Aharon Leib Shteinman

Shteinman was born in 1913 in the Brest region, then part of the Russian Empire and subsequently Poland, in territory that is today Belarus.[1][2] A Maariv profile gives his birthplace more specifically as Brisk, then situated on the Polish-Lithuanian border, and names his father as Nah Tzvi, an associate of the rabbi of Brisk, and his mother as Gitl-Feiga.[3] A minority of sources give his birth year as 1914 rather than 1913; the discrepancy is not resolved among the sources consulted.[3]

From his youth, Shteinman was immersed in the Lithuanian yeshiva world, where he was educated in the demanding analytical method associated with the Brisker tradition of Talmud study.[2] He became known as an exceptionally gifted student, and by approximately age twenty he had taken on a teaching role—a career that would continue in various forms for more than eighty years.[4] Before the war, he studied at the large yeshiva in Brisk, and as conditions worsened in the late 1930s he moved to a village near Kamenitz, where he studied under Rabbi Baruch Dov Ber Leibowitz.[3]

As the threat of war intensified, Shteinman faced a consequential personal decision. He fled Poland before World War II, partly to avoid the Polish military draft.[2] Together with his close friend Rabbi Moshe Soloveitchik, he reportedly used a traditional rabbinical decision-making procedure known as the "Goral HaGra" to determine whether to leave; according to the account, the result was that they should go.[3] Their families did not accompany them, and the two eventually reached Switzerland after traveling through several places.[3]

Shteinman spent the years of World War II in Switzerland, where he continued teaching Torah in a yeshiva setting.[4] Part of that time was marked by hardship: he was interned at a labor camp near Basel.[2] His parents were murdered by the Nazis, and he recited Kaddish daily for them after learning of their deaths.[3]

During these years, Shteinman met and married Tamar Kornfeld, who was also from Poland.[2] Their 1944 wedding was attended by only fifteen guests, reflecting the wartime circumstances.[4] Shteinman continued his scholarship during this period and produced manuscripts containing a substantial portion of his early Torah writing. Those manuscripts did not survive his journey to the Land of Israel.[3]

His path to Switzerland had taken him and Rabbi Soloveitchik through several countries; one account says that his subsequent journey from Switzerland to Israel included travel through Spain.[2] Tamar accompanied him, and together they built a family in Israel.

Most biographical reports place Shteinman's immigration to Mandatory Palestine in 1945, after World War II.[1][4] His decision was precipitated by the discovery that his family had been lost in the Holocaust.[3] He arrived carrying manuscripts containing much of the Torah scholarship he had accumulated over years of study and teaching, but a train on which he was traveling to Haifa was bombed on the day he arrived, destroying the manuscripts.[3]

After his arrival, the Chazon Ish arranged for Shteinman to receive financial support and an educational post at a Haredi yeshiva in Kfar Saba.[3] The Jewish Agency provided him with a basic mattress, which he used for more than sixty years and replaced only in 2012, for medical reasons.[2]

From Kfar Saba, Shteinman's educational career expanded steadily. Several years after his arrival, he became head of the young-students' division of Ponevezh Yeshiva in Bnei Brak and head of its kollel.[4][3] He later founded Orhot Torah yeshiva in Bnei Brak and taught Talmud, Jewish law, and ethics.[2][4] The couple had three children, and Tamar remained his life partner until her death in 2002.[2] Their family grew to include numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Shteinman authored more than thirty books on Jewish law.[2] His principal work was Ayelet HaShachar, a title used for a fifteen-volume commentary on the Talmud and a five-volume commentary on the Bible.[2] Catalog records for the series include comments and explanations on Talmudic tractates such as Yevamot, Ketubot, Gittin, and Zevachim, as well as a collection of words of encouragement.[5]

His writing reflected a teaching career that spanned more than eight decades.[4] In 2018, Mesorah Publications in Brooklyn issued the English-language biography Reb Aharon Leib: The Life and Wisdom of Rabbi Aharon Yehudah Leib Shteinman, written by Naftali Weinberger and edited by Nina Indig.[6] The 439-page Jaffa family edition included illustrations, facsimiles, and bibliographical references.[6]

Shteinman's formal entry into Haredi political and communal leadership came through the founding of Degel HaTorah in 1988, when Rabbi Elazar Menachem Shach invited him to join the party's Council of Torah Sages.[4] His influence expanded throughout the 1990s, particularly in education and yeshiva affairs, and he became an increasingly authoritative voice within the Lithuanian Haredi world.[4]

Following Shach's death in 2001, Shteinman was recognized as one of two principal leaders of the Lithuanian Haredi community, alongside Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv. Both were regarded as possible successors, but Shteinman yielded the senior position to Elyashiv and served effectively as "number two."[7] As Elyashiv's ability to function declined, political and public questions were increasingly brought to Shteinman, who was widely viewed as his likely successor.[7]

After Elyashiv died in 2012, Shteinman became the senior and most influential figure in mainstream Lithuanian Haredi leadership, although Rabbi Shmuel Auerbach and his followers continued to oppose his leadership.[4][7] As president of Degel HaTorah's Council of Torah Sages and its spiritual and political guide, his influence extended beyond the faction's formal representation in the Knesset.[8] Although only three of the thirteen Knesset members from Haredi parties were directly subordinate to him, his influence on important decisions by both Haredi parties was described as typically decisive.[8]

Shteinman exercised this authority with little reliance on formal institutional office. His small apartment in Bnei Brak became a center for decisions ranging from yeshiva education to electoral and political questions.[2][8]

Shteinman lived throughout his years of leadership in a small apartment in Bnei Brak.[2][9] The Jewish Agency mattress he received after immigration served as his bed for more than six decades and was replaced only when his doctors insisted, on medical grounds, in 2012.[2] Photographer Israel Bardugo, who documented Shteinman's final year, recalled the "simplicity and asceticism" of the home and the sight of the centenarian sitting on his bed while students leaned close so as not to miss his words.[10]

In his final years, students gathered at his home from early morning and studied with him throughout the day and into the night.[10] The apartment also served as a center of pastoral guidance: thousands of Haredi parents sought his counsel about children who had been expelled from or were struggling in the yeshiva system.[2] Visitors ranged from a fifteen-year-old asking whether to buy a bicycle to a school director considering whether to admit a child who found Talmud study difficult.[9] In 2014, he advised educators not to punish students harshly or act "out of anger or annoyance."[2]

Shteinman was also a significant fundraiser for Torah institutions, pressing wealthy donors to contribute and helping yeshiva administrators meet expenses for food, electricity, and salaries.[9] One account described millions in charitable funds passing through his hands while he personally took no money for himself.[9] When Bardugo trained his camera on him during the final photography project, Shteinman reportedly joked: "I, for my part, tried not to be seen."[10]

His approach to students experiencing religious or educational difficulties was described as compassionate. A Maariv profile reports that he opposed expelling students whose religious commitment had weakened and urged school leaders to try other methods first.[3] He is quoted asking a visitor concerned about a troubled student: "If it were your son, would you throw him out, or would you try other ways?"[3] He took an active interest in yeshiva operations, including admissions decisions and the selection of Talmudic tractates for study.[3]

Few issues in Israeli public life have been more persistently contested than military service for Haredi yeshiva students. Contemporary accounts agree that Shteinman opposed compulsory enlistment but differ in their interpretations of the practical accommodations he was willing to accept.

In August 1983, he wrote a declaration by hand stating: "I, the undersigned, hereby declare that I will not issue, under my signature, an approval for a student in connection with the deferment of conscription except for one who is engaged in no activity other than his studies in the yeshiva, and for whom Torah study is his sole occupation."[11] The declaration limited his approval of a deferment to students for whom Torah study was genuinely their sole occupation.[11] At a Bnei Brak conference in 2013, he opposed coalition proposals that included increased Haredi enlistment, core-curriculum requirements in Haredi schools, and linking state benefits to employment.[12] He called the situation "a terrible trouble to destroy the Jewish people and the Torah" and urged the community to increase Torah study, expressing hope that it would be able to "continue learning Torah all our lives."[12]

At the same time, reports attributed to him a more pragmatic approach to some voluntary or specialized frameworks. The Jerusalem Post reported that, despite opposing an obligatory draft, he supported the establishment of the Nahal Haredi IDF battalion in 1999 and sent representatives to provide input to the Tal Committee.[13] A 2012 Ynet profile reported criticism of him from conservative Haredi elements for cooperating with the initiators of the Tal Law, supporting a Haredi Nahal framework and vocational training for Haredi young men not exclusively engaged in Torah study, and sending representatives to the Kinneret Covenant forum.[7]

Former Knesset member Dov Lipman credited Shteinman with supporting the IDF's Haredi Nahal unit and with not opposing some programs combining yeshiva study and military service. Lipman recounted asking the head of such a yeshiva whether rabbinic leaders would condemn the project; the yeshiva head reportedly replied that Shteinman would not oppose it, and Lipman said the initially small graduating class later grew tenfold.[14] Lipman also attributed to Shteinman quiet support for Haredi men entering the workforce. These claims represent Lipman's testimony and interpretation rather than independent verification.[14]

In 2015, Shteinman intervened in the question of Sephardi students' access to Haredi yeshivas. In a letter published in Yated Ne'eman, he set different earliest dates for entrance examinations: general examinations were not to begin before the 26th of Tammuz, while yeshivas for Torah students of Sephardi origin were not to examine applicants before the 19th of Tammuz.[15] Ynet interpreted the one-week difference as an effort to give Sephardi students more time to seek admission and improve their chances of acceptance.[15] The report placed the instruction in the context of alleged ethnic discrimination in Haredi admissions and quoted his spokesman as saying that concern for Sephardi students deeply affected him.[15]

Shteinman was hospitalized at Mayanei Hayeshua Medical Center in Bnei Brak in November 2017 as his health deteriorated.[16][8] He died on December 12, 2017, at age 104, after suffering heart failure and undergoing unsuccessful resuscitation efforts.[16][8] His eldest daughter, Rachel Devorah Berlin, had died of a heart attack shortly before his final deterioration in health.[2]

His written will requested a minimal funeral. He asked that there be no eulogies, memorial gatherings, or newspaper articles about him, and that only ten people attend.[17] He requested burial among ordinary people, a simple and inexpensive gravestone without honorific titles, and asked that people avoid lengthy visits to his grave when they could instead be studying Torah.[17] He also asked not to be called a "righteous man" or "God-fearing," writing that he feared being shamed by such praise in the world to come.[17]

The will asked those wishing to honor his memory to study one chapter of Mishnah each day through the twelve-month mourning period and asked women to recite ten chapters of Psalms daily, including on Shabbat and festivals.[17] He also requested that his descendants not follow his funeral procession, in keeping with a Jerusalem custom referenced in the will.[17]

Several of his requests were overtaken by the scale of public mourning. Globes reported that more than 100,000 people attended the funeral procession from his home to his burial site in Bnei Brak, with many more unable to arrive because of public-transport difficulties.[18] The Jerusalem Post described hundreds of thousands attending.[19] Rabbi Gershon Edelstein delivered a eulogy despite Shteinman's request that none be given.[18]

Shteinman's decades of leadership encompassed the rebuilding and expansion of Israel's yeshiva world and major disputes over Haredi military service, education, employment, and relations with the state.[4][7] His authority relied less on formal institutional office than on his scholarship, personal example, and role in advising educational and political leaders.[2][8]

His scholarly legacy is centered on Ayelet HaShachar, his multi-volume Talmudic and biblical commentary.[5][2] The 2018 English-language biography published by Mesorah Publications, a 439-page volume containing illustrations and facsimiles, brought accounts of his life and teachings to a broader English-reading audience.[6]

Shteinman also shaped the institutional life of the yeshiva world through direct involvement in admissions, curriculum, pedagogy, and fundraising.[4][9] Mako credited him with an active role in rebuilding the yeshiva world after the Holocaust and carrying its traditions into the Israeli setting.[4] Reports of his resistance to expelling struggling students, his accessibility to families, and his fundraising for Torah institutions illustrate the educational priorities associated with his leadership.[3][9]

The contrast between his personal austerity and his public influence was especially visible at his death. He requested ten mourners and no eulogies, but more than 100,000 people attended and Rabbi Gershon Edelstein delivered a eulogy.[17][18] The disparity between his will and his funeral reflected both his self-effacing personal ideals and the breadth of his communal authority.

Sources differ on Shteinman's birth year. The National Library of Israel's authority record and several news reports give 1913, while a Maariv profile gives 1914.[5][3] Most biographical reporting also places his immigration in 1945, but a caption in Ynet's report on his will identifies Aharon and Tamarla Shteinman in what it describes as a 1940 list of immigrants from Switzerland.[4][17] The apparent immigration-date discrepancy is not resolved by the sources consulted.

His positions on military service generated divergent readings among contemporary observers. A Jerusalem Post report portrayed him as comparatively moderate, while other accounts emphasized his public opposition to compulsory enlistment and reported criticism from rivals who considered him too conciliatory toward the government.[2][13] Taken together, the reports describe a leader who firmly opposed compulsory enlistment of full-time yeshiva students while accepting, or at least not blocking, certain specialized or voluntary arrangements.

Dov Lipman's account of Shteinman's influence on Haredi workforce participation and his support for combined yeshiva-military programs represents Lipman's testimony and assessment, not independently verified fact.[14] His causal claim that Shteinman's quiet approval drove increased Haredi male employment is not corroborated by data in the cited article. The Jewish Review of Books described Shteinman in 2013 as the leader of the "relatively moderate haredim," an editorial characterization rather than a formal designation.[20]