The Ktav Sofer כתב סופר
Rabbi Avraham Shmuel Binyamin Sofer, thirty-two years at the head of the Pressburg yeshiva
The Ktav Sofer took his father's place in Pressburg at about twenty-five and held it for thirty-two years. By his death some four hundred men studied in the yeshiva—still the largest in Europe. Through his mother he was a grandson of Rabbi Akiva Eiger: the two lines, paternal and maternal, met in him.
The chief decision of his life was not about a book. The Hungarian Jewish Congress of 5629 split the community: some went toward a common structure under state supervision, some refused. The Ktav Sofer gave the schism the assent of the house of Sofer—and with that made the secession of the Orthodox communities lawful in the eyes of those who wavered. Hungarian Orthodoxy went its separate way largely because of that signature. His works—responsa, novellae on the tractates, and Ktav Sofer al haTorah—appeared only after his death.
On the timeline
Places
Related
Sources
Acharonim and later rabbinic literature
- Responsa “Ktav Sofer” — answers across all four parts of the Shulchan Aruch
- “Ktav Sofer al haTorah” — his discourses on the weekly portions
Documents of the period
- Documents of the Hungarian Jewish Congress of 5629 — the communal schism and the assent of the house of Sofer
Basis: documents and evidence.