שמעון סופר

Rav Shimon Sofer (13 Tevet 5581/1820–5643/1883), whose name appears in German records as Simon Schreiber, was chief rav of Kraków, and before that of Mattersdorf. He was the second son of Rav Moshe Sofer of Pressburg, the Chatam Sofer, and his mother Sarah was a daughter of Rav Akiva Eger of Poznan; he was named for his ancestor, the author of the Yalkut Shimoni. He was born in Pressburg while his father held the rabbanut there, and as a small child sat on his father’s lap during the weekly Chumash shiur at the Pressburg yeshiva. His father called him Shimon Chassida, and at his bar mitzvah conferred on him the title Chaver. At seventeen he married Miriam, daughter of Rav Dov Ber Sternberg of Nagykároly, and returned to Pressburg, where at his father’s direction he began learning kabbalah with the dayan Rav Natan Binyamin Lieber. He was nineteen when his father was niftar, and together with his elder brother Rav Avraham Shmuel Binyamin, who succeeded to the Pressburg rabbanut, he prepared their father’s writings for print, completing the first volume of the Chatam Sofer teshuvot on Yoreh De’ah.

He became rav of Mattersdorf in about 5603/1843, the post his father had filled some forty years earlier, and founded a yeshiva there. Offers from other cities he turned down: Nikolsburg, because he would not stand where the Maharal, the Tosafot Yom Tov, Rav Shmuel Shmelke Horowitz and Rav Mordechai Benet had stood; and Pápa, because its shul had moved the bimah from the center — and even when the kehillah undertook to restore it he refused, writing to his brother-in-law that he and his wife hoped to settle in Yerushalayim and would not bind themselves to a five-year contract. In 5620/1859 he accepted Kraków, after Rav Chaim Halberstam, the Sanzer Rav, was among those who urged him to take it; his nephew Rav Shmuel Ehrenfeld, the Chatan Sofer, followed him in Mattersdorf.

Kraków then held between 15-20,000 Jewish population, and in a letter of 5639/1879 he counted more than eighty minyanim in the city alone. Against the Haskalah he founded, in 5638/1878, together with the Belzer Rebbe Rav Yehoshua Rokeach, the party Machzikei Hadas, which drew the support of the traditional kehillot across Galicia and was recognized by the Austrian ministry of culture — the first attempt of Orthodox Jewry in Europe at united political action. In 5640/1880 he launched a Hebrew-Yiddish weekly of the same name in Lemberg. Standing with the Polenklub, he was elected in 5639/1879 to the Reichsrat for the Galician districts of Kolomyia, Sniatyn and Buchach; its business was conducted in Polish, and he worked through influence rather than from the rostrum. His commentary and teshuvot are learned today as Michtav Sofer.