Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion

Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion

Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion was founded in 1875 in Cincinnati as the first permanent Jewish seminary in the Americas. It trains rabbis, cantors, and educators for the Reform Movement across four campuses, with Andrew Rehfeld serving as president and David B. Edelson, Senior VP and CFO of Loews Corporation, chairing its Board of Governors. The endowment, estimated at $236M, allocates across activist and hostile strategies, private equity, and direct real estate holdings. The portfolio bears the structural imprint of major campus monetizations — NYU acquired its Greenwich Village property, and USC purchased most of its Los Angeles campus, freeing capital while maintaining academic collaborations like the Louchheim School for Judaic Studies. Holdings span the First Battery Armory in New York City, the Taube Family Campus in Jerusalem, and the remaining Cincinnati campus on Clifton Avenue. Investment governance sits with Daryl Messinger, the Investment Committee chair and past URJ chair. The institution draws operational support from affiliated Reform Movement entities including the Union for Reform Judaism, which provides membership-funded backing. Institutional partnerships extend to the Central Conference of American Rabbis and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, where President Rehfeld holds board representation. What differentiates HUC-JIR is its hybrid endowment model — a religious seminary operating with an investment portfolio that deploys private equity and activist capital alongside a physical campus network spanning three continents. The recent campus sale-and-leaseback or partnership structures with large research universities add a real-asset monetization layer uncommon among comparably sized endowments.