Shopify CEO Makes Good on 18-Year-Old Promise to His Campus Rabbi

by Mendel Super – chabad.org

In 2008, Harley Finkelstein was a young law student at the University of Ottawa when he told Rabbi Chaim Boyarsky that he’d like to one day help purchase a building for Chabad at the campus. At the time, Chabad was being run out of the Boyarsky family living room. “I was a poor law student; I wasn’t a rich kid,” Finkelstein, today the president of the online shopping platform Shopify, tells Chabad.org. “The comment I made to Rabbi Chaim was really a throwaway comment; it was so funny to see students all over his house.”

Much has changed since those Friday evenings spent around the Boyarsky’s Shabbat table in Canada. Finkelstein didn’t practice law for long; in 2009, he became one of the first merchants on Shopify, and soon after, became an executive at the company.

In 2018, Finkelstein made good on that “throwaway comment” that had long been forgotten by everyone else, writing his first check to fund the construction of a permanent center for the Rohr Chabad Student Network of Ottawa. Post-Covid, as the world bounced back, Finkelstein and his wife, Lindsay, pledged further to renovate and expand the center to meet the growing needs of the Jewish student body on campus.

Other members of the Ottawa Jewish community joined in as well. A building committee, led by Joel Figler and Ian Chavinsky, raised close to $3 million to complete what became a $5 million project. The initial purchase of the property was made possible by a donation from Larry Hartman, another community member. Boyarsky notes that this was almost entirely a locally-funded project, with the bulk of the contributions coming from Jewish Ottawans and alumni who wanted to see Judaism flourish on campus.

Completed in April, the Finkelstein Chabad Center is a 6,000-square-foot, two-story building in the heart of downtown Ottawa, under a mile from Parliament Hill, housing a synagogue, dining hall, guest suites, a commercial kitchen and soon, a mikvah. “It’s becoming the center of Jewish life, which is unbelievable,” Finkelstein says, “I never imagined in a million years that I would be doing this.”

Boyarsky, who has directed the Rohr Chabad Student Network of Ottawa with his wife, Yocheved, since 2008, first met Finkelstein during the latter’s second year of law school. Boyarsky had arranged nightly prayer services for a student who’d lost his mother, and Finkelstein was one of those who showed up.

“He invited me to dinner every Friday night. It was remarkable; there were students everywhere,” Finkelstein recalls. “The energy was amazing.”

“He knew I wasn’t religious,” says Finkelstein, “but he wrapped tefillin with students, and I wanted to wrap it right in the middle of the atrium.”

“Harley was always very proud of his Judaism,” recalls his rabbi.

Finkelstein met his wife, Lindsay, at the Boyarskys’ home on one of those Friday nights at Chabad. “She was a huge part of this project,” he says. “In 2021, when she saw the demand, she encouraged me to make it bigger. It was her ambition.”

A Symbiotic Relationship

Finkelstein sees parallels between Chabad upending the traditional synagogue model and his career. “It’s like comparing Fortune 500 companies to Shopify. This isn’t a traditional synagogue; we are the disruptors. Chaim saw something in me; he placed a bet on my future, and he got a massive return on investment,” he says.

“There’s a non-judgmental aspect to it; he didn’t care if I was secular or kosher; he cared that I was Jewish. Chabad pays it forward in a way that others don’t. Rabbi Boyarsky isn’t from Ottawa, but when he moved there, he figured out who everyone was, who the leaders are now and who will be in the future. He invested in us. Most people wouldn’t spend time with a poor law student, but he did. It’s that pay-it-forward approach that makes them different—unlike anyone I’ve met in my life. It’s a more modern version of Judaism, done in a modest way.”

“Chabad,” Finkelstein continues, “attracts other Jews outside of the campus community. It’s unique and has energy; it inspires more traditional congregations to think differently. It acts like a magnet and a tool for inspiration to engage others. At a time when Jewish giving is at risk, Chabad is thriving. They are more thoughtful, more ambitious and less judgmental—an inspiration for others in the Jewish community to be better.”

Finkelstein views his support of Chabad as reciprocating in kind. “I’ve done a lot of great things, but the Finkelstein Chabad Center is the most meaningful thing I’ve ever done. My wife and I met at a Chabad event in Ottawa, and I want more of that to happen. I want there to be a hundred more of these centers with other people’s names.”

Finkelstein doesn’t believe his story, and that of Chabad on campus in Ottawa, should be unique. “This can happen everywhere; it’s totally scalable. Come as you are; we will teach you and inspire you, connect you to more people. If you have success, you pay it back. I want people to ask, ‘Who is Finkelstein?’ and see how all of this happened.

“That’s how we create more Jewish life.”