 In 1958, he was named rector of the Seminary.In 1945, Finkelstein hired the theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel, who had been teaching for a brief period at Hebrew Union College.During the course of his chancellorship, Finkelstein also gave academic appointments to other prominent scholars including Moshe Davis (1942), Shalom Spiegel (1943), Yochanan Muffs (1954), Max Kadushin (1960), Gerson Cohen, David Weiss Halivni, Judah Goldin, Chaim Dimitrovsky, and Seymour Siegel.