Rabbi Moshe Hauer ultimately turned to the mesorah he had received from our mutual rebbi, Rav Yaakov Weinberg

IN

2017, I began my six-year, term-limited tenure as president of the Orthodox Union. During that period, the OU had to select a successor to Allen Fagin, its immensely capable executive vice president, and the leadership decided to bifurcate the executive vice president position. One executive vice president would serve as the organization’s chief operating officer, while the other would serve as its hashkafic guide and public representative: the face of the OU both within the frum community and to the broader Jewish world and beyond.

Rabbi Moshe Hauer’s unique combination of deep Torah scholarship, extraordinary middos, and unwavering passion for Torah and Klal Yisrael made him singularly suited for this role. We were confident that the OU’s professional staff, the Orthodox community, and the wider community would embrace him wholeheartedly. The real question was whether Rabbi Hauer himself would accept the role.

It took three trips to Baltimore before Rabbi Hauer began to seriously entertain the invitation, with characteristically thoughtful and measured deliberation. He had several hesitations. His deep love for his kehillah made it difficult for him to imagine lessening his involvement with its members. He also cherished his role as husband and father and was understandably reluctant to assume responsibilities that might further encroach upon his already limited family time.

Yet what I sensed to be his greatest hesitation was the prospect of reducing the time he devoted to the study and teaching of Torah. I appreciated his reluctance. The thought of curtailing his immersion in Torah learning was genuinely painful for him. But as I anticipated, he ultimately turned to the mesorah he had received from our mutual rebbi, Rav Yaakov Weinberg.

AS he often shared, Rabbi Moshe Hauer’s parents were a powerful source of inspiration and influence. Yet through our decades of close relationship, I came to see how deeply his life choices and values were deeply informed by the mesorah we both received from our rebbi.

Moshe Hauer and I grew up in Montreal, where our families were close, and so we would exchange occasional conversations. Both of us learned in Ner Yisroel in Baltimore, but as he was five years my junior, I left shortly after his arrival. Our true relationship did not blossom and deepen until 1999, with the petirah of our rebbi.

Following Rav Weinberg’s passing, Rabbi Hauer and I, along with other talmidim, forged deeper bonds, as we sought counsel and clarity from each other, sharing the limudim and yesodos each of us had received from Rebbi.

At the time of Rav Weinberg’s passing, Rabbi Hauer was already an accomplished talmid chacham, serving as the rav and posek of a kehillah, while I, as a practicing attorney, was primarily engaged in lay communal leadership. Yet we found ourselves in frequent contact, exchanging ideas, strategies, and aspirations for the broader community, all filtered through the prism of the rich and precious mesorah we shared. He often spoke at Orthodox Union forums, and along with others, he and I founded and edited Klal Perspectives, an online journal exploring challenges to the American Orthodox community.

Years later, when wrestling with the decision of whether to take on the burden of leadership in the OU role, Rabbi Hauer ultimately returned to one of the central principles our rebbi had taught us: Every choice must be guided by a clear assessment of which path will most greatly enhance kevod Shamayim and elevate the collective ruchniyus of Klal Yisroel. The OU leadership argued that while his existing impact through Torah and personal leadership was already profound, the new role would allow him to magnify that influence many times over.

True to the mesorah we shared, Rabbi Hauer understood that such consequential decisions require objectivity that one cannot fully achieve alone. He sought the counsel of those with both Torah wisdom and the impartiality necessary to see clearly what he, given his deep attachment to his kehillah and his learning, might not.

Those to whom he turned for guidance apparently shared the Orthodox Union’s vision of the far-reaching impact he would have as executive vice president of the OU. Yet neither of us could have foreseen the remarkable breadth and depth of the influence he would ultimately exert.

A musmach of Ner Yisroel in Baltimore and retired partner in the international law firm Ropes & Gray LLP, Rabbi Moishe Bane is president emeritus of the Orthodox Union.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1083)