 When, in 1867, Maimonides College was established in Philadelphia, Morais was made professor of the Bible and of Biblical literature, and he held the chair during the six years that the college existed.For a number of years thereafter he felt the urgent need of an institution for the training of Jewish ministers on historical and traditional lines, and the declarations of the Pittsburg Conference in 1885 urged him to immediate action.After a considerable agitation of the subject he succeeded, in conjunction with a few others, in establishing (January, 1886) the Jewish Theological Seminary at New York.