History
The origins of the URJ began with the founding of the UAHC by Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise in 1873, based at Cincinnati, Ohio. At the time it consisted of 34 congregations. In 1951, the UAHC relocated its headquarters to New York City. In 2003, the UAHC was officially renamed the Union for Reform Judaism by the General Assembly at the organization's Biennial Convention. The former name was dropped because it reflected Wise's unrealized expectation that the whole of American Jewry would eventually affiliate with the Reform movement, and also because it failed to acknowledge the Reform-affiliated congregations outside the United States. Today, the organization is often referred to simply as "the Union." As of 2012, over 900 synagogues were affiliated with it.
In 1875, the Union created Hebrew Union College (HUC) in Cincinnati, the Reform movement seminary to train rabbis and later cantors and other Jewish professionals. In 1950, the college merged with the Jewish Institute of Religion, a Reform rabbinical college founded in 1922 by Rabbi Stephen Samuel Wise, and located in New York City. Rabbis in URJ member temples are members of the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR).
Read more about this topic: Union For Reform Judaism
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