Rabbi Moshe Sherer had absolute integrity. His word was a word. If he told something to the president of the United States, or the governor of New York, or the mayor of the City of New York, they could put it in the bank. They knew that if Rabbi Sherer had said it, it was absolutely true. And if it did not turn out that way, then they knew that someone else had betrayed him. They never doubted anything that he said. There was another point. He avoided using his influence with important public figures for the specific benefit of Agudath Israel. He wanted them to see him as a spokesman for the Jewish people, or as a spokesman for the Orthodox community, not as a spokesman for his own particular organization.
It brings to mind the approaches of Rabbi Aharon Kotler, Rabbi Moshe Feinstein and Rabbi Yaakov Kamenetsky. Whenever they spoke, they never spoke about their own institutions. They talked about the importance of Torah in Kial Yisroel. I heard Reb Moshe many times at fundraising Melave Malkas for the benefit of Tiferes Yerushalayim. He never mentioned his yeshiva, Tiferes Yerushalayim. He spoke about Torah.
There was a Black Friday in Rabbi Sherer's life. The New York Post once ran a front page story in the Friday afternoon edition accusing Rabbi Sherer of influence peddling, of using his contacts with government figures for the benefit of corrupt businessmen, to defraud the state. The Shabbos that followed was a Gehinnom for him. Whoever planted the story chose to run it on Friday afternoon for an obvious reason. It appeared at a time when Rabbi Sherer would not have time to defend himself.
In those days, The New York Times had a superlative investigative reporter by the name of John Hess who checked into the accusation and had expected to turn it into a major story. A few weeks later, he called up Rabbi Sherer, whom he had never met. John Hess said, "I dug everywhere to verify the truth of that story and to find more that was not reported in the Post. I have never in my journalistic career found someone who has a higher reputation for integrity than you." That was Rabbi Moshe Sherer.
[Jewish Observer May 2008]
