Sofer, ?ayyim ben Mordecai Ephraim Fischel
SOFER, ?AYYIM BEN MORDECAI EPHRAIM FISCHEL
SOFER, ?AYYIM BEN MORDECAI EPHRAIM FISCHEL (1821–1886), Hungarian rabbi. An outstanding pupil of ?atam Sofer in Pressburg and of Meir Eisenstaedter in Ungvar, ?ayyim was appointed head of the yeshivah at Mattersdorf in 1844. He served as rabbi of Gy?mr? in 1852, of Sajoszentpeter in 1859, and of Munkacs in 1867. Persecuted by the ?asidim despite his religious extremism, he left Munkacs in 1880 and was appointed the chief rabbi of the Orthodox community in Pest. He was one of the leading extreme Orthodox rabbis in Hungary, a signatory of "the infamous excommunication" of the maskilim in Michalovce, and a central figure of the Shomerei ha-Dat organization. He demanded that adherents of the Reform movement be excommunicated and that their sons be refused circumcision.
He was the author of the following works: Peles ?ayyim (1854), novellae on the first chapter of Gittin; Ma?aneh ?ayyim (1879–85), responsa arranged according to the order of the Shul?an Arukh; Sha'arei ?ayyim (1869), admonitions against the Reformers; Kol Sofer (2 pts., 1881–82), on the Mishnah; and Sha'arei ?ayyim (1892), a commentary on Psalms.
bibliography:
A. Stern, Meli?ei Esh al ?odesh Sivan (n.d.), 1179; S. Weingarten, in: Arim ve-Immahot be-Yisrael, 1 (1946), 3535; A. Fuerst, ibid., 2 (1948), 162; J.Z. Sofer, Toledot Soferim (1963).
[Itzhak Alfassi]