Rabbi Eliyahu “Eli” Fink, a prominent voice and writer on contemporary issues in Orthodox circles, died last Friday morning, Mar. 21, in a car accident on the Garden State Parkway near East Orange, New Jersey.
A 2004 alumnus of Baltimore’s Ner Israel Rabbinical College, he was 43.
A native and resident of Monsey, New York, Rabbi Fink was an attorney and the former spiritual leader of the Pacific Jewish Center in Venice Beach, California.
In his writings and teachings, Rabbi Fink often addressed such sensitive subjects as Orthodox attitudes and approaches to the LGBTQ community, women wrapping tefillin (phylacteries), discrimination and assimilation.
“He was an early and leading voice in the blogosphere and [on] social media that was desperately needed at the time,” Peninah Gershman, a board member of Eshel, a nonprofit that promotes LBGTQ inclusion in the Orthodox world, told the New York Jewish Week. “He helped me step out of my comfort zone and gave me hope for the future of the Orthodox Jewish LGBTQ+ community.”
In a Facebook post, Mordechai Zac Levovitz, a founder of the nonprofit Jewish Queer Youth, called Rabbi Fink “kind, brave, decent, and good. … Today, when we see Orthodox communities and schools being more welcoming to queer people, it is only because a handful of Frum [Orthodox] Rabbis between 2000-2015 stood up for us when most were too afraid. Rabbi Fink was one of those Rabbis.”
In a tribute column, David Suissa, publisher and editor-in-chief of the Jewish Journal in Los Angeles, wrote of Rabbi Fink, “He was an Orthodox rabbi raised in the black-hat world of Baltimore yeshivas where Talmudic learning was the primary source of intellectual nourishment. His deep knowledge of Torah, however, was not what made him one in a million. … Fink created a lot of meaningful things in his life, with a Torah-Hollywood voice and a sweetness that made him one in a million. As he said about Judaism, his past will live in us.”
Besides Ner Israel, Rabbi Fink was a graduate of Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. For the past four years, he worked as the marketing director at Aleph Bet, an online Jewish educational platform.
“R’ Eliyahu once wrote of his hope that ‘life would lead us to good places … where warm conversation, intense debate, and love for Torah Judaism co-exist,’” wrote Menachem Butler on the website Torah Musings. “That wasn’t a distant ideal — it was how he lived. His writing and the community he built reflected that vision: open yet committed, questioning yet grounded. He didn’t just describe that kind of space — he lived it.”
In addition to his wife Tova, Rabbi Fink is survived by his three children, Manny, Azzi and Romi, and his parents, Rabbi Aaron and Bassie Fink; and his siblings, Adina Schonfeld, Gila Spira and Yisrael Fink, Rabbi Michoel Fink, Rabbi Yehoshua (Shubi) Fink, and Batsheva Freilich.
Donations in Rabbi Fink’s memory can be sent to the chesedfund.com/ty/fink-family-fund.
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