About Our Rabbi

Rabbi Shmuel Hain is a pulpit rabbi, educator, and community builder. Under his leadership since 2006, YIOZ has doubled the size of its membership, completed a major expansion project and transformed into a vibrant community synagogue. As Rosh Beit Midrash V'Torah Sheba'al Peh at SAR High School, he chairs the TSBP (Gemara) Department, mentors the Beit Midrash Fellows, and teaches advanced Judaic Studies classes. He is also on the leadership team of Machon Siach, SAR High School's research arm for educators. Rabbi Hain is also an adjunct faculty member at YCT where he teaches Hilchot Aveilut. During the summer, he serves as Rav Machaneh (Camp Rabbi) of Camp Moshava- Indian Orchard.

As a congregational rabbi who is passionate about Jewish scholarship, Rabbi Hain was awarded the Daniel Jeremy Silver Fellowship at Harvard University's Center for Jewish Studies (CJS) for the 2020-2021 academic year. He was then appointed Visiting Scholar at CJS for the Spring 2022 semester. His research and teaching at Harvard integrated academic, halakhic, and pastoral perspectives on the Jewish laws of mourning. He has since published several scholarly and more popular articles on the subject. Rabbi Hain was also the recipient of a LEAP Fellowship for the 2024-2025 academic year at the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He has co-authored and edited several volumes of Torah and academic scholarship, including a volume in The Orthodox Forum series entitled The Next Generation of Modern Orthodoxy (Ktav: 2012). Some of Rabbi Hain's scholarly and more popular writing appears here.

Rabbi Hain graduated with honors from Yeshiva College with a BA in Psychology and studied both Medieval Jewish History and Talmud at the Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies. He was an inaugural fellow of the Bella and Harry Wexner Semikha Honors Program and Kollel Elyon at RIETS, where he was ordained in 2001 and taught advanced Talmud to semikha and undergraduate students from 2000-2012. From 2005-2011 he also served as Rosh Beit Midrash of YU's Graduate Program for Women in Advanced Talmudic Studies. He also previously served as Assistant Rabbi at The Jewish Center in Manhattan and as Rabbinic Assistant at the Young Israel of Woodmere.

Rabbi Hain and Shari, Senior Physician Assistant of the Otolaryngology Department at Mount Sinai West Hospital, cultivate a warm, family atmosphere at YIOZ by opening up their home to all members of the community. They are the proud parents of Eitan and Shira, Akiva and Reva, Judah, Nate, and Rayli. 

For Rabbi Hain, being a pulpit rabbi at YIOZ and an educator at SAR HS is doubly rewarding and mutually enhancing for community building. "I begin and end every day with Tefillah at YIOZ and in between I am privileged to learn, teach, and perform acts of chesed, all while connecting with adults and young people in our community."  He is gratified by the one-on-one time he spends with congregants, hearing what inspires them, what troubles them, and what keeps them going during difficult times. He is especially thankful to YIOZ's members for inviting him and Shari to share in their smachot and sorrows.

Rabbi Hain can be reached at rabbi@yioz.org.