I do not live in Baltimore or New York. I met Rabbi Hauer only once, perhaps twice. We communicated via email a few times. Many others knew Rabbi Hauer far better than I. Yet, when I received the notice of his passing, I broke down. I was in such grief over the sudden loss of such a sterling person and leader that I could not control my tears of sadness.
Rabbi Hauer, the late executive VP of the Orthodox Union, touched people from afar. To be in his orbit, it was not necessary to be geographically in his orbit. How so?
A Torah scholar must articulate the Torah orally or literarily. A ba’al middot — a person who embodies the Torah — is different. Very different. The Torah animates his whole person. It is not necessary for a ba’al middot to say one word in order to convey the Torah, to project what the Torah wants a person to become. A Torah scholar speaks. A ba’al middot is.
A Torah scholar reaches a person who is capable of understanding him. A ba’al middot reaches everyone, learned or not, Jewish or not.
Which brings me to I Samuel 19:20. As I observed about the late Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein, Imay observe about Rabbi Moshe Hauer, an incident amidst the prophets of Israel is a lens for understanding the rare ba’al middot and Torah scholar.
King Saul dispatched his emissaries to take David when David was with Samuel the Prophet and with Samuel’s band of Prophets. King Saul’s emissaries set out to capture David so that King Saul could harm him. But when these emissaries reached David, it is recorded in I Samuel 19:20, “and they also prophesied.” Again King Saul dispatched emissaries, with the same purpose, and again Scripture records, “and they also prophesied.” The same act by the King, with the same result, occurred a third time. King Saul’s intentions came to naught. Why? What happened?
Nowhere in Scripture does it say why these emissaries, instruments of evil, suddenly prophesied, nor does Scripture relate that they had a change of heart, that they repented, and that out of repentance they attained the stature of Prophets. Nor does Scripture record what they prophesied. Scripture does not even state that because they prophesied their evil mission was aborted. The first book of Samuel simply states, “and they also prophesied.”
Despite the absence of data in the Biblical record, it seems clear what happened. Men, bent on one purpose, came within the field of Samuel the Prophet, and within the field of his band of Prophets. That spiritual field was so pervasive, so “thick,” that the field suffused these men. It transformed them. Once transformed, it could not be imagined that they would take David, nor was it necessary to say as much. And they prophesied. They became wholly different people. They ascended. They embraced the spiritual life. They did so without even speaking with Samuel the Prophet. Scripture records no words exchanged between them. Merely to be within the field of the Prophets of the Creator altered their plans and altered their very selves.
I hardly exchanged words with Rabbi Moshe Hauer. But to be within his field was to be transformed, to be altered. Rabbi Hauer’s humanity, his commitment to the Torah and to the Jewish people, came through because of who he had become, a rare servant of the Alm-ghty who transformed those who came within his orbit to aspire to become servants of the Alm-ghty themselves.
© IJN 2025
