Below is a transcript of the Hesped I gave at Ohr Someyach in Eretz Yisroel a few weeks ago.  The loss of Rabbi Hauer is still so raw.  It helps me to read and remember so many things about him.  

Good afternoon, everyone.

First, thank you to Rabbi Breitowitz. It is such an honor just to be here and get to see him a couple of times a year. My name is Dovid Fink. I have been a talmid of Rabbi Breitowitz for about forty years. I was first a talmid of his at the University of Maryland Law School, when he was teaching Sales and Secured Transactions and Commercial Paper. He was known as the greatest professor in the university. But every time you saw him in the law school he had seforim in his hands, he was running through the hallways with Gemara's and with Rambam's. That is who he was and is.

It is a tremendous privilege to be here. I come a couple of times a year and Rabbi Breitowitz gives me the Zchus to talk to some of the guys here about some of the ideas I have been working on. Baruch Hashem, over the last twenty years of Torah Anytime, Rabbi Breitowitz’s olam of talmidim has expanded to the thousands and thousands of people who can reach him online. I am not exaggerating when I tell you that we start off every Friday night seuda in my house in Baltimore – with my wife, my children, my sons in law and my daughters in law – discussing Rabbi Breitowitz’s ideas of the week. Everyone should realize how lucky you are just to be in his presence, let alone to learn Torah from him.

Normally when I am at Ohr Someyach, I give over a kind of independent, off the beaten track ideas, but Rabbi Breitowitz this week asked me to speak about one of the great Torah leaders who passed away about ten days ago. Most of you probably heard of Rabbi Moshe Hauer, who passed away, who was Executive Vice President of the OU. Prior to that he was a Rav in Baltimore for more than twenty years. He was my Rav. Long before he became a national figure, we got to know him in a very different way.

For those of you who have access to Mishpacha magazine or other publications, there have literally been hundreds of articles written about Rabbi Hauer and what he accomplished in his young life. He passed away at the age of sixty. In just the last two years there was no one in Washington DC more often than Rabbi Hauer, banging on doors of people to make sure that the Land of Israel was supplied with what they needed to fight this war, and more importantly to put whatever pressure he could, in any way, shape or form, to get the hostages home. People know him for that. They know him as a man of compassion and as a man of intense passion.

But as a former president of his shul, I got to know him very differently than almost anyone else. In many shuls, the rabbi reports to the board and the president is the head of the board. It was not that way in Bnai Jacob Shaarei Zion in Baltimore. It was Rabbi Hauer’s shul. The job of the board was to carry out his bidding.

Every week, for an hour, the president of the shul would have a meeting with Rabbi Hauer one on one, to discuss what was going on in the shul, what things needed to be addressed and what things were coming up. Was there a social event, was there a dinner, what was needed. We got to know Rabbi Hauer in a very different way, let alone being a congregant of his for twenty years. I used to go to a shiur with him every Monday night and every Thursday night. One was a Kabbalah shiur and one was a Chumash/Machshava shiur. The man had no bounds to what he loved to teach. He loved to learn Torah and he loved to teach Torah.

I think there is so much to learn from Rabbi Hauer’s life and that is why Rabbi Breitowitz asked me to speak a little bit about that.

In Baltimore I am a trial attorney. That is what I do. I do that four or five hours a day or three days a week, whenever I have to be in court. When I am not in court, I am learning. Baruch Hashem, I have the ability to do that. But as a trial attorney, you are very much paid to have a poker face. One of the greatest skills you can have is being able to read the other side’s “tells” and knowing when they are giving away something, whether it be in a deposition or when you are reading a juror to try to determine which parts of your arguments they are latching on to.

I am going to try to keep my poker face on today, but I have to tell you, this is very emotional for me. I am not embarrassed to say it: I loved Rabbi Hauer. He was an exceptional human being. The reasons for that were not because we agreed on everything. We did not agree on everything.

Just to give you a little idea at the outset: when Rabbi Hauer and I did not agree on something, his mahalach was not to argue. His mahalach was to say, “Tuesday at three o’clock, come, we will have a meeting. We will discuss. I want to hear your point of view, I want you to hear my point of view, and we will try to figure this out.” I am not saying that on those rare occasions – there were two or three items over twenty years – that we ended up seeing eye to eye. But it was never about trying to win an argument or change someone’s mind. It was always about trying to find common ground. That is why Rabbi Hauer, even though he was a member of the yeshivish community and wore a black hat, was welcomed in non Orthodox circles, in secular circles, in government circles, because he treated everyone like a mentsch. He realized that every person has value and something to bring to the table.

I want to tell you first how I met Rabbi Hauer. I knew of him a little bit because I am in Baltimore. I knew he had become the rav of a shul there. He had learned in Ner Israel and he had married into a family that my parents knew very well and that I grew up with, the Baumgarten family, a very prominent family in Baltimore. He became the rav of what was called Bnai Jacob Shaarei Zion, a merger of two shuls.

At that time I was a young man and I had a chavrusa. He was my chavrusa for twenty six years, a man named Meir Gutman. Aside from our regular times for learning, I would learn with him Shavuos night, because on Shavuos you stay up all night and learn. From twelve midnight to five in the morning, for many years, I would learn with Meir in addition to our regular sedarim.

One year, Meir calls me and says, “Listen, my son is now eleven years old. He wants to try to stay up Shavuos night, and I want to encourage him. So I will learn with my son from twelve to two, and then we will get together from two to five at the Agudah in Baltimore and we will learn from two to five.” I said, “Great, no problem.”

The only problem was, it was a week before Yom Tov and now I had no chavrusa for Shavuos from twelve to two. Someone told me that Rabbi Hauer used to give an all night shiur from twelve to five. He did not move. He gave shiur for five hours and it was incredible. I thought maybe there would be breaks and schmoozing and whatever, but I went at twelve midnight to hear the shiur.

A few years before this, I was in yeshiva hearing shiur from Rav Moshe Brown in Far Rockaway, one of the great Torah geniuses of our time. Two years before that I was in yeshiva hearing shiur from Rav Tzvi Kushalevski, again one of the Torah geniuses of our time. Two years before that I was hearing shiur from Rav Moshe Shapiro, who was niftar a few years ago, recognized as one of the gedolei hador of our time. I was exposed to some of the greatest maggidei shiurim of our time, people who not only taught Torah on a very high level, but whose brilliance was such that you just did not see it many other places.

So I went to Rabbi Hauer’s shiur at twelve, looking at the clock, knowing that at two A.M. I was supposed to go over to the Agudah. Except I did not go. I stood up my chavrusa. I could not leave. The shiur was so riveting, so gripping, so well sourced and so well delivered that I could not go anywhere else. A week later I became a member of Bnai Jacob Shaarei Zion. I got to know Rabbi Hauer a little bit at that time, and I tried to go to as many shiurim of his as I could.

I learned what everybody has been writing about him in the last couple of weeks: what an incredible mentsch, what an incredible person of passion and feeling he was, and how much love he had for everyone in the world. Shortly thereafter, a few years later, I became the shul president.

It is important that if you read any of the articles about Rabbi Hauer, they all talk about his kindness, his compassion, his passion, his crusading. All of that is true. But I wanted you to hear first what is not being talked about enough, and that is that he is one of the greatest talmidei chachamim that I ever met. His Torah knowledge was so deep and so broad, and his ability to give it over was unparalleled. First and foremost, before we talk about any of Rabbi Hauer’s other great skills, he was an incredible talmid chacham, and we are all poorer for his passing. 

Many of you growing up probably noticed, and maybe you did not, that this is not an absolute, but a generalization: often the best guy in eleventh grade is also the best ball player. Not always, but very often the best ball player also happens to be the best learner or the best guy academically. It is not uncommon, because when we go to school or yeshiva or college, we are exposed to people that just tend to excel. There are people who excel in many areas. 

Take, for example, some people in Jewish history. You have all heard of the Chafetz Chaim, one of the great people from the last generation, who passed away in the 1930s. The Chafetz Chaim was the author of one of the greatest halachic works we have today, the Mishnah Berurah. We have the Rambam, we have the Shulchan Aruch and many other great compilations, but in five hundred years no one had compiled anything like the Mishnah Berurah. All the great poskim – the Rama, the Tur, and so on – had written in the 1200s and 1300s. The Mishnah Berurah took it upon himself to bring ancient halachah to what was going on in the 1800s and 1900s, when all of a sudden you had to deal with railroads and medications and all the questions that no one had ever heard of before. It was one of the greatest compilations ever done by someone who lived just a hundred years ago.

Nevertheless, the Chafetz Chaim wrote twenty or thirty seforim, the Mishnah Berurah clearly being one of the flagships. What is he best known for though? He is best known for his sefer called Shemiras HaLashon. He wrote an incredible sefer on the rules of speech – how to watch what comes out of our mouths, how not to slander somebody or speak lashon hara about somebody. He wrote a compilation this thick about how to speak to people and what to say and not say, when it is permitted to say a negative thing if it is to protect others and so on. The Chafetz Chaim is best known for Shemiras HaLashon because it was unique. There was no one else in history who had written a sefer like that on watching our tongue.

There are other people in Jewish history like this. The Tur is another example. Many people know the Tur for the Baal HaTurim, a sefer that takes gematrias and shows the numerical value connections between pesukim and phrases. The mathematical genius to look at a pasuk and instantly know its numerical value is beyond us. Yet many people do not realize that the same Tur is also the author of the halachic work called the Tur, one of the great precursors to the Shulchan Aruch of Rav Yosef Karo, a masterpiece in the thirteenth century. Imagine having a mind that is both so brilliant in mathematics and gematria and also so proficient in Gemara and halachah.

David HaMelech is another example. We could write volumes about his life – and we did, it is called Tanach. Even in secular history there are volumes devoted to the Davidic kingdom. King David was famous all over the world. The greatest dynasty in the history of the Jewish people, an unprecedented period of peace and flourishing, where every country in the world wanted to trade with us and be allied with us. Dovid went through so much to get there: starting as a shepherd, being anointed to be the next king after Shaul, having his father in law try to kill him, fighting war after war to secure Eretz Yisrael, then dealing with conflict among his own children over succession. The strife Dovid went through is incredible.

Yet what is David best known for? For Sefer Tehillim, a prayer book. Thousands of years later it is still the “go to” book we pull out when we want to daven for something.

My point is that throughout history we have had people who excel in multiple areas, and even so they tend to be remembered for one thing. Rabbi Hauer was such a person. While we talk about his kindness, his compassion, his love for every person, his genius cannot be lost. He was an incredible talmid chacham.

When I was president of the shul, one of the things the president was privy to was Rabbi Hauer’s schedule. He would say, “Listen, here is my schedule for the next six days until we meet again.” It was not uncommon to see a day that started with a six o’clock in the morning minyan, then right after minyan he would fly out to California to be menachem avel someone, then catch a plane to Detroit to be mesader kiddushin, then take a plane to New York to be there by ten thirty in the evening to be menachem avel someone else, and then take a train at one in the morning so he could be home and see his children and his wife in the morning. That was not uncommon. When I first saw his schedule I thought it was an isolated event, but it was not.

Any time he was not on a plane or a train or teaching Torah, you saw him in shul with his children, learning with them and guiding them. From the outside we could see the way he treated his rebbetzin as his total partner, the complete respect between the two of them, and the beautiful family they raised.

I will tell you a story. One Tuesday morning, when I was meeting with him, Bnai Jacob was a pretty big shul, three hundred fifty families or so. One of the things we had was a very robust teen minyan – thirty to forty young teenage boys between fourteen and seventeen. Every Shabbos they would learn how to lain properly and how to daven for the amud. It was a beautiful thing. We had nice people who would lead the minyan, but Rabbi Hauer was always very concerned that they get the best example and the best teaching of how to grow into proper bnei Torah.

When I had been in the shul for three or four years, the former president came over to me and said, “Dovid, my tenure is coming to an end in a few months. I wanted to talk to you about becoming the next president of Bnai Jacob Shaarei Zion.” I said, “Saul, you do not want me to be the next president. I am a regular guy. I sit in the back. I am not that kind of guy.” We went back and forth for a few minutes and finally I said, “Tell you what. Why don't you go ask Rabbi Hauer if he wants me to be the next president of the shul. I am sure he will say no and then we can end the discussion.”

Saul said, “Well actually, it was Rabbi Hauer who asked me to ask you.” I said, “Oh. I cannot say no to the rav.” So I agreed.

Saul sat me down and said, “Listen, there are certain things you have to understand about being president of Bnai Jacob Shaarei Zion. Like I told you before, this is not a regular shul. It is our job to do the rav’s bidding. He tells us his vision for the year, his vision for the next ten years, and it is our job to implement it with his guidance. One of the other things we have to do is sometimes protect him, because he is doing everything for everyone all the time and sometimes we have to insulate him. If there is an employee who is not doing a good job and has to be fired, it is not appropriate for the rav to be the one to do that. That is our job. We do the bad stuff. We protect the rav so he can continue to do all the great things he does.” 

One time, during one of our Tuesday meetings, he said, “Dovid, I just read about this guy named Alan Veingrad.” Alan Veingrad played in the NFL for twelve seasons, for the Green Bay Packers and the Dallas Cowboys, and won a Super Bowl with the Cowboys. Three years after he retired he became an Orthodox Jew. He had always been Jewish, but he became fully observant. He was very well liked and his new career was traveling around the world inspiring people about the beauty of being a Torah Jew.

Rabbi Hauer told me what a great inspiration it would be for the teen boys and for the whole shul to see this guy, who had lived a life of luxury, money, power, adoration with fans and everything, and who was now a frum Jew, to have him speak to them and especially to the boys. He said, “What do you think?”

I was quiet for eight or nine seconds. Rabbi Hauer said, “This does not sound like a good idea to you?” I said, “That is not really it. It's just that it was made clear to me when I took this job that part of my job is to protect you. I am a little concerned that some of the more right wing rabbis in town might give you a hard time about the fact that you are bringing in a former NFL player to inspire your kehillah. I am concerned about that.”

He looked at me and said, “I don't really care. It is not my job to pacify the rabbi down the street. I have respect for him, but I have to do what is best for my kehillah. I have to do what is best for my boys.”

That was a moment of clarity for me about who I was dealing with in Rabbi Hauer. It was always, “What is best for my people.” We had an incredible Shabbos with Alan Veingrad. Let me tell you one message he shared with the boys. We had a special seuda shlishi with just the teenage boys and he said:

“I am still friends with all of my former teammates in the NFL. We get together regularly. They are very respectful of the fact that I am an Orthodox Jew now. When they come to Florida, they know all the great kosher restaurants that I love and they take me out to dinner. When I go to their cities they look up the kosher restaurants so they can take me there. Our bond is not based on our religion. When you spend three hours in an ice tub with people, you have a bond. We have been through the ringer together.

But now I travel all around the world. Last week I was in Los Angeles, the week before that in Jerusalem, the week before that in Brazil. Every Friday I get picked up by some Jewish guy I never met before. I get put up in luxurious accommodations in someone’s house. I speak in their shul on Shabbos and then I fly to the next city. This club of Orthodox Judaism that we share is far better than anything I ever had in the NFL.”

I said to my wife that afternoon, I can tell my children the beauty of being a Torah Jew, I can teach them the greatness of being a Torah Jew, but I cannot tell my sons that this is better than playing in the NFL. I cannot say that. Alan Veingrad was able to tell them that, and it was a message that really hit home for many of them – that what we have is so special it is even better than playing in the NFL. Rabbi Hauer saw that this would bring something powerful to our kehillah, and he was right.

I will tell you two other things. I made a siyum seven or eight years ago, and when I told Rabbi Hauer when it would be, it turned out he had a chasunah that night. He felt really bad that he was not going to be able to make the siyum. He had tears in his eyes that he was going to miss it. Two hours before the siyum he called me just to tell me that he was with me, how proud of me he was, and how much he wished he could be there.

The same thing happened with family simchas. He was mesader kiddushin at two of my children’s weddings and of course always gave a bracha at every chasunah. It added a special gravitas just to have him in the room. At one point, already working for the OU, he told me he would not be able to be at a later chasunah because he would be out of town. I was disappointed but I understood. The chasunah was at six. At ten thirty, during the dancing, Rabbi Hauer walked in. He had taken a train back early so he could be there for at least a little bit of the dancing and wish us mazel tov.

It was not because I was special. He did this for anyone he could, anyone he ever met. That was his greatness and his love for other people.

We did not always agree. In a community the size of Baltimore there are many organizations. You have the Associated, the federation, mostly run by non Orthodox but now with a large Orthodox presence. One of their flagship organizations is JCS, Jewish Community Services. They get millions of dollars a year. They help people who have lost jobs, provide psychological counseling, marital counseling, all kinds of services to help people get back on their feet. They are underfunded, they only do what they can do, but they work very hard.

They asked me to become one of their board members. At the time I was already chair or president of seven or eight different organizations, so I asked Rabbi Hauer if this was a good use of my time. He said, “We have many good organizations in town. JCS really tries, but we have poor people in town who need money, who need help. When they go into JCS and explain their situation, they get forms to fill out. Where was your last job, do you have any problems at home, do you have drug or alcohol issues, all sorts of things they need to know so they can hook you up with the right resources.

“When you go to Ahavas Yisrael, which is one of the Orthodox charities in Baltimore, you get a check. We need people to explain to JCS that more people need a check when they come in the door. They need a check.”

Shortly after, with his encouragement, I became a board member of JCS. I saw how hard they work to teach people how to fish. There is an old saying: if you give a man a fish he has food for a day, if you teach him how to fish he has food for a lifetime.

I tried to understand his point of view on this, and the irony is that I learned it from him in a different context. I told you we had a Kabbalah shiur with him for about eight years on Monday nights. Kabbalah speaks of ten sefiros, ten conduits that Hashem uses to connect the spiritual world with the physical world. Among them are chesed and rachamim, kindness and compassion. If you ask the average serious rabbi what the difference between them is, it is a hard hair to split.

The kabbalistic works describe that rachamim is feeling someone’s pain and wanting to help them. Chesed is the act of giving. But there is also gevurah, strength, which modifies both. Gevurah tells us how to take our genuine concern for someone else and turn it into something that really helps them long term. It is the combination of compassion, giving and strength that says, “I understand he needs fish today, but I have to teach him how to fish so he can feed himself tomorrow.”

If Rabbi Hauer had a “flaw,” it was that he was overflowing with rachamim. He could not see a need without addressing it immediately. Whether someone was to his left or to his right, politically or religiously, he responded to their needs. He would go to Capitol Hill to lobby on behalf of the hostages and be met there by a Reform rabbi he knew from earlier visits. The rabbi would say, “I still do not agree with your views.” Rabbi Hauer would say, “Let us talk about what we do agree on. Let us talk about our common ground to try to get these hostages home.” That was the need. For every person who came into his office with a problem, every questioner, it was always rachamim – “How do I help this person.”

Perhaps the greatest thing I can say about him is that despite his twenty two hour days, despite never resting from doing for others, he never put his family second. He somehow had time for everything. He had time to learn with his sons, to learn with his daughters, to spend time with his wife, to show everyone by example the beautiful relationship he had with his children, the great relationship of mutual respect and love with his rebbetzin, and his exemplary kibbud av vaem with his own parents.

It is a huge loss. I could literally speak for hours on the things I learned from Rabbi Hauer and continue to review in my head every day. I remember he met with several of the former presidents of the shul when he decided he was going to take the job at the OU and become a more national figure. He did not need our permission, but he felt it was a courtesy to those of us who were so invested in the shul to talk to us about it beforehand. You do not get that often.

When I was becoming president of the shul there was a meeting of the five prior presidents with Rabbi Hauer to set out the vision for the shul going forward – what had happened since the merger, what his vision was, what we could do to make it better. One of the things he shared with us was, “I have to tell you, I have an Achilles heel. I love to learn. I love to learn Torah. To the extent that anyone on the board can take something off my plate so that I have more time to learn, I will be forever grateful.”

Fast forward twenty years, when he told me about accepting the position at the OU. He asked me if I thought it was a good idea, not because he needed my haskamah but because that was his way. I told him, “The idea that you can bring to the national stage what you brought to our kehillah in Baltimore can only be a great thing. I think you will be great and Klal Yisrael will benefit from it.”

We spoke for a few more minutes and then I said, “Rebbe, I do have one concern.” He said, “What is that?” I said, “I remember from many years ago when we met you told me about your absolute passion – that you love to learn. You only get to set the terms of your employment once. If you get hired for a job, you can tell them when you are available and what you need. After that, you do not get to reset the terms. I am afraid you are going to get so absorbed and caught up in everything the OU does – they deal with kashrus, NCSY, lobbying, everything you can imagine – that you will not have as much time to learn as you like. You need to tell them, before you take the job, that there has to be time carved out every day where you can just learn.”

He took my arm and said, “David, that was one of the first things I talked to them about. But I cannot tell you how much I love you because you were concerned about that for me.” He gave me a kiss on the cheek, and a week later he started his position at the OU, never going a day without spending hours in his seforim.

If you walked into his house, which we often did for the Monday and Thursday night chavrusa sessions, every room was filled with seforim and none of them looked new. They were all used. You could ask him the craziest question from the four corners of Torah and he would go to the tenth shelf on the second row and pull out a well worn sefer that no one had ever heard of, and show you that exact question and the exact answer, which we would discuss.

We lost an absolutely great human being and a great Torah scholar in Rabbi Hauer. I encourage all of you to read as much about his life as you can. It is literally a storybook of how we should live our lives.

Again, I have tremendous gratitude to Rabbi Breitowitz for suggesting that we use our time today to speak about him. I have given shiurim here on many topics – halachah, hashkafah, tefillah in this beis medrash – and I cannot leave without telling you how lucky you are to be here. It would be really interesting to do a study of the average guys who come out of this yeshiva and see where they are ten years down the road, because what I have seen is that this yeshiva disproportionately excels.

I do not know whether you are going to be neurosurgeons or roshei yeshiva. What I do know is that as a general rule you are going to outperform many others. For some reason this place is a magnet for people who excel. There may be differences between you – some taller, some shorter, some more fluent in Hebrew or Yiddish or Gemara – but the things you have in common cannot be overstated. Take pride in who you are sitting next to. Take pride in who you are learning with. Take pride in the things you share. That was something that Rabbi Hauer taught all of us to do.

One thing I have incorporated into many of the talks I have given over the years is this: when I meet a secular Jew, I immediately recognize that even though they may not be Shomer Shabbos, I have more in common with them than I do with any non Jew in the world, even someone I have shared an office with for twenty five years who got the same legal training I did. I have a stronger bond with every Jew in the world. That was something I learned from Rabbi Hauer as well.

There is no end. I could talk to you for hours. The time is short. I will give you my email address. If any of you have questions or follow up or want to ask about Rabbi Hauer or any other topic, I am happy to share with you. It is DavidEFink at yahoo.com. I would love to hear from you. I would love to learn with you.

A couple of times in our lives we may find someone who is truly an example to live by. Take the time. Get a Mishpacha magazine, read the articles that are available on Rabbi Hauer, and you will learn so much. Particularly, listen to the hespedim that were given in Baltimore last week, not only by roshei yeshiva and family members but by people who had been presidents of the shul and knew him the way I did. You could spend a lifetime studying the things there are to learn from Rabbi Hauer.

I miss him. I loved him. I am grateful for the privilege to have learned from him and known him for so many years. His family should have nechamah, Klal Yisrael should have nechamah, and we should all try to emulate his avodos Hashem. Amen.