The Shabbat table, a sanctified place that intertwines the feeding of the body and the spirit with palatable foods, meaningful conversation and moments of profound connection, was also the place where we forged a deep friendship (as so many others have) with Rabbi Eliyahu Fink, z”l. We were two families, bonded by our randomly settling on the same street, on the edge of somewhere that often felt like nowhere, ensconced by woods and the occasional family of bears, traversing through life, all of us, animals and humans. And we would ask aloud, mutually wondering what we were doing there, and how long we would stay in this chapter of life, this Chapter 2, or maybe it was Chapter 10? We were both choosing to veer away from the more popular communities where we had separately lived, in favor of a reclusive and exclusive life in the wilderness of Montebello, one that afforded privacy and fed the soul spoonfuls of soothing solitude, the medicine we all so desperately crave in the chaos of daily movement. And there, we had found it, had found each other, swimming in the same direction, on the same journey, on the very same street. Two families, side by side, neighbors on a shared path.

But that’s what Shabbat is: the union of the ordinary and the extraordinary, the elevation of the mundane into the holy. The pulling away from the busyness and settling into the quietness of the inner circle of your orbit. Our whole experience on that street together was like one long Shabbat experience, one in which you pull back from the social demands of other neighborhoods, fading into a quiet refuge, a surreal, slow-motion experience. While the existence feels magical, wholesome and invigorating, you also simultaneously yearn for everything that awaits beyond the curtains of trees, the rolling mountain roads, the starry skies. The rest of life. It’s a pause in your breath, a slow, languorous chapter in the book of your life.

Eliyahu and the Fink family were frequent guests at our table in the three years we had known them, as we were at theirs, sometimes joining our families and guests and doing our own Shabbat prayers together. The meals were always filled with vibrant and healthy foods, diverse topics of conversation that could span the latest sneaker drop to the deepest thoughts about the rituals of an upcoming Jewish holiday, harmonious songs, laughter and pure connection. Eliyahu’s ideas were often engaging, nuanced, and captivated the crowd, leaving us curious and hungry for more. He was easily the most intelligent person we had ever met, his mind filled with photographic references of sources he had read years ago—an encyclopedia of Jewish information, trivia and halachic discourse.

Eliyahu had this ability to elevate materialism and pop culture around us, just as Shabbat does; he would pull in the things we expose ourselves to and unwrap and reveal the core of spirituality in a movie we had to see, or a song we needed to listen to. With his eyes, he would be able to expose how Judaism flows all around us and is often cloaked by distraction, but there it always was—God’s essence at the very core, buried and then revealed. And with skill, from the other side of the table, he would present it to us, allow us to taste of the very beauty implicit in these dynamics, and how the world around us can truly enrich our existence as Jewish people, if you understand its applications.

On one such occasion, Eliyahu shared that listening to Adele’s song “Hello” helped him connect deeply to the interaction of our forefather, Abraham, with God, during the Akedah, the binding of Isaac, adding a layer of emotion which was devoid from the text of the Torah. After Shabbat, he sent us a video he had made sharing these ideas, and we listened to it on a speaker in our backyard, over the licking flames of our Havdala bonfire. Eliyahu’s sweet voice shared words of Torah, reverberating down the stark emptiness of our street, the darkness, a cavern for the flowing words, and then we heard Adele—imagining she was the the voice of emotional pleas of Abraham, feeling forlorn and forsaken.

Hello, it’s me

I was wondering if after all these years you’d like to meet

To go over everything….

Hello, from the other side…

After leaving the spotlight of the rabbinate several years ago, when the Fink family moved back to the New York area, Eliyahu invested his energies on being the best husband, father and son he could be. All of the passion he had once infused in his community in Venice Beach, California, and in his online blog community, FinkorSwim, he was now pouring into his family life. He studied with his kids, learned about and shared their hobbies, cooked, did errands and carpools, and planned vacations while building his business.

On the night that he was killed, he was indeed invested in performing the mitzvah of honoring his parents by going to pick them up from the airport for a family bar mitzvah, his soul departing while in service of others. How meaningful that his final act on this earth was bringing joy and goodness to others, that his soul stepped out of the chaos, the busyness of the highway and into the calmness of God’s arms above, and was serenely held and embraced.

But, in true Eliyahu style, it wasn’t enough; and even after he had passed, he still continued to take care of his family and his parents in the most miraculous of ways.

His parents had flown to New York from Florida for their grandson’s bar mitzvah, and had left their passports at home. But when the family made the decision to bury Eliyahu in Israel, they suddenly needed those passports. Time was of the essence, and so a neighbor entered their home in Florida on Friday and sent them overnight via FedEx, but by the end of the next day, it was clear that the passports were not arriving on time, and the funeral ceremony was on Sunday in New York, to be followed by the flight out to Israel. The stress from this inconvenience was an unwelcome guest in the myriad torrential emotions of the weekend.

As only the Jewish community could do, someone found that one Jewish guy—Allen—who worked at FedEx at JFK, who could maybe help them. The only way he was able to access his work accounts was through his computer, which he never had with him on the weekends, but he happened to have it because his uncle had passed away, and he left work with his computer to visit his aunt. When he logged in, he located the Finks’ passports at the FedEx in Mahwah, which was closed on Sunday. A former colleague had just transferred there as the manager, and he reached out to her for help. The passport made it to the Finks; house on Sunday, and Allen sent them a message that he’d like to meet them at the gate at JFK, to introduce himself.

The Fink family felt a tremendous sense of gratitude, and at the gate, Allen approached, his FedEx ID tag hanging loosely around his neck. They shook hands, profusely thanking him, and Allen picked up his ID—and showed them that his last name was Fink as well.

They stared curiously at each other, wondering if they were somehow related or if it was just an unusual coincidence. The family was suddenly rapt with attention.

“I had to come today to meet you,” Allen said, touching the badge nervously, “Because I also needed to share with you that my Hebrew name is Eliyahu. I am Eliyahu Fink.”

Eliyahu Fink came to bring the passports.

Eiliyahu Fink is still entrenched in acts of kindness and easing the trip for his parents and his family, enabling them to escort him on his journey, as he had shown up for them, ushering them along, so very many times. Eliyahu revealing God’s hand in it all, unwrapping the beauty meticulously for them. The unusual circumstances of reaching Allen, of Allen having his work computer with him, of him knowing the branch manager at Mahwah, and finally, of embodying the same name: Eliyahu. The occurrences were too many and too sharp to be anything but God’s intervention.

And through the telling of this story during shiva, the breathlessness of the non-coincidence, the words echoing through the vaulted ceiling of the Fink living room, the same ceiling that had cradled our Friday night Kabbalat Shabbat prayers together in their home, I also hear the words of Adele.

The words that can come to narrate an extra layer of emotion. The words that teach us, as Eliyahu had, that implicit in all the materialism, in all events around us, are sparks of Torah and spirituality, waiting to be revealed:

Hello, can you hear me?

I’m in California dreaming about who we used to be,

When we were younger and free…”

Eliyahu, reflecting on his time as the rabbi at the Shul on the Beach, unburdened by the later years of life.

There’s such a difference between us

And a million miles.

And now, he has moved on and we are miles and miles apart, us, trapped in bodies, and he, released and free.

“Hello from the other side.”

This is the legacy that Eliyahu left for us, beyond his New York Times recipe gourmet cooking, and his custom gelato and ice creams, his unique words of Torah … more than the artistic photographs he once took, which sprinkle the walls of the house, a glimpse into his world and the way he saw things. Eliyahu was a white light, a breathing force that experienced the world differently than most others, and wasn’t afraid to say so. But he never judged others, nor did he take things personally, no matter their position or stance, and he often would accept people as they are, making them feel loved and included in his own gifted ways, finding the reserves to always say that one impactful line.

“Hello, from the other side.”

Sarah Abenaim is a life coach and writer who lives with her family in Montebello, New York.