Rabbi David Finkelstein

Raised in Highland Park, Illinois, Rabbi David experienced a variety of Jewish ways of being, learning at Conservative, Reform, and Chabad synagogues while attending public school K-12. He studied classical piano performance and English literature at the University of Wisconsin and earned an M.A. in Humanities from the University of Chicago.

In his late twenties, Rabbi David began to study Torah, and to pray, and started immersing himself in the Jewish community leading to two years of study at the Conservative Yeshiva in Jerusalem, where he met his spouse Rabbi Sara Meirowitz. They returned to Boston to study at the Rabbinical School of Hebrew College in Newton, where Rabbi David was ordained in 2014. While in Rabbinical School, Rabbi David studied Jewish Spiritual Storytelling and was greatly influenced by Maggid Yitzhak Buxbaum (z”l).

Before becoming a rabbi, Rabbi David taught at Camp Yavneh and Camp Ramah in Wisconsin, served as an intern at the Boston Synagogue and at Temple Shalom of Salem, and taught writing at Bentley University and Emerson College.  

Prior to coming to Or Atid, Rabbi David served as rabbi of Temple Beth Israel in Waltham for nine years. His first pulpit helped him discover a love of community building, a love of supporting individuals and families in their pursuit of a meaningful Jewish life, and the joy of lifting up the voices of contemporary Jews engaged in creating, nurturing, and sustaining an American Jewish Torah for the 21st century.

Rabbi David is known for his humor and joy, for his clear-eyed literary analysis of Torah, and for connecting the Torah’s concerns to our lives today. He cares deeply about creating a learning environment where all participants can build and articulate their own authentic relationship with Torah.

Drawn by Or Atid’s active lay leadership and by the Jewish Learning Collaborative of Metrowest, Rabbi David is thrilled to join Congregation Or Atid with his spouse, Rabbi Sara, and their two children, Rafi and Libi ; he invites you to join him in Or Atid’s caring and light-filled Jewish community. 

With a foundation of gratitude to our Creator for the blessings of each day, Rabbi David welcomes people of all genders, sexual orientations, and cultural and religious backgrounds to join him in celebrating, learning, and forming a community of care and support.