Rav Shimon Sofer

Early years

Rav Shimon Sofer zt"l, the Rav of Cracow and author of Michtav Sofer, came into the world on 13 Teves 5581 (1820) in Pressburg, where his father, Rav Moshe Sofer, the Chasam Sofer, was Rav. His mother, Sarah-Sorele, was a daughter of Rav Akiva Eger, the Rav of Poznań. Shimon had ten siblings, and he was eleven when his mother died. He carried the name of an ancestor, the author of Yalkut Shimoni.

From a very young age Shimon stood out as a prodigy. During the weekly Chumash shiur in the Pressburg yeshivah, his father kept him on his lap, and the boy would speak about the commentaries of Rashi and the Ramban. At nine he knew the writings of the Shlah HaKadosh and the Baal HaAkeidah well. He also loved Jewish poetry, a gift that later showed in his Torah writing. His favorite piyut was Yah Ribon, by Rav Yisroel ben Moshe Najara, a Shabbos zemer that his father never sang.

Rav Moshe affectionately called his son Shimon Chassida (the pious one). When the boy became bar mitzvah at thirteen, his father honored him with the Ashkenazi title Chaver. Four years later Shimon married Miriam Sternberg, whose father was the philanthropist Rav Dov Ber Sternberg of Carei, also known as Nagykároly. He then returned to Pressburg, where, at his father’s direction, he studied Kabbalah under the dayan Rav Nosson Binyomin Lieber, author of Sheeris Nosson Binyomin.

Torah and leadership

Shimon was nineteen when his father passed away. His brother, Rav Avrohom Shmuel Binyomin, who was six years older, took over as Rav of Pressburg. During their father’s lifetime he had charged the two of them with preparing his Torah commentary and halachic rulings for print, and they kept at that work. In those years they finished the first volume of the Chasam Sofer’s responsa on Yoreh Deah.

In about 1841 (5602) Rav Shimon relocated to Nagykároly to live near his father-in-law. In about 1843 (5603) he was appointed Rav of Mattersdorf, where his father had served some forty years before. He opened a yeshivah there and took an active part in communal and wider Jewish affairs. Like his father, he would not budge from the traditional Orthodox path or accept any reform.

Several communities sought him as their Rav, and he declined them. Yarmat approached him around 1849 (5610), and the reason he refused is not known. Around 1851 (5612) Nikolsburg invited him. He answered that he could not take the seat of the Torah giants who had led that city, among them the Maharal, the Tosfos Yom Tov, Rav Shmuel Shmelke Horowitz and Rav Mordechai Benet. Pápa made its offer around 1855 (5616). There the congregation had shifted the bimah away from the middle of the shul and set the chazzan on a raised platform facing the worshippers, which Rav Shimon judged a break with halachah and tradition. Although the community pledged to return the bimah and amud to their proper places, he still said no. Writing to his brother-in-law and sister, Rav Shlomo and Gitel Spitzer, the letter said that Yerushalayim was where he and his wife meant to settle, and a five-year contract would block them.

Around 1857 (5618) the Jewish community of Cracow invited him to be its Rav. This time he gave the matter serious thought and weighed it for a while. Among those who persuaded him was Rav Chaim Halberstam, the Sanzer Rebbe. Around 1859 (5620) he agreed and moved to Cracow, and his nephew Rav Shmuel Ehrenfeld, author of Chasan Sofer, filled his place in Mattersdorf.

In Cracow

Cracow had a flourishing Orthodox community, and a Jewish presence there is recorded from as early as the twelfth century. From the sixteenth century onward its rabbinate had been held by many great Torah figures, including the Rema, the Bach, the Tosfos Yom Tov and the Maginei Shlomo. In Rav Shimon’s time the city had between 15,000 and 20,000 Jewish adults over fifteen. A letter he wrote in 1879 mentions more than eighty minyanim in Cracow alone.

These were difficult years for observant Jews. The Haskalah had left its mark on much of Jewry across the Austro-Hungarian empire, and many were drifting into assimilation or turning away from Orthodoxy. Emperor Franz Joseph I was well disposed toward the Jews, and they lived with freedom and rights under his rule. When he visited Yerushalayim in 1869, the Orthodox community and its leaders gave him a warm welcome, and he gave the dome of the Tiferes Yisroel shul as a gift. Chassidim and the rabbanim of the Sofer family worked side by side to protect traditional Judaism and to resist reform in communal life and in politics.

The Shomer Israel Society, a powerful reform organization, posed a major challenge. It favored assimilation and pressed for laws that would compel yeshivos to teach philosophy and secular subjects, which the Orthodox firmly opposed. In 1878 (5638) Rav Shimon and Rav Yehoshua Rokeach, the Belzer Rebbe, established a political party called Machzikei Hadas, backed by the traditional Orthodox communities of Galicia, home to about 800,000 Jews at the time. The Austrian Ministry of Culture gave it recognition. It can be regarded as the first effort by Orthodox Jews in Europe to join forces politically so as to defend their beliefs. In 1880 Rav Shimon began a Hebrew-Yiddish weekly, also named Machzikei Hadas, printed in Lemberg, as a reply to the Izraelit, the paper issued by Shomer Israel.

Also in 1878, Machzikei Hadas formed an alliance with the Polish Club and ran Rav Shimon as its candidate in the districts of Kolomyia, Sniatyn and Buchach in Galicia, where many voters were Jewish. He won the election in 1879 and entered the Reichsrat, the Austrian parliament, as head of his party. Although he spoke well and was reasonably fluent in German, the Reichsrat conducted its business in Polish. It is recorded that he never addressed the assembly and instead used his influence quietly behind the scenes. He became the leading figure of Galician Orthodox Jewry in both spiritual and practical matters.

In his memoir A World Apart, the writer Joseph Margoshes portrayed the Rav of Cracow as strikingly handsome, with rosy cheeks, a man who carried himself with an aristocrat’s dignity and rarely became agitated. Heading Machzikei Hadas earned him and the Orthodox community respect and satisfaction, but he also bore a good deal of contempt and personal abuse from the Shomer Israel Society and from the press, notably the Izraelit and HaIvri, whose editorials attacked him and his colleagues.

Teachings and seforim

Rav Shimon was a great halachist and lamdan, and his commentary and responsa are known as Michtav Sofer, the name by which he is often called. With his brother he also helped bring his father’s writings to print.

Later years and passing

Rav Avrohom Shmuel Binyomin died on 31 December 1871. The news was kept from Rav Shimon, and he was not at the burial. Rav Azriel Hildesheimer attended and wrote a memoir of it. He records that the Cracow community intercepted three telegrams sent by Pressburg and by the family, since they were afraid Pressburg would call him to be its Rav. Two weeks later, in a letter of condolence to his brother’s family, Rav Shimon asked forgiveness for leaving the telegrams unanswered. He wrote that his family and his community had hidden the news and that he found out by accident, on seeing his son-in-law studying the halachos of aveilus.

On Purim 1883 (5643) Rav Shimon celebrated with his community as usual, and the festivities went on deep into the night. The evening before 17 Adar II he began to feel unwell. In the morning doctors examined him and prescribed medicine, and he davened in tallis and tefillin until ten o’clock. He then summoned his son-in-law, Rav Akiva Kornitzer, and said, “Understand, my son, that for many years my eyes and heart have turned constantly toward the Holy Land. But for fear that I would be accused of neglecting the tasks I was responsible for, I never said anything. And now the time has come to visit the Holy Land.” These were his last words. He passed away on 17 Adar II 5643 (1883), and his son-in-law took his place as Rav of Cracow.

Legacy

Rav Shimon is remembered as a great Torah scholar and as a leader who defended the Torah of his father, the Chasam Sofer, in both public and private life. His seforim and his work for Machzikei Hadas continued to shape Orthodox Jewry in Galicia, and he is still called by the name of his sefer, Michtav Sofer.