The Reconstructionist Rabbinical College is bringing a racial justice lens to the story of its nearly 60-year history, especially when it comes to the context surrounding its 1982 move from North Philadelphia to a nearby suburb.
In past tellings, RRC’s move has gone underexamined or been described as coming without cost — to the college or the urban, largely Black neighborhood it left behind.
In reality, rabbinical students and faculty from RRC’s 1968 founding to its move 14 years later missed opportunities to forge deep ties with Black neighbors or participate in racial justice initiatives during a dynamic time.
Those are some of the key findings from a yearlong project forthrightly examining RRC’s relocation and the role that race may have played.
The project was an initiative of Reconstructing Judaism — RRC is part of that organization — and was an outgrowth of the movement’s 2023 Reparations Resolution, which urged Reconstructionist communities to grapple with systemic oppression, racism and their harmful impacts.
The resolution also called for “deep reflection on the ways in which we have participated in or benefited from racial injustices in our communities.” The effort to re-examine the past and consider alternate courses for the future also stems from Reconstructing Judaism’s commitment to “join and lead Jewish efforts to dismantle systemic racism and to advance racial diversity, equity and inclusion within the Reconstructionist movement,” as stated in its 2021-26 strategic plan.
Examining the college’s past — and to what degree it was shaped by or contributed to racist practices — has involved nearly all aspects of the organization. That includes RRC faculty and students, the Center for Jewish Ethics, Thriving Communities staff, as well as members of the board of governors and the Tikkun Olam Commission. The project’s scope demonstrates Reconstructing Judaism’s commitment to racial justice, even as the political climate has become far less favorable to such work. It’s resulted in series of recommendations related to how the college and Reconstructing Judaism tell their story and interact with the wider Philadelphia community.
Officially, the effort is called the “1299 Reckoning Project,” referring to the current physical address of RRC and Reconstructing Judaism. In retrospect, some have suggested that it should have been called the “2308 Project,” after its former address on Philadelphia’s major north-south artery.
“ ‘The 1299 Reckoning Project’ provides a model for enacting the resolution that other institutions — within and beyond our movement — could then follow,” said Rabbi Mira Wasserman, Ph.D., vice president for academic affairs at Reconstructing Judaism and former director of the Center for Jewish Ethics.
We think every suburban synagogue in America that relocated from within a city should learn more about the urban neighborhoods they come from, about the people who were their neighbors.
Rabbi Micah Weiss, RRC ’19, who co-led the project as Reconstructing Judaism’s tikkun olam specialist, said “a truthful accounting of the past is a core component of teshuvah. Investigating the past is a first step toward discussing acts of repair going forward.”
Weiss, who formerly worked in Reconstructing Judaism’s Thriving Communities department, stressed that the project isn’t about assigning blame for any past historical wrongs; it is an effort to better understand RRC’s past to more fully tell its present and future story. (Rabbi Asher Sofman, RRC ’23, Reconstructing Judaism’s Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI) Program Coordinator, is now overseeing the organization’s racial justice efforts.)
“We think every suburban synagogue in America that relocated from within a city should learn more about the urban neighborhoods they come from, about the people who were their neighbors,” said Weiss. “This is walking the walk of reparations. We have made commitments, and we continue to live them out.”
Like many big endeavors, the “1299 Reckoning Project” began with a series of questions including: Was the 1982 move in any way motivated by racial stereotypes? Did RRC’s move from North Philadelphia cause racial harm?
An email from Rabbi Armin Langer, PhD., RRC ’22, sparked discussions between Weiss and Wasserman that laid the project’s groundwork. Commencing in May 2024, the project included a week-long intensive course that brought together RRC students, faculty, synagogue leaders, as well as members of the Reconstructing Judaism board, Tikkun Olam Commission, and Jews of Color and Allies Advisory Group. Additional scholars and leaders took part, including Langer. Through readings, panels, text study, discussions with early alumni and a visit to North Philadelphia, participants examined the history of RRC as an institution, Philadelphia neighborhoods, and broader trends in American Judaism and race.
Later that fall, three RRC students pursued independent research projects, further exploring RRC’s past and how other Jewish communities have pursued reparations efforts. Michelle Katz, Molly Schulman and Tzvi Silver worked under the guidance of Amanda Beckenstein Mbuvi, Ph.D., the new director of RRC’s Center for Jewish Ethics. Students shared their learning with the rest of the student body in March with an RRC community program.
“Understanding the histories that we’ve lived through, even in their difficult aspects, can help us understand the present,” said Mbuvi. “Moving from the sort of enormous thing in history to something concrete, contained and doable is an important skill students developed.”
Those who participated uncovered a more complex story about RRC’s early years than what had previously been shared.
According to Wasserman, the story behind RRC’s move is a complicated one. On the one hand, the 1982 move came well after the peak years of demographic change, so it might be hard to consider it “white flight.” On the other hand, depressed circumstances in the neighborhood circa 1968, when RRC was established, contributed to the ability of the nascent institution to be able to afford to purchase its own building.
“Rabbi College opens in ghetto.” This 1968 Philadelphia Inquirer headline seemed to sum up attitudes at the time. For most students and faculty, the neighborhood was something to be feared — or a kind of badge of honor to have survived — rather than an opportunity to build deep relationships or explore political and intellectual firmament. This was during a period following the 1967 Six-Day War when the storied civil rights-era Black-Jewish alliance was breaking apart. Starting in the late 1960s, many Jewish communities and leaders took a step back from civil rights activism and became much focused on Jewish-specific issues like Israel and Soviet Jewry.
Indeed, some students did try to forge ties, but found their hopes for building relationships were limited by their lack of time and the extent of the issues facing the neighborhood.
While the project did not uncover evidence of any kind of calculable economic harm to the North Philadelphia neighborhood where RRC began, it did identify lost opportunities and “sins of omission.”
For example, during the years when strong bonds might have developed, there were limited connections among RRC students, faculty and the surrounding community.
And there was almost no discussion about the racial, economic and social implications of leaving a predominantly Black neighborhood.
“Nor did the RRC community seem aware of the important organizing in pursuit of reparations and racial justice that was unfolding in that very neighborhood at that very time,” said Wasserman.
Sandy Gerber, a member of Reconstructing Judaism’s Tikkun Olam Commission and Mayim Rabim Congregation in Minneapolis, traveled to RRC last year to take part in the intensive course; in March, she remotely shared her observations with participants at the communal program and during a Reparations Shabbat service at Mayim Rabim.
“A major reason for the affordable, available real estate was the disinvestment in the neighborhood by white Jews over the past two decades. Once a thriving site of Jewish life, by 1968, there were very few Jewish institutions left on North Broad Street,” Gerber said in the Shabbat talk on reparations.
I think that having the willingness to engage in this level of self-reflection and introspection is just amazing,
“When it comes to stories of feelings of safety in the neighborhood, it is good to be mindful of how these tropes are often racially coded and to try to include some kind of systemic analysis in explaining the environment,” added Gerber. (Click here to read Gerber’s full summary of her experience with the project.)
Student Michelle Katz explored the Ira and Judith Kaplan Eisenstein Reconstructionist Archives, sifting through the private correspondence of Ira Silverman, RRC’s president in the early 1980s. She found a significant difference in how Silverman spoke about the relocation publicly, privately and confidentially. In confidential correspondence, Katz found he was far more likely to describe the neighborhood as declining, referring outright to danger posed to students.
Additionally, Katz learned that before the sale of its first home, RRC sold its stained-glass windows separately. Gerber said this led to degradation of the building left to future residents—the stripping of aesthetic beauty from the neighborhood.
“Of the research we were able to do in this project, this is the one site we found where RRC may have done direct harm in the relocation process to the next owners and residents of 2308 N. Broad Street,” wrote the authors of a series of recommendations. “That being said, there are too many complicating factors for us to feel confident making a recommendation that RRC pay monetary reparations for this harm.
The “1299 Project” has resulted in a series of recommendations, including incorporating these findings into public retellings of RRC’s history. One example: a committee plans to create a display at RRC’s current building that more fully accounts for its history.
Other recommendations that students, staff and volunteers are working on include strengthening Reconstructing Judaism’s relationships in Cheltenham Township, the increasingly diverse community in which it resides, and becoming more involved in Philadelphia’s racial and social justice efforts.
“I think that having the willingness to engage in this level of self-reflection and introspection is just amazing,” said Gerber, who works in community development. “I’m excited that Reconstructing Judaism framed this project as a chance to look at ourselves.”
Further Reading
Sandy Gerber offers analysis and reflections on the 1299 project.
Explore how Rabbi Mira Wasserman confronts slavery in Jewish sources.
Learn about Reconstructing Judaism’s civil rights pilgrimage to Georgia and Alabama.
Review Reconstructing Judaism’s racial justice commitments.
Learn about RRC’s Dismantling Racism from the Inside Out project.
Listen to a podcast about the Dismantling Racism project.
Read Rabbi Deborah Waxman’s call for Jews to embrace the pursuit of racial justice.
