Steve Saltzman Created Opportunities for Jewish Heritage in New Haven
In 1962, as a newly minted tax attorney from New York University, Steve Saltzman traveled to Boston to interview with a law firm at the request of his tax law professor. Upon arrival, instead of showing Steve inside—his friend showed him the door.
“My professor apologized profusely, telling me his firm just wasn’t ready for a guy named Saltzman as they have not yet digested McDonough” Steve recalls. “So, I found a great position in New Haven and proudly established my family and career here.”
That early experience in Boston not only shaped Steve’s professional trajectory—it paved the way for Steve’s significant contributions to Jewish New Haven, most notably his involvement with the Greater New Haven Jewish Federation, the Jewish Foundation of Greater New Haven, and the Anti-Defamation League.
For Steve, a former President and campaign chair of the Jewish Federation, Chairman of the Jewish Foundation, co-founder of the Jewish Cemetery Association, regional board chair of the ADL—as well as a longtime local leader within the Horeb Lodge of B’nai Brith, and his synagogue, Congregation B’nai Jacob—heritage and circumstance have driven a lifelong pursuit of helping the New Haven Jewish community thrive in perpetuity.
“When I came to New Haven, the only organizations I could join were Jewish; I couldn’t join the Quinnipiac Club or the New Haven Country Club. Today, the younger generation has all those options, and more.”
Ensuring those opportunities for generations to come is what motivates Steve to continue his commitment to the Jewish Foundation and other civic organizations. “Growing up, I recognized that our Jewish community as a group had to take care of itself. Summer camps for kids, homes for older folks, holocaust education—we need to make sure that whatever is important to our community endures long after we’re gone.”
For his part, Steve chose to honor his late wife’s memory and demonstrate his own commitment to Jewish New Haven by establishing multiple endowment funds designed to provide perpetual income to the organizations dear to him. Steve established a LOJE (Lion of Judah Endowment Fund) in Marilyn’s memory which every year makes a distribution to the Federation annual campaign, in Marilyn’s name. Steve also established funds for the Jewish Cemetery Association, the ADL-Connecticut, a PACE fund to endow his own campaign gift, as well as a donor advised fund and provided that upon his passing, his daughters, Linda and Amy, will become the donor advisors for this fund. Steve’s wife Mary Beth is a member of the Women of Vision Society of the Jewish Foundation.
“I’m no kid anymore, and people ask me why I keep working,” says Steve. “I keep working so that I can keep giving. I’m part of a 4,000-year link chain of Jewish heritage; I want to be sure that chain is as strong when I put it down, as the day I picked it up.”