On the day of his formal appointment as chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary, Arnold Eisen pledged to strengthen the school’s finances to the point it could offer need blind admissions and then increase faculty salaries.

“The challenge is daunting, but it doesn’t seem to be impossible. I’m quite calm about it,” Mr. Eisen said, adding that he would increase the endowment slowly while reducing the reliance on annual fund-raising to cover the operating budget.

He also addressed a hot-button issue: the ordination of gay rabbis. He said he personally favors doing so but would support leaving the halachic process in the hands of the Conservative movement’s rabbis. He declined to speak about his position on same-sex marriage, explaining it was an issue for rabbis to decide.

Although he won’t formally take the position until 2007, the conversations Mr. Eisen had yesterday were the first steps toward defining his voice as the first non-rabbi chancellor of the school since 1940. “I found his voice to be not so much academic as communal. It is very positive, upbeat, and forward-looking,” the head of the Rabbinical Assembly, which represents rabbis in the Conservative movement, Rabbi Joel Meyers, said after his meeting with Mr. Eisen. “I think we’re going to work very well together.”

Mr. Eisen also stressed his broad definition of his leadership role. “Keeping the world from blowing itself up in the name of religion has got to be item no. 1 on the agenda,” Mr. Eisen said.

On the subject of Israel, Mr. Eisen said he was an ardent Zionist with great passion for the country in which he lived for two years. “I’m very concerned about the distancing of American Jews from Israel,” he said. “So one of my top agenda items is to use the seminary in any way that I can to strengthen the relationship.”

He emphasized the need to bring together great thinkers to discuss issues such as adult literacy and synagogue affiliation. “The Jews are supposed to have such brain power, but we don’t have ways of bringing the power to bear on the issues that affect us. Closed-door conversations hardly ever happen,” he said.

He said his friendships with faculty members at JTS and with leaders of other schools would help him start these kinds of conversations.

Mr. Eisen said he was drawn to the position because it gives him the opportunity to put into practice what he has written and talked about for more than 20 years.

“The chance to direct this institution in particular was what grabbed me,” Mr. Eisen said.

He first came to JTS 35 years ago to interview Abraham Joshua Heschel as a reporter for the University of Pennsylvania student newspaper.

“He became a model to me of an activist Jewish scholar,” he said.