High tech for a higher authority: the placement of graduating rabbis from Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion

We describe the new placement process to match the graduating rabbis from Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC–JIR) with congregations. The students involved in this new placement process are scheduled to be ordained as rabbis from HUC–JIR in May, about one month after the placement process is completed, and most students begin their pulpit assignments in July. Embedded in the new placement process are the double-blind match procedure and the double-blind match procedure for couples. These procedures, which we adapted from the procedure used to assign medical school graduates to internships, have been used successfully for placing the graduating rabbinical students at HUC–JIR since 1997.