2 rabbis now lead OU: EVP Silber, CEO Joseph

During the upcoming High Holidays, Rabbi Shmuel Silber, of Suburban Orthodox Toras Chaim in Baltimore, plans to ask for divine help in his new job as executive vice president of the Orthodox Union, a role that his friend, Rabbi Moshe Hauer, held until his untimely death on Oct. 14.

“I walk into this Rosh Hashana with a tremendous feeling of being overwhelmed at the opportunity to hopefully do something even greater for the Jewish people,” he told JNS.

The first year, Rabbi Silber said, will be a bit of a “hybrid model” between being in the OU office in New York a few days a week and working remotely.

“I feel a tremendous sense of responsibility to my shul. It’s not just my shul — it’s my family,” he said.

The Orthodox Union said on last week that in his new role, Rabbi Silber would be “responsible for representing the OU’s vision on both Torah and public policy and providing hashkafic and halachic guidance within the organization and beyond.”

Rabbi Josh Joseph, currently executive vice president and chief operating officer at the OU, is becoming the Orthodox umbrella organization’s new chief executive officer. In that role, he will oversee “management of all OU programs and operations,” and like Rabbi Silber, he will report to the group’s executive committee, the OU said.

“I think where the board is going with this is that there is one person, who everybody understands, that is the senior executive, who from a reporting perspective, from a supervisory perspective, from a management perspective, from a financial accountability perspective — there is one person to focus on, and that’s the CEO,” Rabbi Joseph said.

“We’re a lay-leadership driven organization, so Mitch Aeder is the president. He’s the senior lay leader. Rabbi Moshe Elefant is the CEO of kashrus and me as CEO of klal, or community,” he said.

The OU has nearly 3,500 employees in 115 countries worldwide, including at 640 plants in China, according to Rabbi Joseph. “That doesn’t include all of the volunteers,” he said. “When you add in volunteers and you add in consultants and you add in advisers, it’s much larger.”

At 128, the Orthodox Union is still growing, according to Rabbi Joseph. The organization’s new strategic plan includes an emphasis on bringing more Jews — and not just Orthodox ones — closer to G-d, including through Jewish Student Union at NCSY, which aims to go from engaging 20,000 to 40,000 to 100,000 teens a year, he said.

It also aims to engage Jews more via Birthright and in its work on the federal education tax credit, which can be used for Jewish education.

“Being focused on Jewish identity, Jewish pride, knowing what it means to be Jewish — yes as a reaction to antisemitism but also because people are asking for it,” he said. “That is priority number one.”

“Priority number two is more focused on Israel, our Anglo engagement in Israel,” he said. “So 10 years ago, we had no couples on campuses in Israel, 25 campuses in America, called JLIC couples. We now have 17 couples in Israel on 11 campuses and in four communities for young professionals.”

Under Rabbi Silber’s leadership since 2003, Suburban, which is in its 70th year, has grown significantly. “As our spiritual leader, Rabbi Silber’s dedication and commitment is demonstrated time and again through his shiurim and classes, as well as a strong caring presence during times of simcha,” joy, “and sorrow,” per the Orthodox congregation’s website.

Rabbi Silber created the synagogue’s Institute for Jewish Continuity, an “in person and online learning center dedicated to providing inspiring and intellectually invigorating Torah learning to all levels of learners,” per the synagogue.

Rabbi Silber said that he grew up in East Brunswick, N.J., and was inspired by Rabbi Yaakov Wasser, then of the Young Israel of East Brunswick, who was a “tremendous influence” on him and his family and who inspired Rabbi Silber to pursue a rabbinic career.

“I have been privileged, thank G-d, to spend my life in Jewish communal service, obviously in different arenas at different times,” Rabbi Silber said.

He went to Yeshiva University, where he earned his rabbinic ordination, and he did his rabbinic internship at Congregation Shearith Israel, also known as the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, in Manhattan, then under Rabbi Hayyim Angel.

The first time that he spoke “really” publicly was at the synagogue, Rabbi Silber said. The sermon (drasha) came after services, and Rabbi Norman Lamm, a former Yeshiva University president who died in 2020, was then in the audience.

“I was a kid. This was my first drasha given in a shul, and I have Rabbi Lamm — the orator of orators was there,” Rabbi Silber said. “I will never forget. Immediately after he pulled me to the side. I don’t remember exactly what he said, but I remember it was critique and compliment in a beautiful synthesis way that was just fantastic.”

Rabbi Silber was then assistant rabbi, for three-and-a-half years, of Congregation Shomrei Torah, in Fair Lawn, NJ, under then Rabbi Benjamin Yudin. Rabbi Silber was also education director at the time at the kosher certifier Kof-K. (The OU also has a kosher division, which operates separately and with its own executive.)

He also holds a graduate degree in Jewish education from Yeshiva, and he and his wife Aviva Silber have six children, according to his synagogue biography.

Rabbi Silber said that Suburban, which opened a new building in 2025, is a “beautiful, diverse, eclectic congregation.”

Rabbi Hauer, the former OU executive, “was a friend and a mentor, and I heard from Rabbi Hauer just a lot of the different things that he was able to accomplish at the OU,” Rabbi Silber said. “I can’t say that we were looking for anything, but this opportunity presented itself, and I think the unique platform of the OU is an opportunity to help the klal,” Hebrew for the community.

“I feel very privileged that throughout my entire life, I’ve been devoted to the needs of community, but obviously, community I would say in a narrower way. In Fair Lawn, N.J. In Baltimore, Md.,” he said. “In both, thank G-d, through different platforms, I am able to teach Torah that is able to go to a much wider audience.”

“That platform at the OU, I think, is an opportunity to help the klal in a very different way,” he said. “I would like to think that I will bring some of the skillsets of my rabbanus with me. Much larger congregation.”

The way that Rabbi Silber has approached his rabbinic career is “I love my people,” he said.

“I don’t look at myself on the perch and them on the floor. I try to live with them, alongside them,” he said. “Obviously, I have responsibilities towards them, but I’ve always seen myself as just one of the congregation.” (As an aside, he pays membership dues, “because I want to,” he said. “As much as I’m the rabbi of the congregation, I feel a part of the congregation.”)

He tries to love and accept congregants for who and what they are, the rabbi said.

“I know what a flawed human being I am,” he said. “I like people to accept me with all of my flaws, and so I’ve come to feel that I could — I try to bring a certain sense of unconditional love and unconditional acceptance to the people around me.”

He thinks his congregation has created a “safe space” for people to grow in their own ways, and to become the “best version” of themselves.

When Rabbi Silber came to Baltimore, he was “probably” the youngest rabbi and Hauer was the second youngest. The two had a “very unique” friendship, and Hauer was a mentor, he said.

“From when I came to Baltimore, from the beginning, he just extended his hand in friendship and really made himself available,” Rabbi Silber said. “As a new rabbi — as much as I had been the assistant rabbi, this was my first time on my own — the ability to have someone who was somewhat in the same stage of life but had a good amount of additional life experience, had rabbanus experience under his belt. He just always made himself available to me.”

“I’m not from Baltimore. Baltimore is a multi-generational town, so it’s kind of like if you’re not born in Baltimore, you’re never really from Baltimore,” he said. “Here I was, kind of alone on the island. My family does not live here. Having someone who could be a friend, a sounding board, a mentor. I was able to run things past him, bounce ideas off him, and we had a good relationship.”

He added that Baltimore is a “big city with sometimes like a small town neshamah.”

He plans to approach his new position with “humility,” and he hopes to focus on unifying Jews, Rabbi Silber said.

“Part of the power of the OU is the OU has such profound and holy tentacles, that go into so many different directions and so many parts of the Jewish community, and to be able to have this position to leverage that, to build bonds of unity,” he said. “I would like to think that with this new opportunity, there’s a whole arsenal of incredible, holy tools to be able to address it.”

Jews feel like “we’re getting pummeled from multiple directions,” he said. “It feels that way. Internally. Externally.”

That might be because of “information and sensory overload,” in which everyone knows “everything that is happening everywhere at all times,” he said. “It feels like we’re getting bombarded from all sides.”

He hopes that after 2,000 years of waiting for the Redemption that it is forthcoming.

“We are the masters of patience and simultaneous impatience. I feel a little bit more on the impatience side,” he said.

JNS volunteered that if the Messianic era arrives, he and his family could move to Israel rather than New York.

“Or I could just focus on giving shiurim,” religious instruction,” he said, “because all of the problems will be solved.”