הרב יוסף חיים זוננפלד

Rav Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld (6 Kislev 5609/1848–19 Adar II 5692/1932) was the first rav of the Edah HaChareidis of Yerushalayim and for decades one of the pillars of the city’s Torah community. He was born in Verbo in the Nitra district of Hungary and named Chaim — the name Yosef was added in his later years at the direction of Rav Yehoshua Leib Diskin. His father, Avraham Shlomo, son of Rav Shmuel Nadash, a talmid of the Chatam Sofer, was niftar when the boy was five. He learned under Rav Yehuda Leib Lefler and Rav Chaim Tzvi Mannheimer, entered the Pressburg yeshiva of the Ksav Sofer at about sixteen, and received semichah in 5630/1870. After his marriage he settled in Kobersdorf, learning under its rav, Rav Avraham Shag.

In 5633/1873 he accompanied Rav Shag up to Eretz Yisrael and settled in the Old City of Yerushalayim. He drew close to Rav Yehoshua Leib Diskin and stood at his right hand in all his communal work — the beit din of the yereim they established in 5638, the uniting of the kollelim of Warsaw and Hungary, and the Diskin orphanage, whose gabbai he became. After the petirah of Rav Shag he headed Kollel Shomrei HaChomot of the Hungarian community and served as chief gabbai of the chevra kadisha of Yerushalayim.

He was a builder of Yerushalayim beyond the walls. As an Austrian subject he could acquire land under Ottoman law, and new neighborhoods were bought partly in his name; it was he who persuaded Yitzchak Tzvi Ratzersdorfer of Antwerp to purchase, instead of ten dwellings in the Old City, the ground on which the three hundred homes of Batei Ungarin rose, and he recorded in the pinkas of the Shaarei Chesed gemach the decision to found that neighborhood. From the day he arrived he left Eretz Yisrael only once, and would say it is better to be a craftsman in Eretz Yisrael than a rav in chutz laAretz; in his old age he rode out to see each new neighborhood of the city, and even in troubled times insisted on walking to the Kotel through Shaar Shechem, holding that no corner of Yerushalayim may be given up out of fear. In the winter of 5674/1913 he joined the journey of the rabbanim to the new moshavot of the north to strengthen Torah and mitzvot among their people.

From the petirah of Rav Shmuel Salant in 5669/1909 he was in practice the rav of Yerushalayim’s old community, and in 5680/1920 he formally accepted the crown, standing with Rav Yitzchak Yerucham Diskin at the head of the newly founded Edah HaChareidis until his last day. His teshuvot are gathered in Salmat Chaim, his torah on Chumash in Chochmat Chaim, and his rulings and hanhagot in Torat Chaim. He was niftar in 5692/1932 and was buried on Har HaZeitim, beside his rebbi Rav Avraham Shag.