Rabbi Ismar Schorsch retires

A brief update on the The Forward website:

The chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary, Rabbi Ismar Schorsch, announced to faculty members Wednesday that he would be retiring in the summer of 2006, at the end of the next academic year.
According to a source, Schorsch announced his decision, noting that by next summer he will have turned 70 and served for 20 years as chancellor of Conservative Judaism’s flagship institution.
Schorch sounded a similar note in a mass email to JTS supporters.
"I decided long ago to step down while still in top form,” Schorsch wrote. "The time, however, has come for me to return to the life of the mind.”
Schorsch asserted that in "its 120-year history, [JTS] has never been larger, stronger or more focused.” He also said the institution was in strong financial shape, "buttressed by a balanced budget, well managed portfolio and vigorous annual campaign, its endowment grows apace.”
In his e-mail, the chancellor made no mention of the school’s ballooning debt, revealed last year when Schorsch announced that the school needed to repay nearly $40 million in loans to an internal source. Schorsch and other JTS officials have refused to answer questions about the school’s financial situation.

It will be interesting to see to what extent the latter paragraph emerges as a factor, either privately or publicly. Presumably if urgent financial problems were the deciding factor he would have been pushed to leave before the summer of 2006.