AJU’s Ziegler School Celebrates New Home—and Chapter—on Beverly Drive

American Jewish University (AJU) unveiled the new home of the AJU Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies during a May 7 dedication ceremony.

The new 7,700-square-foot Ziegler Campus is located at 350 S. Beverly Drive, at the corner of S. Beverly Drive and W. Olympic boulevard.

While Ziegler opened at the site on March 11, shortly after the start of this academic year’s second semester, the dedication ceremony provided community members their first opportunity to see the new location in-person.

“This is really an exciting moment for us,” AJU Board Chair Harold Masor said at the event, addressing approximately 100 guests, including AJU students, faculty, donors, board members, rabbis and friends of the school.  “We’ve been preparing for this for a couple years, and to have Ziegler in this space where the collaboration can take place on an informal and formal basis is really wonderful.”

AJU designed the new space to encourage scholarly collaboration and communal spirit. The campus’ beit midrash is a rotunda area that is surrounded by the offices of the school’s faculty and administrators. A nearby hallway—adorned with framed portraits of every Ziegler graduating class since 1999—leads to five classrooms, workspaces, a conference room, kitchen and library, which will house AJU’s major book collection and was configured to accommodate not only students but outside researchers as well, according to AJU President Jeffrey Herbst.

“When we walked in here, we immediately understood, with the rotunda and the possibility of faculty and the offices and students studying in the beit midrash, that this could be a place of exceptional intellectual vitality, collegiality and learning,” Herbst said. “We’re delighted this day has come.”

While the new site is being used primarily by the Ziegler School, it will also host “outward facing” community programming, including public events, Herbst told the Journal.

Additionally, because the school is centrally located, in proximity to the predominately Jewish Pico-Robertson neighborhood, many of the school’s faculty and students will now be able to walk and bike to campus, Herbst said. And for those students who aren’t located nearby, the expectation is over time they will “situate themselves” in the area, Herbst said.

Artistic flourishes at the campus include a vibrant Andy Warhol portrait of Jewish philosopher Martin Buber hanging on the wall of the conference room. Additionally, classroom walls are painted purple, which is a color that’s conducive to making students feel more upbeat, according to Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies Dean Rabbi Bradley Artson.

In a humorous touch, a sign in the kitchen was labelled “hefker corner.” “Hefker” is Hebrew for “unclaimed property.”

Over the past several years, AJU has undergone significant transitions, most recently with the sale this year of its Bel-Air hilltop property to Milken Community School. Before the sale, in a move accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, AJU began placing greater emphasis on online learning. This followed a tuition reduction, structural and curriculum changes at the Ziegler School, a leading rabbinical school in the Conservative movement that remains focused on graduating rabbis who are prepared to take on leadership roles in the Jewish community even as the Jewish world around them changes, said Artson.

“In the past we Jews have wandered from place to place, often out of desperation…but AJU’s history of going from campus to campus has been, I think, a wonderful demonstration that we don’t allow nostalgia to preclude our future,” Artson said at the ceremony. “That campus in Bel Air was a magnificent chapter in our history, but it’s not our history. It’s a place. And when it no longer serves the advancement of our mission, the mission is primary.”

Additional attendees included AJU Associate Dean and Rabbi Cheryl Peretz; Past AJU Board Chair Virginia Maas; and Ziegler School Professor in Philosophy Elliot Dorff.

The dedication ceremony included the affixing of mezuzahs outside several of the school’s named offices, classrooms and shared spaces, including the Sara and Simcha Lainer Beit Midrash, the Abner and Roslyn Goldstine Dean’s Office and the Norman and Lela Jacoby Conference Room.

With anti-Israel protests prevalent on college campuses nationwide and antisemitism surging in the aftermath of Oct. 7, not lost on those celebrating Ziegler’s new home was that the joyousness of the occasion was happening at a difficult moment for the Jewish community.

In  his remarks to the program’s guests, Artson—who has been with the Ziegler school for 24 years—noted this dichotomy.

“This is a shared triumph,” the Ziegler dean said, “and this is something at a bleak time to actually feel good about.”