The greatest,according to someHE WAS exceptional in several ways. Brought up in the shtetls of what is now Belarus, Aharon Yehudah Leib Shteinman was the only member of his family to outlive the Holocaust. He then devoted his life to building the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in Israel. Such was his piety that other devout Jews came to regard him as Gadol Hador—the greatest of his generation. But he remained exceedingly modest, or sleeping on the same mattress for six decades. During the day it would serve as a sofa for anyone wanting his guidance. Parents,ministers and tycoons passed through his damp one-bedroom flat.Ten people at my funeral would be enough,” wrote Rabbi Shteinman in his will. As it happened, and hundreds of thousands of ultra-Orthodox men turned out to mourn their leader,who died on December 12th at the age of 104.
Rabbi Shteinman was one of a small group of rabbis who arrived in the new state of...
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Source: economist.com