WEINSTEIN, LEWIS H.

WEINSTEIN, LEWIS H. (1905–1996), U.S. attorney and communal leader. Weinstein, born in Arany, Lithuania, was taken to the United States as an infant and grew up in Portland, Maine. He received his law degree from Harvard Law School in 1930. He was admitted to the Massachusetts bar and practiced law. 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 a lieutenant colonel and chief of the liaison section in the European Theater of Operation. He was among the Allied troops that took part in the liberation of the concentration camp prisoners at the end of the Holocaust. Weinstein returned to a Boston 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. His wide-ranging interest in Jewish life led to his service as chairman of four national Jewish agencies: the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds (1965–66); the National Community Relations Advisory Council (1960–64); the American Jewish Conference on Soviet Jewry, which he helped found and which he served as cochairman from its inception and from 1968 as chairman; and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations (1963–65). He also served a number of local, state, and national organizations, including the Temple Mishkan Tefila board, Boston's Hebrew College (president, 1946–53), and the Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston as president and general campaign chairman.

At Harvard's Center for Jewish Studies, Weinstein established the annual Selma and Lewis Weinstein Prize in Jewish Studies, awarded to the best undergraduate essay in Jewish studies. Weinstein's autobiography Masa: Odyssey of an American Jew, which chronicles his journey from the shtetl to Harvard Law School, was published in 1989. His book My Life at the Bar: Lawyer, Soldier, Teacher, and Pro Bono Activist appeared in 1993.