Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost is suing Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) to keep its historical rabbinical school and assets in Cincinnati.
In a lawsuit filed in Hamilton County Common Pleas Court, Yost argues the school is violating Ohio's charitable laws with its plans to shutter its historic rabbinical program by the end of the 2026 academic year. The lawsuit further alleges the college has inappropriately moved donations meant for the Cincinnati campus to its other locations.
"Hebrew Union accepted millions of dollars in donations based on a 76-year-old promise it now would like to break," Yost says in a release. "We’re suing to keep these assets in Cincinnati where they belong."
The lawsuit says in 2022 the college's board removed a line from its 1950 Consolidation Agreement — the document created when it combined the Jewish Institute of Religion, formerly based in New York, with the Cincinnati campus — stating that it would "permanently maintain rabbinical schools in Cincinnati, Ohio and New York, New York."
The Hebrew Union College Board of Governors in New York voted in April 2022 to sunset rabbi ordinations at the college's Cincinnati campus by the end of the 2026 academic year. The Pines School of Graduate Studies in Cincinnati is no longer accepting students.
The last four rabbinical students on the Cincinnati campus will be ordained in May.
The college's strategic plan states it plans to consolidate "our three U.S. rabbinical programs into one national rabbinical school operating on two residential campuses" while also "reimagining our historic Cincinnati campus to ensure our world-class library, archives and museum serve students, scholars, and community learners in new and innovative ways."
Yost argues many charitable donations were made for programs in Cincinnati, or to support a 2005 master plan that refers to "a permanent address on Clifton Avenue" — the Cincinnati street where the college is located. He alleges the college has redirected those funds outside of the state since the decision to close the Cincinnati rabbinical school and end its Cincinnati-based graduate school programs.
WVXU has reached out to the college for comment.
Yost's lawsuit suggests the state has "information and belief" that the college is "actively pursuing the sale or lease of the land that it owns which houses its Cincinnati rabbinical school."
The suit asks the court to prohibit the sale of the Cincinnati campus, prevent any restricted donations from being transferred out of state, and for a full accounting of Ohio-based assets along with a court order that they support a permanent rabbinical campus in Cincinnati.
Gary Zola, Ph.D. is executive director emeritus of the American Jewish Archives and professor emeritus of the American Jewish Experience at Hebrew Union College. He's been outspoken since 2022 in his criticism of the college's plans to shutter its academic programs in Cincinnati.
"Despite the school's belief that you could close the academic programs and maintain the campus and give it a meaningful existence, I indicated ... no academic institution could be brought forward as an example, an illustration, of what the Board and the administration was attempting to do," Zola tells WVXU. "Now, as we are about to ordain here in Cincinnati, the last four Hebrew Union College students in May, the proof of my predictions have all come true: the campus is been rented out to Good Samaritan Hospital's nursing school; the library is no longer a living library. It has stopped collecting books."
Zola says he hasn't had time to thoroughly exam the lawsuit, but thinks Yost has a point.
"You don't need any education to know that if there are no students, if there are no academic programs, if nothing exists here, and people have given money over 75 years for the purpose of sustaining rabbinic education — scholarship money, funding for the campus, all this — and nothing exists, well, I certainly can understand the attorney general's point of view."
This is the second time Yost has taken legal action against Hebrew Union College. In 2024 he filed suit to prevent the sale of certain assets after news reports came out suggesting the school was considering selling off rare books from the Klau Library collections.
That lawsuit ended in a deal in 2025 under which the college agreed to:
- provide a list of all texts in its Special Collections and Rare Book and Manuscript Collection to the AG's office;
- identify any items that have donor restrictions;
- notify the AG's office at least 45 days in advance before attempting to sell or remove items from the collection;
- and adhere to the American Library Association’s standards for collection management.
Hebrew Union College was founded in Cincinnati in 1875 by Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise. It now has campuses in Los Angeles, New York and Jerusalem.
The Cincinnati campus also is home to the Klau Library, the Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives and the Skirball Museum.
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