Rabbi Eliyahu Fink, a prominent and empathetic voice on contemporary issues facing Jews in the Orthodox world, died early Friday morning in a car accident on the Garden State Parkway in New Jersey. He was 43.
Fink, a married father of three, was a lawyer and the former rabbi of the Pacific Jewish Center (now known as the Shul on the Beach) in Venice Beach, California. A resident of Monsey, New York, an Orthodox hamlet in Rockland County, Fink was also the writer of “Fink or Swim,” an independent blog and later, in 2013 and 2014, a column for the Jewish Press, a conservative newspaper that primarily serves the Orthodox community.
In his writing, Fink compassionately addressed subjects like women’s participation in tefillin wrapping, assimilation, discrimination and how the Orthodox world treats the LGBTQ community — taking positions that were often at odds with mainstream Orthodox Jewish thought.
In a Jan. 2014 column responding to an op-ed by Yair Hoffman, a Haredi rabbi based in Long Island’s Five Towns, Fink pressed strongly against conversion therapy for LGBTQ people, and had harsh words for those who equate queer Jews with pedophiles.
“There is no moral equivalence between the two and we should not allow ourselves to fall into the trap of equating the two under any circumstance,” Fink wrote.
“He was an early and leading voice in the blogosphere and [on] social media that was desperately needed at the time,” said Peninah Gershman, the mother of a gay son and a board member of Eshel, a nonprofit that promotes LBGTQ inclusion in the Orthodox world. “He helped me step out of my comfort zone and gave me hope for the future of the Orthodox Jewish LGBTQ+ community.”