Money Woes Force Tough Choices on Venerable Jewish College

New York’s Yeshiva University, one of the world’s best-known Jewish institutions of higher learning, faces job cuts and downsizing amid endowment losses and a budget shortfall that reached $150-million last year, writes The Wall Street Journal.

Yeshiva wants to hand daily management of its Albert Einstein College of Medicine to the nonprofit, Bronx-based Montefiore Health System, a move that will cut $100-million from its deficit. The century-old university has eliminated administrative posts, offered staffers early retirement, and could consolidate its multiple campuses. One possibility is merging single-sex campuses, a tradition for Orthodox institutions, into a single co-ed site.

Yeshiva lost $110-million in Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, making it one of the largest nonprofit victims of the scam, and risky alternative investments have further shrunk its endowment from $1.7-billion in 2007 to $1-billion now.