Loss and Gain
On the first yahrtzeit of Rabbi Moshe Hauer z"l
By Yonoson Rosenblum
Photo: Naftoli Goldgrab Photography
Simchas Torah marked the first yahrtzeit of Rabbi Moshe Hauer. The sense of loss, if not the searing pain, from his sudden and completely unexpected passing has, if anything, only increased.
Over the past year, I have interviewed over a hundred people about Rabbi Hauer — members of Bnai Jacob Shaarei Zion, the shul he led for a quarter of a century; rabbinic colleagues in Baltimore, many of whom began their relationship with Rabbi Hauer in a chaburah he gave for aspiring rabbis from Ner Yisroel; those who worked with him at the OU; prominent journalists and US senators. I cannot think of another person in our time who touched so many individuals on a deep, life-changing level as he did.
In those interviews, more frequently than not, the interviewee would start crying at some point in the interview. A number of interviewees mentioned that they still wake up sobbing in the middle of the night thinking about Rabbi Hauer. And more than one congregant told me that he or she was left more bereft by Rabbi Hauer's passing than even that of his or her parents.
Moshe Bane, who as president of the Orthodox Union brought his fellow Ner Yisroel alumnus into the organization, noted that in general at a levayah it is an easy to discern the family of the niftar. But when he entered BJSZ for Rabbi Hauer's levayah, he found an entire room sobbing. And the loudest wailing came from the single women and divorcees — the often-forgotten members of the community — who were the special objects of Rabbi Hauer's concern. (At the OU, he created an entire division to address the special needs of this group.)
For relative newcomers to Jewish observance, Rabbi Hauer became their model of the Torah ideal, the fixed star around which they built their lives as observant Jews. One young man, who subsequently had a private weekly chavrusa with Rabbi Hauer for over 20 years, remembers thinking when he first met him, "If this is what a person can become from serving Hashem, I want in."
But even shul members who had learned for years in yeshivah and kollel nevertheless chose to remain in BJSZ, even as new shuls sprung up closer to their homes, because he uplifted them with his Torah, inspired them with his davening, and comforted them with the knowledge that whatever difficulties they faced in life, Rabbi Hauer would always be there for them.
Above all, he led by example. When a student at Sinai Retreats in Lake George told Rabbi Hauer that he was going to visit the grave of the Lubavitcher Rebbe ztz"l, and asked Rabbi Hauer whether there was anything he could request on his behalf. The latter replied immediately, "That my wife and I, our children, and all our descendants should make a kiddush Hashem wherever we go."
In that, he fully succeeded. On his matzeivah is a pasuk he quoted frequently: "You are my servant, Yisrael, through whom I will be glorified" (Yeshayah 49:3).
IN SOME WAYS, his loss is felt even more at the level of Klal Yisrael. That is not to say that with the move to OU, his focus switched from individuals to the klal. Many of his initiatives at the OU were designed precisely to expand the reach of what he had achieved in BJSZ and the larger Baltimore community to many more Jews.
For instance, the creation of multiple groups of rabbis from across the Orthodox spectrum, meeting regularly to share insights and discuss issues, was a means of empowering communal rabbis, whom he saw based on his personal experience as the key resource for inspiring spiritual growth and a greater attachment to Torah learning.
At the same time, much of his attention was devoted to issues for which solutions could only be found at the level of the klal — e.g., rising antisemitism in the United States, particularly on university campuses; the intra-Orthodox divide in Israel post-October 7.
As the divide between national-religious and chareidi Jews in Israel has become ever sharper in recent years, I have frequently thought to myself how much we miss Rabbi Hauer, and how he was the only one capable of bringing the two groups together to sit around a table together to discuss their differences.
He commanded great respect in all camps. He was thoroughly anchored in the yeshivah world in which he grew to maturity. Each of his sons and sons-in-law are in full-time learning or teaching Torah. Yet he also had deep connections in the national-religious world and identified profoundly with its sacrifices since October 7.
He encompassed many worlds and was a superb bridge-builder. On the many shul trips that he brought to Israel over the years, the packed schedule was divided between visits to Yeshivas Mir — he would often attend the shiurim of Rav Asher Arielli (with whom several Hauer sons learned) — Rav Asher Weiss, and the Choshen Mishpat kollel headed by Rav Yosef Fleischman, on the one hand; and Miriam Adani's Kever Rochel initiatives, pre-induction academies for national-religious boys between high school and the army, the hesder yeshivah in Sderot, and visits to yishuvim in Judea and Samaria, on the other hand.
He was animated by an overflowing ahavas Yisrael. And that love for his fellow Jews filled him with confidence that if he could just bring two Jews from disparate backgrounds and communities together to listen to one another respectfully, good things would happen.
On one of the shul trips to Eretz Yisrael, he joined a Thursday night kumzitz on the steps of the Kosel. At some point, he tapped a shul member to whom he was close on the shoulder, and pointed to a chassid, a soldier, and a chareidi man singing together. He told his friend to take a photo, and the friend noticed that tears had welled up in his eyes.
Many speak of Jewish unity. But he worked hard to bring it about. He once brought a group of Israeli chareidi politicians on the municipal level to America to meet with different Jewish communities, including modern Orthodox shuls and representatives of the major Jewish defense organizations.
One of the major projects on which he was working at the time of his petirah was to bring a group of leading national-religious roshei yeshivah, dayanim, and poskim from Israel to meet with chareidi leaders in America, including the Skverer Rebbe; Rav Malkiel Kotler, rosh yeshivah of Beis Medrash Govoha; and Rav Aharon Feldman, rosh yeshivah of Ner Yisroel. That visit only took place after his passing, but it was entirely his vision.
Those meetings did not overcome all differences of perspective. Rabbi Hauer never thought they would. But they did give both sides a better understanding of one another and deeper respect. The heads of hesder yeshivos, for instance, assured Rav Feldman that it was simply not true that most of their students, or even many of them, ceased to be religiously observant in the army; and that if that were the case, they too would not send their talmidim into the IDF. The meeting ending with Rav Yaakov Shapiro, rosh yeshivah of Mercaz Harav, asking Rav Feldman for a brachah, a result that would have delighted Rabbi Hauer.
The question with which we are left by his passing is: Now, who will bring the various factions in Klal Yisrael together to talk freely and openly with one another — and above all, respectfully?
Why the Jewish People Matter
When I first heard of Dana Nessel, the Jewish attorney general of Michigan, she struck me as a normal person, perhaps even an admirable one. That was in late July, when she announced that she would not be attending the Michigan Democratic convention: "I don't feel safe going. I don't want to get chased around. I don't want to get harassed. I don't want to get yelled and screamed at. I don't want to get booed off the stage, irrespective of what I'm saying."
I was, however, quickly disabused of that impression less than a month later, when she explained why Jews should vote for the Democratic nominee for the Senate, Abdul el-Sayed, despite his close association with the Muslim Brotherhood and rabid hostility to Israel. In a Jewish gathering, she lectured her audience on the "moral imperative to place the needs of the world [i.e., ensuring a Democratic majority in Congress] over our own self-interest and, yes, even our own survival."
She even found a Biblical source to prove her point: Queen Esther, who sacrificed her "comfort, safety, and security to save the rest of humanity." Nessel seems genuinely unaware that Queen Esther sacrificed her own security in order to save the Jewish People, not humanity in general.
But that was only the beginning of her idiocy. First, the easy assumption that the interests of America (or the world) are well-served by allowing the Muslim Brotherhood to get its claws into the US Congress requires a little more argumentation than she provides. Is anything that makes Donald Trump less popular or less powerful self-evidently of the greatest benefit to the world? Would Nessel also claim that a victory of the Iranian mullahs over the United States benefits the world by rendering Trump less popular?
But far more glaring was her juxtaposition of the good of the world against Jewish survival, and the weighing of the two against one another. I fear she is not alone in the non-Orthodox world in doing so because she has no conception of why the Jewish People matter.
It does not occur to her that the survival of the Jewish People as a distinct people is itself of benefit to the world, not to mention the greatest possible benefit. And in that, I suspect, she mirrors many, if not most, of her Jewish contemporaries. And that explains a lot.
Nessel has obviously never read or contemplated Rashi's comment (Bereishis 1:31) that the existence of the world hung in the balance until the Jewish People accepted the Torah on the sixth day of Sivan.
On the Yamim Noraim, we added a series of paragraphs to our tefillah, beginning with uv'chein tein pachdecha — "instill Your awe upon all Your works, and the fear of You on all that You have created... Let them all become a single society, to do Your will wholeheartedly...."
That paragraph is well understood in terms of the avodah of Rosh Hashanah to crown Hashem as King on the entire world. But what is the relationship of the next paragraph — Uv'chein tein kavod [honor], Hashem, to Your people [Israel], praise to all those who revere You... and eloquent speech to those who hope in You; gladness to Your land and joy to Your city [Jerusalem]."
What does good fortune to Israel have to do with recognition by the entire world of Hashem's dominion? The answer is that through His chosen people, awareness of Hashem's name is promoted and increased in the world. He reveals Himself in history through the Jewish People. When the Jewish People prosper, Hashem's honor is increased in the world. Thus, do we beseech Hashem repeatedly during the Ten Days of Teshuvah, to act favorably to us "for the sake of Your Name."
The goal for which the world was created is recognition of Hashem by all the peoples of the world and the determination to act in accord with His will. And that places the Jewish People at the very center of human history, as the primary bearers of Hashem's message to all of mankind.
Pace Nessel, the extinction of the Jewish People would end all hope of a redeemed world, and the flourishing of the Jewish People is crucial to the realization of Hashem's ultimate goal for mankind. For that were we chosen.
In failing to recognize the vital role of the collective Jewish People, Nessel is a representative of two-thirds of American Jews, who tell pollsters they will continue to vote Democrat, even as the party becomes dominated by those with a single-minded hatred of Israel and antipathy to Jews (as Nessel herself recognizes).