Lewis H. Weinstein, 1905-

Lewis H. Weinstein (1905- )

A U.S. attorney and communal leader, Lewis H. Weinstein was born on April 10, 1905 to Jacob Menehem and Kuna (Romanow) Weinstein in Arany, Lithania, and was taken to the United States as an infant. He grew up in Portland, Maine. He married Selma Yeslawssy on September 2, 1932 and had two children-David J. (born 1936) and Louise (born 1945).

Before coming to Boston in 1921, while he lived in Portland he worked as a reported for the Press Herald, as office manager in a furniture business, as a Hebrew school teacher and principal, and waiter.

After graduating from Harvard (Phi Beta Kappa) in 1927 and Harvard Law School in 1930, he was admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1930 and practiced law in Boston, Massachusetts at the firm of Rome and Weinstein and then Foley, Hoag and Elliot from 1946 until his retirement.

During World War II he served in the army, in 1944 on General Eisenhower's staff as liaison to General Charles de Gaulle and in 1945 as chief of the liaison section of the European theater of operations. After the Normandy landing, he served as liaison officer from General Eisenhower to Generals DeGaulle and Koenig. He entered Paris with them on the Day of Liberation in 1944. After the war he returned to his law practice and was active in local, state, and national bar associations.

Among his many interests was housing: he served as counsel for urban renewal agencies and on city, state, and federal housing agencies, and taught city planning at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and law at Harvard and other professional institutions. He served as chairman, from 1946-1052, of the Massachusetts State Housing Board, Emergency Housing Commission, Massachusetts Housing Council and was counsel to numerous housing and redevelopment authorities, in Massachusetts and elsewhere. He was a member of the U.S. Rent Control and Housing Commission.

His wide-ranging interest in Jewish life led to his service as chairman of four national Jewish agencies: the Council of Jewish Federation and Welfare Funds (1965-1966); the National Community Relations Advisory Council (1960-1964); the American Jewish Conference on Soviet Jewry, which he helped found and which he served as co-chairman from its inception and from 1968 as chairman; and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations (1963-1965). He also served a number of local, state, and national organizations, including the Temple Mishkan Tefila Board, Boston's Hebrew College (President, 1946-1953), and the Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston as President and general campaign chairman. He served on the Boards of the Beth Israel Hospital, Hebrew Rehabilitation Center for the Aged, Bureau of Jewish Education, and other local agencies. 1

1 Compiled on the basis of archival documents in the Papers of Lewis H. Weinstein as well as from data presented in Encyclopedia Judaica, vol. W, p. 871; Who's Who in American Jewry (1980), p. 516.