First Commencement of the Hebrew Union College, Wednesday, July 11th, … at the Plum Street Temple, Cincinnati.

<<Program for the first graduating rabbinical class of the Hebrew Union College. Of exceptional rarity, unrecorded by Singerman.>> Hebrew Union College was founded in 1875 with Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise as its first president. Eight years later it celebrated the graduation of its first class of four American‑trained rabbis. In a moment of high symbolism, the lavish banquet commemorating the rabbinic ordination of these graduates featured a variety of non-kosher foods and became known as “the Trefa Banquet” - from which several traditional rabbis in attendance left in horror. This shattered Rabbi Wise’s dream that all Jews in the United States would be unite as the “Union of American Hebrew Congregations.” In the ensuing, contentious atmosphere, the Radical Reform wing of the movement passed its 1885 Pittsburgh Platform, dismissing biblical and rabbinic rituals regulating diet and dress as anachronisms. In response, moderate rabbis and scholars, principally Sabato Morais, Alexander Kohut and Cyrus Adler, called for the establishment of a new rabbinical seminary, more hospitable to traditional Judaism. By January 1887, the Jewish Theological Seminary Association opened in New York City, with the mandate to preserve “the knowledge and practice of historical Judaism.” See John Appel, The Trefa Banquet, Commentary, Feb. 1966.