Posted on 10/19/25
Parshas Bereishis 5786
At the outset, I want to say thank you to everyone here. Thank you for coming together on this most difficult but meaningful Shabbos, for coming to be with each other and to remember Rabbi Hauer. Thank you for your encouragement to me, for your care and support for the Hauer family. And thank you to the many, many people who have worked so hard in these last few days. On Motzaei Yom Tov, I was completely occupied with arranging logistics and planning with the family. But when I came to shul at 6:00 AM the next morning, the whole shul had been set up: there were chairs from front to back, there were speakers in the lobby and outside, there was a team of ushers ready to go, there were shifts of people who did shemirah in the funeral home. I had nothing to do with any of it and it all happened at a moment’s notice. I have seen more than ever in these last few days how much Hashem loves our shul, and this is surely one of the reasons why.
I want to start by quoting a line that Rabbi Hauer said often in recent years: I am going to speak today for a little longer than Rabbi Rose usually does on Shabbos morning.
There is a phrase that one finds sometimes in Torah literature: וה' הטוב יכפר בעד, Hashem, who is good, will forgive for this. It comes from a story about Chizkiyahu Hamelech, from a time when he did something for Bnai Yisrael that was innovative. When you do something new, even as you are doing it for the right reasons and it feels like the proper thing to do, it is inevitable that you might not get the nuances correct. And so Chizkiyahu expressed that he was doing what he thought was the will of Hashem and asked for forgiveness for the details he might get wrong.
On the one hand, we are not allowed to be maspid, not allowed to say a eulogy, on Shabbos. We may not bring ourselves to tears – we are only human, and tears will come, but we may not bring them on intentionally, and we may not try to bring others to tears. But on the other hand, how can we not talk about what has happened to us? Rabbi Hauer always taught us his first rule of giving drashos: when something is happening that is on everyone’s mind, it is your job to talk about it. So we are going to try to do this in the right way, to get the balance and nuances correct in doing what we must do today. וה' הטוב יכפר בעד.
My intention today is not to tell stories about Rabbi Hauer. There will be time for that in the weeks and months and years ahead. What I want to do is to speak b’rucho, in his spirit. I want to speak, as I think he would have, about what has happened, about where we are and where we need to go from here.
To start, I want to share with you a little more about what transpired over this past yom tov. Most of it I will keep with me forever. But there are some things that I want you, who he loved so very much, to understand.
On the morning of Shemini Atzeres, I was sitting on my couch with my five-year-old son, when, at 7:45, there was a knock on my front door. That in itself is not unusual in my line of work; I thought it might be someone with a question about how to make their yom tov coffee. But I went to look through the peephole and saw that it was a member of Rabbi Hauer’s family. That was indeed unusual.
I will skip over the details, but he came inside and told me what had happened, and by 8:00, I was walking quickly toward the Hauers’ home. On my way, as you can imagine, there were a hundred half-coherent feelings and thoughts whizzing around my mind. But there was one that was particularly pressing:
Shacharis is in less than an hour. The whole shul is going to be full of people.
What on earth am I going to do?
But after I spoke with the family, it was absolutely clear that we had to try to do everything we could to keep this terrible news from spreading. For one thing, they did not want to ruin everyone’s yom tov if we could avoid it, when there was nothing for people to do in any case. But by far the most important reason was that there were family members across the country and the world who had no idea what had happened. We desperately wanted to make sure that they would not, chas v’shalom, find out in the wrong way, before they could be reached sensitively by their own family. There was no question that this is what we needed to do, even if we had only a chance of succeeding.
I made a few more surreptitious visits to the Hauer home over yom tov, and we were astonished that the secret had held. It is a miracle that it did. But with Hashem’s kindness, even as I was being bombarded with messages on Motzaei Yom Tov, all the family members were informed only in the proper way.
But after I left their house – my memory is a little blurry, but it might have been while I walked, or maybe at some point before Hallel – I realized that this was the right thing for a different reason. We had to have a full yom tov of Shemini Atzeres and Simchas Torah in shul.
It is extremely important to me that you understand this clearly. Why was it the right thing? Not simply because the show must go on. Not even because there are halachos of how one must daven and celebrate simchas yom tov even when it is difficult. It is because nothing in the world made Rabbi Hauer happier. Nothing in the world brought him more joy and fulfillment than seeing us do what he taught us to do – to love each other, to dance with each other, to love and cherish the Torah, to sing and give thanks to Hashem for his kindness, to see children and parents and grandparents and great-grandparents all united together in simcha and commitment and achdus. There was nothing in the world that he would have rather seen. It would have made him so proud.
Was it hard for me? That is a rhetorical question. Simchas Torah was not even the hardest part. Someday, maybe, I will tell you more, but certainly not on Shabbos. But I had no doubt that we were doing exactly the right thing, exactly what he would have wanted. And that made our decision simple.
I had many, many thoughts I yearned to share with you over this past yom tov. Most of them are definitely not appropriate for Shabbos. But I want to share a few that are.
One of the gedolei yisrael from the last century who Rabbi Hauer particularly admired was Rav Meir Shapira, the founder of Yeshivas Chachmei Lublin and the originator of Daf Yomi. If you had asked me a week ago, I would have said that the similarities between them were intriguing. If you ask me today, I would say that they are eerie.
Rav Meir Shapira was a gadol batorah who was innovative, courageous, charismatic, thinking outside the box and always ready to challenge the status quo. He was beloved by gedolim and leaders of his time who were far senior to him in both age and position. He thought on the scale of klal yisrael and loved achieving things people thought were impossible. He wanted to change the world and he did what he could to accomplish that.
Does that sound familiar?
But now there is more.
Rav Meir Shapira passed away at only 46 years old. In his last few hours, as it was clear that the end was near, he insisted that everyone around him would only express feelings of simcha.
As some of his talmidim from the yeshiva came to be near him, he commanded them, Tantz a rikud’l! – make a little dance! They obeyed, dancing next to his bedside, chassidishe bachurim dancing in the chassidishe way. And when he noticed some of his students starting to crack and beginning to sob, even as he was struggling to draw breath, he admonished them, nor b’simcha! Only with joy!
Those were the last words he ever spoke.
It is hard for me to believe. But that is what we did for Rabbi Hauer. In those hours after his passing, when his neshama was between this world and the next, as the Gemara teaches us, you danced a rikud’l – fourteen of them, to be precise. You sang Simchas Torah songs, the most joyous songs we have. You were nor b’simcha, completely and wholly with joy.
You did not, of course, realize what you were doing. But you did it, for him.
Nothing about what happened over these past few days is in any way typical. And it is astonishing to see how Hashem orchestrated this part of it, too.
On Shemini Atzeres morning, I gave a drasha. I spoke in that drasha about what happened, though of course you did not know what I was talking about. I was hoping it would prepare you for what was to come. I want to repeat now one part of what I said then.
We said that sefarim tell us that when tzaddikim would dance in front of the Torah on Simchas Torah, they would do so בכל כחם, with all their strength. The halacha says that when we take the sifrei Torah out of the aron kodesh, we do not just take out one, or three. We take out every sefer Torah in the aron because we want to show ourselves that we are doing this with everything we have, leaving nothing behind.
Why?
Because בכל כחם does not just mean that we dance with every bit of physical energy, though it does mean that, too. It means that we take all our experiences, all our feelings, the good and the bad, the wonderful and the difficult, and wrap them into our connection with the Torah. It means that we take everything life has given us and dance with it before Hashem, with Hashem, with joy for our relationship with Him and the Torah He gave us.
I do not know, I said, why Shemini Atzeres became such a complicated day for us, a day of the greatest joy but also a day to remember the tragedies two years ago. But what do we do when we don’t have the answers to our questions? We hold the Torah close to us. We hold Hashem close to our heart. And we keep Him there. We dance with Him, knowing that only by keeping Him close will we find our way forward, that by keeping Him in our heart, He will stay with us long after Simchas Torah has ended.
All this is what we spoke about on Shemini Atzeres. And this is exactly what we did. With the sadness and questions that you did not yet know were coming, you held Hashem and His Torah close to your hearts. You danced with him with perfect emunah, with all your koach. We will keep Him with us in these difficult days and weeks ahead. And He will stay with us forever.
So now what? Where do we go from here?
I know that we all have some questions we would like to ask Hashem about this. I do too.
My question is: Ribono shel olam, how can it be that this world does not need Rabbi Hauer in it? Which of his qualities do we not need in heaping measure? Does this world not need more Torah? Do we need less compassion? Do fewer people need to be noticed and uplifted? Do we need less understanding, less listening, less respect, less love, less bridge-building, less appreciation for each other, less striving, less spiritual ambition? Ribono shel olam, what is Your plan for a world without all that Rabbi Hauer was giving to it?
I hope it is not presumptuous of me, but there is only one answer that I can possibly think of.
Chazal teach us that גדולים צדיקים במיתתן יותר מבחייהם, tzaddikim are greater in their death than in their lifetime. Setting aside any kind of spiritual or esoteric explanation, the pshat is that when a tzaddik lives among us, there are many distractions and barriers that stop us from learning from them as we should. There are so many silly things that prevent us from appreciating who they are and understanding what they are trying to teach us. But when tzaddikim leave us, all the minutiae fall away and everything becomes so clear. We see exactly what they were teaching us, exactly the values they wanted us to have above all others, exactly what was important to them and what they wanted us to become. I have never felt the truth of this Gemara as I have in these last few days. Who he was and what he wanted is so clear now.
And if that is the case, then I can think of only one thing that Hashem wants from a world without Rabbi Hauer. What was done by Rabbi Hauer must now be done by all of us. What we will never replace in quality, we must try to replace in quantity. What this one man did must now be undertaken by many. And if anyone is going to do that, then who should do it be more than me and you? Who should do his work more than us, who watched him and learned from him, who sat at his feet as he taught Torah and united our heart with his as he davened, who watched him touch people and warm their neshamos with his smile and his kindness? It is our job now. The world needed him. Now it needs us.
A few years ago, I shared a dvar Torah during a drasha which Rabbi Hauer complimented. I confess that this did not happen very often – he never, ever critiqued me, but we did often think differently, which just shows you his tolerance and humility in listening to me speak so many times. But this is one he liked. It happens to be a drasha I gave one Shemini Atzeres. And it happens to be a dvar Torah about Parshas Bereishis. It went like this:
On Shemini Atzeres, we have a unique tefillah, and as it happens, it is one in which we will forever hear Rabbi Hauer’s voice and nusach. It is the tefillah for geshem. But the month of Tishrei is jam-packed full of days of tefillah. Why do we save geshem for this last day? Why not Aseres Yemei Teshuvah or Yom Kippur or Hoshana Rabba?
The answer is that the Torah tells us that there is something unique about rain. On the sixth day of creation, everything in the world had already been created. But the plants and trees and grass, although they had been created on the third day, were עומדים על פתח הקרקע, waiting at the surface of the earth, not fully emerged. Why? Because there was no rain yet. And why was there no rain? ואדם אין לעבוד את האדמה, there was no man yet who would daven for the rain. Rain requires tefillah, and tefillah requires an adam.
Every year on Rosh Hashanah, we are born again for a new year. But we are still babies; we are still raw and undeveloped. We have to experience ten days of teshuva, Yom Kippur, four days after that, and the yom tov of Succos, each day adding something to who we are and reconstructing our spiritual makeup. And when we finally come to Shemini Atzeres, we are whole; we are fully built. We are an adam. And only then can we say ואדם יש לעבוד את האדמה, now, as fully formed people, we can daven for rain.
He liked this thought. But now consider what happened this year.
Think about when Hashem took Rabbi Hauer from us. It was the day when he was a fully formed adam, when he had completely built himself once again for a new year, at the height of his spiritual power. He went to the next world as a complete person.
But I think there is something else equally as important. Rabbi Hauer left us when he had done the work of making all of us whole. He gave us everything he had, everything he could think of to build us up. He taught us everything he could. He loved all of us for who we were and what we could do. His son-in-law shared that as he walked back to shul from escorting the aron on Thursday, he wanted to grab each person he passed and say, “Do you know how much Rabbi Hauer loved you? Really and truly loved you?”
He believed in us. He fashioned each of us into an adam. He prepared us. So now we are ready to do what we need to do.
The thing people would say now is that we will “carry on”, we will “get through this”, we will “move forward”. But please hear this loud and clear: did Moreinu V’Rabbeinu, Harav Moshe Yisrael ben Harav Binyamin, pour so much life into each of us, did he pour his whole chiyus into shaping and teaching us, into loving us and nurturing us, so that we would do something so minimal as just getting through this?
He wanted us to thrive. He wanted us to grow. He wanted us to be bold and creative and innovative and strong like he was. He wanted us to be more today than we were last week, and more next week than we are today. And if we ever wondered if we would, today we know that we must; today we know that we will.
On Simchas Torah, we read about the departure of Moshe Rabbeinu, and this year, we have experienced the departure of our Moshe Rabbeinu. But on Simchas Torah, we don’t end the story there. We come to the haftarah and we go on to the next chapter in the story of the Torah, from the last perek of the chumash to the first perek of Sefer Yehoshua.
And what happens in the next chapter of the Torah? Hashem tells Yehoshua that משה עבדי מת, Moshe, my servant, has died. And then Hashem repeats a phrase over and over and over again. What is it? Yehoshua, I hope you will cope well? Yehoshua, hold it together? Yehoshua, keep up a stiff upper lip and try to move forward?
No.
What Hashem says is חזק ואמץ! חזק ואמץ! חזק ואמץ! Be strong! Be courageous! Be bold! Take the people forward. Bring them to the next stage of achievement. Accomplish all the things that I did not let Moshe stay in this world long enough to do. And Yehoshua does exactly that – he takes us into Eretz Yisrael, settles us there, picks up where Moshe left off, does what Moshe was not granted the ability to finish.
Does any of you doubt for one second that this is what Rabbi Hauer would want us to do?
Neither do I.
So that is what we, you and me together, will do.
I am speaking after the haftarah today because I wanted to speak before we say Rosh Chodesh bentching. This one was of his tefilos, one that he loved to daven as the chazzan. Even after he was no longer the active rav, he subtly let me know that he would appreciate continuing to lead birchas hachodesh, and I would have him do it as often as I could without people objecting that I did not do it often enough.
In this tefillah, we are going to ask Hashem for chaim. We are going to ask him for a long life, for a life of bracha, for a life of ahavas Torah and yiras shamayim. What are we asking for? Chaim does not mean that you are walking around this earth, breathing and eating and talking. Chaim means ואתם הדבקים בה' אלקיכם חיים כולכם היום. It means you are connected to Hashem, you are close to Hashem and living with Him. That is chaim.
That is the life that Rabbi Hauer had every day on this earth. That is the life he has now. And that is the kind of life we will ask Hashem to give us, too. We should all merit to have more years in this world than he did. But we should also merit to pack them as full of life as he succeeded in doing.
I have not a shred of doubt that this is what Rabbi Hauer would have wanted me to tell you today.
Thank you for believing in us, in each other, in our shul. Hashem should grant each of us His nechama. And Hashem should help us be the shul that Rabbi Hauer wanted us to be.
חזק ואמץ!