Rabbi Jacob Weinstein Dead at 72

Rabbi Jacob J. Weinstein, past national chairman of the National Committee for Labor Israel and who had been re-elected this weekend for his fifth term as the NCLI’s honorary national president, died yesterday in Chicago at the age of 72. Dr. Judah J. Shapiro, NCLI president, who announced the death of Rabbi Weinstein at the closing session of the organization’s 51st national convention here today, said the rabbi was a “brilliant and courageous leader whose passion for social justice was recognized by American labor, and whose dedication to Histadrut over many decades was unlimited.”

Rabbi Weinstein, a leading spokesman for Reform Judaism and past president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, was spiritual leader from 1939 to 1967 of Kehilat Anshe Mayriv Temple in Chicago, the oldest Jewish congregation in Ill., now part of the K.A.M.-Isaiah Israel Congregation. Since 1967 he has been its Rabbi Emeritus. After retirement in 1967 he moved to San Francisco.

Born in Stephin, Russia-Poland, he was brought to the U.S. at the age of five. A graduate of Reed College in Portland, Oregon, he was ordained in 1929 at Hebrew Union College from which he received an honorary Doctorate of Divinity degree in 1955. Rabbi Weinstein served as a labor arbitrator in Chicago in 1960 and on various federal committees under President Kennedy. He had also served on the Jewish Welfare Board of Chicago and the board of the UAHC. During the 1930s he was a founder of the old League for Palestine. Funeral services will be held tomorrow at the K.A.M.-Isaiah Israel Congregation in Chicago.