Jeff Finkelstein marks 20 years as Federation CEO
“I’m blessed to have this job,” Finkelstein said. “I love what I do most days and wake up inspired to do more."

When Jeff Finkelstein interviewed for the top job at Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh 20 years ago, he thought about lessons in community building he first learned as a kid at a New Hampshire summer camp.
“I was asked about my vision for Federation,” said Finkelstein, 55, who was then Federation’s vice president of development but eager to become its president and CEO.
“I told them it was to carry forward what I experienced at Camp Yavneh, a diverse place where we all lived together whether we were Orthodox or Hassidic or Reform, where we spoke Hebrew and where we learned to live a little more Jewishly every single day.”
Finkelstein got the job and has thrived in it for two decades. He is currently the longest-serving Federation director of a large city in the U.S.
Having helped lead Pittsburgh through the aftermath of the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooting and other crises and challenges, Finkelstein is looking forward to 20 more years of furthering the agency’s mission, including combating antisemitism, increasing support for Jewish education and maintaining strong bonds with the broader Pittsburgh community.
“I’m blessed to have this job,” he said. “I love what I do most days and wake up inspired to do more. It is a very special thing to be a Jew. What drives me is a love of the Jewish community.”
Finkelstein, who practices Conservative Judaism, grew up in a traditional Jewish home. His father was a Jewish educator and author who died a year ago. Both parents raised him to embrace his faith, he said. “I was really turned on to Jewish stuff when I was a kid.”
Although Finkelstein planned to go to rabbinical school, his junior year at Hebrew University in Israel prompted him to change course.
He enrolled in the Hornstein Jewish Professional School of Leadership Program at Brandeis University thinking he might become a synagogue director, but an internship at the Federation in his hometown of Boston convinced him that Jewish communal service would be the perfect fit.
He joined Pittsburgh’s Federation in a fundraising capacity, and still considers development a top priority, as evidenced by the more than $681 million the agency reportedly has raised under his leadership.
Running Federation is akin to managing a large business, Finkelstein said, given myriad needs within the Jewish community, locally and abroad.
In the immediate future those needs include a continued focus on antisemitism and security, teen mental health, young adult engagement, enabling the elderly to age well and helping Israel to rebuild from the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack.
Pittsburgh’s Federation has pledged three years of financial and other resources, as part of the national Communities2Gether initiative, to Nir Yitzchak kibbutz on the Gaza border, where seven members were murdered and six others were kidnapped by Hamas.
“We are trying to help with trauma support at Nir Yitzhak after the horrors people experienced and to make it a desirable place to live again,” Finkelstein said, noting that 49% of residents have returned, “which means 51% haven’t.”
Finkelstein, who serves on the Jewish Federations of North America’s Israel Emergency Campaign allocations committee, traveled with Pittsburgh Federation board chair, Jan Levinson, to Israel on a solidarity mission in the wake of the Hamas attack.
Over the years, Finkelstein has led dozens of trips to Israel, including a logistically challenging mega-mission for more than 300 people in 2012 — Federation’s 100th anniversary year — that remains one of his most gratifying accomplishments.
Of even greater significance was his decision to hire a Federation security director in 2016, two years before the attack at the Tree of Life building, that has since become a model for more than 100 other Federations in the U.S.
“We were smart. We saw an uptick in antisemitism and violence in the workplace and we knew something could happen,” Finkelstein said, noting that the active shooter training Federation provided to the congregations in the Tree of Life building prevented more lives from being lost in the massacre.
Federation now employs three full-time security personnel and lobbied the state for grants to install security systems at synagogues and other Jewish organizations throughout Pittsburgh.
Besides hardening facilities, Federation works to build partnerships with the area’s diverse ethnic, religious and university sectors, Finkelstein said, recalling the outpouring of support from non-Jews in the wake of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting.
“It was incredible at the gathering at Soldiers and Sailors (Memorial Hall and Museum) on Oct. 28, 2018, when I asked for all of the city’s religious leaders to come up on stage,” he said. “We’ve built so many relationships since then. At the core, it’s all about relationships. It’s hard to hate people when you know them.”
Federation reaches many non-Jews through the agencies it funds, which are open to all, such as the Jewish Community Center and Jewish Family and Community Services.
Jordan Golin, president and CEO of JFCS, values Finkelstein’s “collaborative” approach.
The relationship between the two agencies is “collegial rather than hierarchal, which is not a model that every Federation follows,” Golin said. “Some Federations create competition among agencies vying for the same dollars, which is not a healthy dynamic. Jeff believes in partnerships, and that tone permeates the Jewish community.”
Finkelstein “isn’t a big ‘toot my own horn’ kind of guy,” Golin said. “He doesn’t have a lot of ego because he sees himself as serving the Jewish community.”
Levinson — the 10th board chair Finkelstein has worked with over the years — echoed that assessment, and added that “people like working with Jeff because he knows what he’s doing, and (promotes) honest dialogue.”
Heading a Federation is a 24/7 job inevitably beset with unexpected crises and developments, Levinson said.
That included last summer’s defeat of the Not On Our Dime referendum, fiscally sponsored by the Democratic Socialists of America, aimed at preventing the city from doing business with Israel.
“Jeff has a natural talent for dealing with pressure and adapting,” Levinson said. “When you love and are committed to your job, you can handle whatever challenge comes up.” PJC
Deborah Weisberg is a freelance writer living in Pittsburgh.
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