אברהם שמואל בנימין סופר

Rav Avraham Shmuel Binyamin Sofer (1 Adar I 5575/1815–19 Tevet 5632/1872), known as the Ktav Sofer after his sefarim, was the son of the Chatam Sofer and his successor as rav of Pressburg and head of its famed yeshiva; his mother, Sorel, was the daughter of Rav Akiva Eiger, rav of Posen. At six he fell so gravely ill that the chevra kadisha had already been called and candles lit; his father added the name Avraham as a segulah and stood in a corner in short tefillah, and the child rallied. The Chatam Sofer’s talmidim later brought in his name that “for one yovel I begged him out” — and indeed the boy lived another fifty years.

He learned first under Rav Mordechai Efraim Fishel Sofer and then in his father’s yeshiva, where he stood out among the talmidim. At eighteen he married Chava Leah, daughter of Rav Yitzchak Weiss of Gorlitz. When the Chatam Sofer was niftar on 25 Tishrei 5600/1839, the son was raised, despite his youth, to his father’s double crown — the rabbanut of Pressburg and the yeshiva, which flourished in his day and doubled the number of its talmidim. He was among the first rabbanim in Europe to permit machine-baked matzot, in 5616/1856, a great and contested chiddush in those days, and he stood among the leaders of Torah Jewry in Hungary through the stormy years that ended in the split of the kehillot.

He left She’elot U’Teshuvot Ktav Sofer on all four chelkei Shulchan Aruch, Ktav Sofer on the Torah, chiddushim on masechtot Gittin and Chullin and on the sugyot of the Shas, and volumes of drashot. From his beit midrash came Rav Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld, later rav of the Ashkenazi kehillot of Yerushalayim; Rav Shlomo Zalman Breuer, rav of Frankfurt; Rav Akiva Yosef Schlesinger, author of Lev HaIvri; and Rav Moshe Gruenwald of Chust, author of Arugat HaBosem. He was niftar on 19 Tevet 5632/1872, and his son Rav Simcha Bunem Sofer, the Shevet Sofer, filled his place in Pressburg; after the churban of Europe his grandson Rav Akiva Sofer re-established the Pressburg Yeshiva in Eretz Yisrael, and a street in the Givat Shaul neighborhood of Yerushalayim carries his name.