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When a study released last year showed enrollment at major seminaries in a decade-long decline, it fueled concerns about a crisis in the American rabbinate. As the old guard of Conservative and Reform Judaism aged out of the workforce, who would replace them?
But the rabbinical schools affiliated with those movements say reports of their demise were greatly exaggerated — and they have the numbers to prove it.
The Jewish Theological Seminary and Hebrew Union College, seminaries of the Conservative and Reform movements respectively, say they have enrolled their largest fall classes in 15 years. Enrollment at Reconstructionist Rabbinical College holds steady with nine students.
“We are seeing a beautifully diverse population of students, which I think mirrors the people who are in our Jewish communities,” said Rabbi Ayelet Cohen, the dean of the JTS rabbinical school.
At JTS, 25 aspiring rabbis will begin a five-year program at its New York City campus; 41 rabbinical students will begin on the Los Angeles and New York campuses of HUC and on a virtual ordination track, where enrollment is still open.
Administrators at each seminary point to a surge of interest in serving the Jewish community since Oct. 7 — and a ceasefire in Israel enabling students to study abroad there. But they also credit recent efforts to open new paths into the rabbinate. At JTS, for example, eight of the incoming students attended the school’s Mekhinah program — a low-cost preparatory semester introduced in 2024 and available remotely. HUC’s virtual track, which launched in 2024, has 16 students enrolled.
“When the field starts moving together, things can change quickly,” said Rabbi Shira Koch Epstein, executive director of Atra – Center for Rabbinic Innovation, the nonprofit whose 2025 study showed declining enrollment. “We’re seeing coordinated investment in its early stages. One year’s numbers doesn’t mean a trend, but it is a hopeful sign.”
Bucking a trend — or starting a new one
For JTS, the intellectual center of Conservative Judaism for more than a century, the uptick also comes amid handwringing about the movement that goes well beyond its rabbinate. More than one-third of the country’s Conservative synagogues have closed in the 21st century, according to a 2020 Pew Research Center study.
The other major Conservative seminary, L.A.-based Ziegler School of Rabbinical Studies, recently paused admissions and has indicated it will move to a nondenominational model. At least two incoming students at JTS had considered Ziegler before it closed.
Similar anxiety exists around the future of Reform Judaism, albeit at a lower pitch. According to Pew, one in five Reform synagogues closed in the same time span.
On top of declining enrollment, the Atra study found that, of the more than 4,000 rabbis working nationwide, only 6% were younger than 35, while 26% were over 65.
“People were saying this was a crisis,” said Wendy Rosov, the lead researcher on the Atra study. “But it’s been happening for some period of time. It’s just that I don’t know if anybody was paying attention.”
HUC widened the pathway into their program through “pipeline fellowships” that appeal to teens, college students and young post-grads and online courses in Hebrew.
“We’ve really seen that in order for people to feel prepared for rabbinical school, having some learning to ground them as well as knowing others who are also thinking about it has been tremendous,” said Rabbi Rachel Maimin, director of recruitment and admissions at HUC.
Rabbi Annie Lewis, JTS’ director of admissions and recruitment, said the school broadened its outreach by working more closely with youth programs like Camp Ramah to identify talent. It also launched a program that flies out college students to do four-days of immersive study with current rabbinical students during winter break. And it increased its scholarship funding.
The incoming class at JTS includes students from Chile and Brazil, a few Ramah alumni, and four people named Sam; their ages range from 24 and 62, with a roughly equal ratio of men to women and a small nonbinary cohort. Most newcomers are also first-career rabbis — a contrast with Atra’s finding that two-thirds of today’s rabbinical students arrived from a different profession.
The average age of an HUC first-year, meanwhile, varies in age depending on whether they’re studying in person (28 years old) or remotely (48). Having a previous career is a prerequisite for virtual students.
Pull factors
For some of the incoming students, the time finally felt right to pursue a longtime dream. Over the course of a decorated career in law and tech, Seth Rosen, 57, would occasionally browse the Hebrew Union College website, daydreaming of going to rabbinical school.
But while he was raising a family, he couldn’t sell his house in Oakland and move to New York for five years. HUC’s virtual pathway made it possible.
An avid reader of the Talmud, Rosen says part of his motivation for becoming a rabbi now was being able to read and interpret it himself. He doesn’t know yet what he will do once he is ordained.
“I’m old enough to know that whatever plan I’ve got is not going to work out five years from now,” Rosen said. “The journey is just as important — bringing an open heart and an open mind.”
Unlike Rosen, Lilah Katz came to the idea more recently.
Katz, who is 24 and uses they/them pronouns, once planned to go to law school. After college, they worked as a paralegal in the New York Legal Assistance Fund’s LGBTQ+ unit, helping trans women who were seeking asylum from Latin America. But living in a house with other Jewish nonprofit workers, Katz — who grew up in the Conservative movement — fielded religious questions so often that roommates started calling them “rabbi.”
For Katz, the faux-honorific was humbling — and sparked something. “Like yeah, it’s a joke,” they said, “but it also kind of makes you be like, ‘Oh God, I do not know enough to be rabbi.’” Wanting to see if full-time Torah study suited them, Katz enrolled at Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies, a nondenominational yeshiva in Jerusalem. A week in, it was clear: “I was just like, ‘Yeah, I have to do this for my whole life.’”
Katz’s story reflects a spike in Jewish engagement in recent years. Jewish institutions across the country have largely attributed that increase to fallout from the attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, with a 2025 study commissioned by the Jewish Federations of North America showing renewed interest in Jewish life holding strong 18 months after the attack.
In addition to the war in Israel, social and political upheaval and technological changes are driving people to think harder about their Jewish identity, Lewis said.
“People are seeking meaning in a volatile world and looking for a way to make a difference,” said the admissions director, “and finding the medicine of our thousands-year-old tradition as what is called for in this moment.”