חיים סופר

Rav Chaim Sofer (3 Tishrei 5582/1821–25 Sivan 5646/1886), known as the Machne Chaim after his responsa, was a rav and posek in Hungary and one of the leaders of the uncompromising wing of Orthodoxy in the years of the rupture within Hungarian Jewry. He was born in Pressburg to Rav Mordechai Efraim Fischel Sofer, and at eleven he entered the yeshiva of the Chasam Sofer — no relation — where he learned until his rebbi’s passing and was counted among his most distinguished talmidim. He then learned under the Maharam Ash in Ungvar, and under Rav Binyamin Wolf Löw in Verbó, whom he regarded as his primary rebbi and from whom he received semichah.

He served as rav in a succession of kehillot — among them Gyömöre and Sajószentpéter — and from 5627/1867 in Munkacs, one of the large kehillot of Hungary; there his reservations about Chassidic practice brought friction with much of the community. In 5639/1879 he became rav of the Orthodox kehillah of Budapest, the first to hold that post after the split between the kehillot in Hungary, and he served there until his passing. Together with his rebbi Rav Hillel Lichtenstein he framed the takanot of Michalowce, which forbade changes in the order of the beit knesset and drashot in the language of the nations.

His responsa, the Machne Chaim, appeared in several volumes; among his teshuvot is his ruling on the issur of moving the bimah from the center of the beit knesset, a practice that had become a mark of the reformers. He was niftar in Budapest and, at his wish, buried in Pressburg, the city of his birth. Beside the Machne Chaim he left Kol Sofer on the Mishnah, Shaarei Chaim on Tehillim, and Divrei Shaarei Chaim on the Torah; among his talmidim were Rav Akiva Yosef Schlesinger and Rav Amram Blum.