Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

‘Facebuker Rebbe’ Dovid Winiarz Dies in Car Crash on Icy Sunday Morning

Rabbi Dovid Winiarz, the self-proclaimed “Facebuker Rebbe” for his outreach efforts over Facebook, was killed in a car accident on an icy road in Maryland.

Winiarz, 49, of New York, was a passenger on Sunday morning in a vehicle that lost control in the icy conditions and struck another car. He was on his way to a Jewish outreach convention in Baltimore.

More than 400 people attended his funeral on Monday morning on Staten Island. Winiarz was the father of 10 children. The driver and the front seat passenger, as well as the two passengers in the other car, survived the crash, according to reports.

Winiarz was president of Survival Through Education Inc., which calls on Jews to discover their faith and reach out to unaffiliated Jews, and served as the rabbi at the Multi-Faith Center at the College of Staten Island, Willowbrook.

He often posted short Torah studies teachings on his Facebook page, which has nearly 13,000 followers.

Among his last Facebook posts read: “I will be travelling Motzai Shabbos/Saturday nite with the encouragement of my wife and children to a convention in Baltimore … If I am delayed in replying to messages … please bear with me.”

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.