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Rabbi Moshe Hauer, OU leader admired across Jewish world, is dead at 60
(JTA) — American Jewry is reeling following the sudden death of Rabbi Moshe Hauer, the executive vice president of the Orthodox Union who was widely known and admired across denominations.
Hauer, the O.U.’s public face since 2020, died of a heart attack at his Baltimore home on Tuesday, the holiday of Shemini Atzeret. He was 60. His death was not announced until Wednesday night, the end of the Simchat Torah holiday.
“Rabbi Hauer was a true talmid chacham, a master teacher and communicator, the voice of Torah to the Orthodox community and the voice of Orthodoxy to the world,” the Orthodox Union said in a statement announcing his death. “He personified what it means to be a Torah Jew and took nothing more seriously than his role of sharing the joy of Jewish life with our community and beyond.”
A levaya, or funeral service, took place Thursday morning at Baltimore’s Bnai Jacob Shaarei Zion Congregation, the Orthodox congregation Hauer led for 26 years before taking the O.U. position five years ago.
“You taught us with such clarity, you taught us with such force, with such conviction, you taught us who you want us to be,” said Rabbi Daniel Rose, Hauer’s successor at the synagogue, in a speech he said was short because Hauer’s body and family were due on a flight to Israel for his burial. Pausing to cry, he went on, “I can’t ask you anymore. I think you taught us well enough that we don’t need to ask you.”
Hauer was an exemplar of Modern Orthodoxy’s historical blend of religious and secular expertise. After being ordained at Ner Israel, an Orthodox yeshiva in Baltimore, he earned a master’s degree in engineering from Johns Hopkins University. He was the founding editor of Klal Perspectives, an online journal elevating Orthodox perspectives on contemporary issues.
In 2023, Hauer testified about antisemitism on American college campuses at a hearing of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. The hearing prompted investigations of several universities for allegedly failing to protect students from antisemitic harassment.
Sen. Josh Hawley, the Missouri Republican who in 2023 worked with the O.U. to pass a Senate resolution condemning Hamas and campus antisemitism, issued a statement saying he was “deeply grieved by the death of my friend.”
Hawley said: “His sudden death is a tremendous loss to America and to friends of Israel everywhere. Rabbi Moshe was a man of remarkable integrity and kindness, and also foresighted leadership. He was a true and dear friend to me.”
Hauer also sometimes was required to speak hard truths to his community. In 2020, he met with Anthony Fauci, then director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, in forming the O.U.’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Hauer then urged congregations to exceed the government’s reopening guidelines. In 2023, he denounced a rampage by Jewish settlers in the West Bank, saying, “We cannot understand or accept this.”
A wide array of Jewish voices mourned Hauer and expressed shock at his sudden death.
“We just spoke this past Friday and texted on Monday, when he was overflowing with joy at the miracle of the hostages’ freedom and the unmistakable hand of Hashem in it,” tweeted William Daroff, president of the Council of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. “Rabbi Hauer was a trusted advisor, cherished colleague, and wise counselor to me, a bridge-builder whose faith, humility, and moral clarity inspired all who knew him. His loss leaves a deep void for all who loved and learned from him.”
Rabbi Shlomo Peles of the Jewish Relief Network Ukraine, a Chabad organization, praised Hauer’s willingness to work with his movement.
“Rabbi Hauer constantly mobilized on behalf of the Rebbe’s Shluchim [emissaries], and especially for those in Ukraine,” Peles said in a statement. “Rabbi Hauer acted with genuine care, a broad heart, and a shining countenance.”
“Klal Yisroel has lost a leader who was universally respected as a talmid chochom of stature, a man of integrity, humility, vision, wisdom and depth,” Agudath Israel, an advocacy group representing haredi, or ultra-Orthodox, Jews, said in a statement. “Rabbi Hauer created Kiddush Hashem in all of his encounters with the outside world, and he leaves behind an impressive list of significant accomplishments. The loss to our community is incalculable.”
“The Jewish people has lost a sage,” said Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, in a Facebook post that included a photograph of himself sitting with Hauer in the official residence of Israeli President Isaac Herzog during a communal mission in July.
Jacobs recalled that Herzog had noted with some surprise that the president of the Reform movement was sitting next to a leader of the Orthodox Union. “I told President Herzog that it was completely natural for me to sit next to my friend and cherished colleague,” he wrote. “Yes, we disagreed on so many issues but shared a profound respect and love for one another. …. Rabbi Hauer’s humble leadership helped point the way for a more respectful and mutually responsible future for the Jewish people grounded in Torah.”
When he was tapped as its new executive vice president in 2020, succeeding Allen Fagin, Hauer pledged to address the rising costs of the Orthodox lifestyle — the O.U. supports federal “school choice” policies in order to offset the high costs of day school tuition — and expressed his commitment to Modern Orthodoxy, which in contrast to haredi Judaism seeks to balance a strict adherence to Jewish law, or halacha, with a deeper engagement with modernity.
“Our community expresses this commitment by engaging with the world around us, as well as with all members of Klal Yisrael and by addressing every modern issue and contemporary challenge from within the value system of Torah,” he told the New York Jewish Week at the time. “We undertake all of these responsibilities while also completely dedicating ourselves to a growing engagement in Torah study, prayer and halachic observance.”
To that point, he added, the O.U. “is completely committed to maximizing — within the framework of halacha — the engagement of Jewish women in every aspect of Jewish life. This is an organizational and communal priority.”
Sheila Katz, CEO of the National Council of Jewish Women, wrote in a Facebook post on Wednesday night that she had been so shocked to hear of her friend’s death that she texted him hoping that it was not true. She said she had just spoken to him last week, in the latest installment of an ongoing conversation that transcended their differences.
“Our very different realities came up over and over again. I loved learning how he lived his life, and he seemed to love learning how I lived mine. Difference, but mutual respect, was at the core of our deep friendship,” Katz wrote.
In the Jewish Week interview, Hauer pledged to improve “relationships beyond the confines of our community.”
That was also the message of one of his last public statements, shared on Oct. 3. In it he described the upcoming Sukkot holiday as an opportunity for connection among Jews from “ideologically diverse places.”
“Even those who usually live separately must seize opportunities for contact and connection,” he said.
Hauer’s survivors include his mother, Miriam Hauer; his wife, Mindi Hauer; their sons Yissachar, Yehuda Leib and Shalom; daughters Devorah Walfish, Batsheva Neuberger, Chana Schneiweiss and Rachel Hauer, and their spouses and numerous grandchildren.
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Israel becomes first country to recognize Somaliland, drawing condemnation from Egypt, Turkey and Somalia
Israel became the first country to formally recognize Somaliland, a self-declared sovereign state in the Horn of Africa, in a decision that was immediately condemned by Somalia and other nations.
“The Prime Minister announced today the official recognition of the Republic of Somaliland as an independent and sovereign state,” wrote Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office in a post on X. “The State of Israel plans to immediately expand its relations with the Republic of Somaliland through extensive cooperation in the fields of agriculture, health, technology, and economy.”
Somaliland’s president welcomed the announcement from Netanyahu in a post on X, adding that he affirmed the region’s “readiness to join the Abraham Accords,” the normalization agreements between Israel and a handful of Arab states that was brokered during President Donald Trump’s first term.
Somaliland proclaimed independence from Somalia in 1991 during the country’s civil war, but has failed to receive recognition from the international community in part due to Somalia’s opposition to its secession. Somalia officially rejects ties with Israel, and has consistently refused to recognize the state of Israel since 1960. Somalia and Somaliland are overwhelmingly Muslim.
“The ministers affirmed their total rejection and condemnation of Israel’s recognition of the Somaliland region, stressing their full support for the unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Somalia,” Egypt’s foreign ministry said in a statement following a phone call between Egypt’s foreign minister and his Somali, Turkish and Djiboutian counterparts, according to Reuters.
In November, the Israeli think tank Institute for National Security Studies argued in a report that recognizing Somaliland could be in Israel’s strategic interest.
“Somaliland’s territory could serve as a forward base for multiple missions: intelligence monitoring of the Houthis and their armament efforts; logistical support for Yemen’s legitimate government in its war against them; and a platform for direct operations against the Houthis,” the report read.
It is unclear if the United States will follow suit. In August, Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz wrote to Trump urging him to recognize Somaliland.
“Somaliland has emerged as a critical security and diplomatic partner for the United States, helping America advance our national security interests in the Horn of Africa and beyond,” wrote Cruz.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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‘Jesus is a Palestinian,’ claims a Times Square billboard. Um, not quite
“Merry Christmas,” proclaims a billboard in Times Square: “Jesus is Palestinian.”
Countless people will walk by the display or see it on social media, and many will believe it.
So, let’s go through why that statement is such a mistake, once again.
Jesus was a Jew. He was born to Jewish parents, was circumcised under Jewish law — traditionally, on Jan. 1, which is how that day became known as the Feast of the Circumcision — and lived as a Jew. He taught from the Hebrew Scriptures. He worshiped in the Jerusalem Temple. He observed Jewish festivals. He debated Jewish law with other Jews using Jewish modes of argument.
Go back to the Gospels in the New Testament — specifically Luke 4:16: “He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom.” Or, John 4:9, in which a Samaritan woman asks Jesus: “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?”
Cross-reference other ancient sources. Josephus, a first-century Jewish historian, refers to Jesus as a Jewish figure executed in Judea. No serious historical study of Jesus elides this basic truth: Jesus was a Jew.
Yet many efforts through history have sought to sever Jesus from his Judaism — often, if not always, in an attempt to denigrate Jews.
In the second century, the theologian Marcion sought to completely sever Christianity from Judaism. For him, the God of Israel was inferior and the God of the Christians was morally superior. Jesus, therefore, belonged to a different moral universe. The early Church condemned Marcionism precisely because it erased Jesus’s Jewish roots, and ultimately dismissed the idea as a heresy that needed to be rejected.
In the twentieth century, Nazi theologians attempted to portray Jesus as Aryan and anti-Jewish, which Susannah Heschel documents in her book The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany.
But it’s not just because of his religion that Jesus shouldn’t be considered Palestinian.
“Why not?” you might ask. “Didn’t he live in Palestine?”
The short answer is: Not yet.
When Jesus lived, the land of Israel was called Judea. It was under Roman rule, and it fell under several administrative districts: Judea, Galilee, and Samaria.
So, what is the source of the name “Palestine” for that area? It comes from the ancient people known as the Philistines, a perennial enemy of the Israelites. After the Romans crushed Jewish independence, they deliberately renamed the province in an effort to sever Jewish historical ties to the land, as well as to humiliate them by naming the land after their ancient foes.
To call Jesus “Palestinian” is therefore anachronistic.
Yet even so, the idea of Jesus as Palestinian appears in some strands of Palestinian liberation theology. Those strands tend to envision the Palestinian people as Jesus on the cross — crucified by Israel and the Jews, in an image that recalls the longstanding and deeply misguided allegation that “the Jews killed Jesus.”
This language appears repeatedly in the writings and sermons of Naim Ateek, the influential founder of the Jerusalem-based Christian organization Sabeel. In his 2001 Easter message, he wrote “as we approach Holy Week and Easter, the suffering of Jesus Christ at the hands of evil political and religious powers two thousand years ago is lived out again in Palestine,” adding that “Jesus is the powerless Palestinian humiliated at a checkpoint, the woman trying to get through to the hospital for treatment, the young man whose dignity is trampled, the young student who cannot get to the university to study, the unemployed father who needs to find bread to feed his family; the list is tragically getting longer, and Jesus is there in their midst suffering with them.”
Yes, of course, Palestinians have suffered and continue to suffer. But illustrations of that suffering should not include the pretense that Jesus was Palestinian. It suggests that Palestinians need to be seen as akin to Jesus to deserve safety and dignity, when in fact they deserve safety and dignity simply because they are human. And casting Israel and the Jews as crucifiers only resurrects medieval theology and hatreds; it adds nothing to the hopes for justice for Palestinians.
Mainstream Christianity has rejected this foul mythology. We have recently celebrated the sixtieth anniversary of the Christian world’s most vociferous denial of that ancient hatred. In 1965, Vatican II’s Nostra Aetate explicitly rejected the charge that Jews are responsible for Jesus’s death. The World Council of Churches issued similar warnings about reviving Passion-based antisemitism — the revival of the ancient accusation that Jewish leaders were responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus, and that Jews bear that guilt eternally.
History matters. Theology matters. And words matter — especially when they carry two thousand years of blood-soaked memory.
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82 years after his plane was shot down in China, Jewish WWII pilot Morton Sher is laid to rest at home
An American Jewish fighter pilot whose plane was shot down in the Chinese theater during World War II was given a proper burial 82 years after his plane went down, according to the United States Department of Defense.
The remains of Lt. Morton Sher, identified earlier this year, were buried in Greenville, South Carolina on Dec. 14 — what would have been his 105th birthday.
Sher was a member of the pilot group known as the “Flying Tigers” — formed to protect China from Japanese invasion following the assault on Pearl Harbor in 1941. He was piloting a P-40 Warhawk when he was shot down by Japanese bombers on Aug. 9, 1943. His mother Celia received Sher’s Purple Heart that same year.
Sher’s squadron put up a memorial stone at the crash site in Xin Bai Village, and a postwar army review in 1947 concluded that his remains had been destroyed and were assumed to be unrecoverable.
The remains of Morton Sher were returned to Greenville, North Carolina and buried on Dec. 14, 2025. (Courtesy Department of Defense)
Two attempts were made to locate his remains in 2012 and 2019, but neither was successful. A breakthrough came in 2024 when a Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency excavated a crash site in the province where Sher’s plane fell, and then in April 2025, when DNA analysis was conducted. The match was confirmed in June.
Sher was born in Baltimore, Maryland on Dec. 14, 1920, and his family later moved to Greenville where they became members of the Conservative synagogue Congregation Beth Israel. In high school, he was a member of the aviation club and enrolled in ROTC. Sher was a founding member of B’nai B’rith Youth Organization’s Aleph Zadik Aleph chapter in Greenville, according to the funeral home that organized his burial.
“He dreamed of being a pilot,” Sher’s nephew, Steve “Morton” Traub told Greenville’s local NBC station. “This guy did a lot for his country. He was my hero.”
Traub, who never met his uncle, but heard stories and read his letters, was raised by Sher’s father, David.
“I wish I had known him, but if he had, I wouldn’t have been named after him. I feel like I knew Mason because I knew Papa,” Traub said.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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