December 12, 2017

The International Rabbinic Fellowship joins the Jewish world in mourning the passing of Rabbi Aharon Leib Shteinman zt"l, the leading rabbinic authority of the Lithuanian Hareidi community in Israel, at the age of 104.

R. Shteinman was a leading Talmudic scholar and communal leader who was a paragon of humility and simplicity looked to by hundreds of thousands for counsel and leadership. 

He was born in Brest, Belarus and studied for a time under the renowned Brisker Rav, R. Yitzchak Zeev Solveitchik. In 1937 he fled to Switzerland to avoid conscription in the Polish Army and remained there surviving the war. In 1945 he made aliyah and settled in Bnai Brak becoming close to the famed Hazon Ish and R. Yosef Kahanamen, head of the Ponovezh yeshiva. He eventually settled in Bnai Brak and became head of the prepatory yeshiva high school of the Ponovezh Yeshiva and was also involved in the establishment of Kollels for full-time Torah study for married men throughout Israel. In the 1990's with the establishment of the Lithuanian Hareidi Party, Degel HaTorah , he was appointed to its Council of Torah Sages. From that point on he was deeply involved in shaping the communal and political policies of the Lithuanian Haredi community as well as the joint political party of United Torah Judaism. He published a number of works on Talmud and ethical topics that have been widely disseminated. 

May his family be comforted among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.