הרב אהרן יהודה לייב שטיינמן

Rav Aharon Yehuda Leib Shteinman (14 Cheshvan 5675/1914–24 Kislev 5778/2017) was the leader of the Litvish Torah world at the turn of the twenty-first century, nasi of the Moetzet Gedolei HaTorah of Degel HaTorah, and the author of the Ayelet HaShachar sefarim. He was born in Kamenitz, where his parents, Noach Tzvi and Gittel Faiga of Brisk, had taken refuge from the front of the First World War, and grew up in Brisk as a neighbor of the home of Rav Yitzchak Zev Soloveitchik, the Brisker Rav, learning b’chavruta with the Rav’s sons and being tested by their father on what they learned. Spoken of as an illui, he entered Yeshivat Torat Chessed in Brisk at eleven or twelve, under Rav Moshe Sokolovsky, the Imrei Moshe, and later learned under Rav Pesach Pruskin in Kobrin and, for a time, in Kletzk under Rav Aharon Kotler.

In 5697/1937, facing a Polish draft notice, he left for Switzerland as a talmid of Yeshivat Etz Chaim in Montreux under Rav Yerachmiel Eliyahu Botschko, traveling together with Rav Moshe Soloveitchik, a grandson of Rav Chaim of Brisk; the two young men served there as rammim. During the war years, as Polish nationals, they were held in the Schonenberg labor camp near Basel and set to laying roads. He was the only member of his family to survive the war. In Tevet 5704/1944 he married Tamar (Tema) Kornfeld, daughter of Shammai Shraga Kornfeld of Antwerp, at a wedding of some fifteen guests — the chattan insisted that the costs, covered by local tzedakah funds, be kept to the barest minimum.

In the summer of 5705/1945 he sailed by way of Spain to Haifa and settled first in Petach Tikvah. On the recommendation of the Chazon Ish he was made rosh yeshiva of the Chafetz Chaim yeshiva in Kfar Saba; in Elul 5715/1955 the Ponevezher Rav, Rav Yosef Shlomo Kahaneman, set him at the head of Ponevezh L’Tze’irim together with Rav Michel Yehuda Lefkowitz, and a decade later made him rosh of the Ponevezh kollel as well. In 5738/1978 he founded Yeshivat Gaon Yaakov and in 5758/1998 Yeshivat Orchot Torah — in all, some eighty years of saying shiurim. His home on Rechov Chazon Ish in Bnei Brak was a small flat, sparsely furnished, where until his last years he slept on the thin mattress the Jewish Agency had given him on his arrival in the land, and where he received the daily stream of Jews seeking advice and berachah. He pressed for the founding of kollelim across the land and stood behind networks of thousands of avreichim.

With the founding of Degel HaTorah in 5749/1988, Rav Shach called him to its Moetzet Gedolei HaTorah; after Rav Shach’s passing he stood alongside Rav Yosef Shalom Elyashiv in the leadership of the Litvish public, and after Rav Elyashiv‘s petirah in 5772/2012 the leadership of the generation rested on him, his word reaching beyond the Litvish world to the whole charedi public. In his nineties he traveled to strengthen kehillot abroad — North and South America, France, England, Gibraltar, Berlin, Odessa. He wrote some thirty sefarim, above all the Ayelet HaShachar on the Shas and on the Torah, first published without his name; the title hints at his initials and his wife’s. He was niftar on 24 Kislev 5778 (12 December 2017) at the age of 103. His tzavaah asked that he be buried within hours of his passing, with no hespedim, among plain Jews, under the cheapest matzeivah with no titles on it, and that those wishing to do something for his neshamah learn a perek of mishnayot or Tehillim; so it was done, with some two hundred thousand accompanying him in Bnei Brak.