The Jewish Institute of Religion was an educational establishment created by Rabbi Stephen S. Wise in 1922 in New York City.
While generally incorporating Reform Judaism, it was separate from the previously established Hebrew Union College.
JIR from the start inclined to Zionism, in contrast to HUC, which at the time did not favor Jewish nationalism.
[4][5] Motivated largely by budgetary difficulties, Wise accepted the prospect of JIR's merger with HUC once the biblical archaeologist Nelson Glueck assumed the presidency.
In 1954 a school in Los Angeles was chartered and, in 1963, primarily as a result of Glueck's efforts, a Jerusalem campus, initially devoted to archaeology, was opened.