Lewis Weinstein served as Chairman of the Conference of Presidents from December 1963 to February 1965.

He was the first chairman of the Conference since it expanded its focus from solely American-Israel issues to those affecting Jews throughout the world, a result of Conference member organizations’ (then numbering only 18) concerns about the situation of Jewish life in the Soviet Union.

Mr. Weinstein had a distinguished career as a Boston attorney and as counsel to numerous Federal and Massachusetts agencies on housing, education, and employment. A litigator and senior partner at the Boston firm of Foley, Hoag & Eliot, he also taught city planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and law at Harvard University, from which he received his law degree.

During World War II he served on General Eisenhower’s staff as liaison to General Charles de Gaulle, and as chief of the liaison section of European operations.

Mr. Weinstein held many roles in Jewish communal organizations, including chairman of the Council of Jewish Federation and Welfare Funds; chairman of the National Community Relations Advisory Council; co-founder and co-chairman of the American Jewish Conference on Soviet Jewry; and president and campaign chairman of the Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston. He was also a board member of the United Jewish Appeal, the National Foundation for Jewish Culture, the Jewish Memorial Foundation, and other organizations.

He passed away in 1996.