Compiled by Rabbi Baruch Myers

GAN SOFER

Introduction

THE CHATAM SOFER

When people ask me what was special about the Chatam Sofer, I answer as follows: throughout Jewish history, there have been many different kinds of Rabbis. Many Rabbis were great Talmudic scholars. Others excelled as legal experts and judges. There were those that were gifted as teachers and established great institutions of learning. And those that were capable community leaders and untiring public activists. Some of them authored great Biblical commentaries, some of them authored great Talmudic commentaries. Yet others were knowledgeable in the Kabbalah. Many Rabbis were models
of piety, praying at length and devoting time to meditation and personal perfection. Others involved themselves in unending charitable projects to benefit the poor, orphans, widows, and the il. There were those that were demanding disciplinarians. And those that radiated kindness and compassion. One thing is certain: to find a combination of even three of the above mentioned attributes in one Rabbi is rare indeed. What was special about the Chatam Sofer was that he embodied all of them.

Rabbi Moshe Sofer was born in the year 1762 in Frankfort, Germany. There he studied with the teachers who would influence him for a lifetime: Rabbi Nosson Adler, and Rabbi Pinchas Horowitz. He served in various rabbinical posts, but his final and most celebrated was in Bratislava, then called Pressburg. There, he established a yeshiva that became the biggest in Europe and flourished right up until World War I. He was a pragmatic community leader who guided his community throughout Napoleon’s battles with Austria. He was na activist on behalf of tradition who fought valiantly against attempts to “enlighten” Jewish tradition through compromises and assimilation. Bratislava’s most celebrated Rabbi passed away in Bratislava in
the year 1839.