Yonasan Steif

Rabbi Yonasan Steif (1877-1958) was a senior dayan of Budapest, Hungary, before the Second World War, a man whom Rabbi Moshe Feinstein referred to as the "gadol hador" (spiritual leader of the generation). He was a world-renowned posek and halachic authority.

He served as senior dayan together with Rabbi Israel Welcz. The Rosh Beth Din was Rabbi Efraim Fishel Zussman Sofer. While Rabbi Steif may have assumed the role of rosh beth din as the year 1944 approached, he was not such for most of his tenure. Nor was he chief rabbi of Budapest. The last to hold that office was Rabbi Koppel Reich, who died in 1929.

Rabbi Steif was rescued from death in the Holocaust in 1944 as a result of a deal between Rudolph Kastner, and a deputy of Adolf Eichmann. He journeyed on a special train bound for neutral Switzerland along with other prominent Jews including the Satmar Rebbe, Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum; the Debreciner Rov, Rabbi Moshe Stern and Adolph Deutsch, head of the Budapest branch of Agudath Israel.

He and his wife Blima had two children; a son named Tzvi and a daughter named Esther. His son died in the Holocaust together with his young son Aron while trying to escape the Nazis. The rest of his family, including his wife, his daughter-in-law Breindel with her two other sons and his daughter Esther with her two young sons were rescued with Rabbi Steif, on that rescued train. His son-in-law Aron Bleier (Esther's husband) was in the concentration camps at the time but miraculously survived and was re-united with the family after the war. A third son was born to them in 1950.

He resettled and was appointed as rabbi of "Kehal Adas Yereim" in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York, which had been founded by Orthodox Jews of Vienna living in New York, and he was known as the "Wiener Rov" (rabbi of Vienna). He died in 1958. He was a major posek, he wrote halachic responsa, works on the Talmud and two works setting forth the obligations of gentiles, one called "Sefer Mitsvos Ha-Shem", "The Book of G-d's Commandments".