Chaim Pinchas Scheinberg

Chaim Pinchas Scheinberg (חיים פנחס שיינברג;‎ 1 October 1910 – 20 March 2012) was a Polish-born, American-raised, Israeli Haredi rabbi and rosh yeshiva who, from 1965, made his home in the Kiryat Mattersdorf neighborhood of Jerusalem.

He was the rosh yeshiva of the Torah Ore yeshiva in Kiryat Mattersdorf and Yeshivas Derech Chaim in Brooklyn.

He was a posek (decisor of Jewish law), Gadol HaDor, and one of the last living Torah scholars to have been educated in the yeshivas of prewar Europe.

He was often consulted on a range of communal and personal halachic issues.

He was one of the rabbinic leaders of Kiryat Mattersdorf, together with Rabbi Yisroel Gans and Rabbi Yitzchok Yechiel Ehrenfeld.

He was also a member of the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah of Israel.

Scheinberg was born in Ostrov, Poland, the second son of Rabbi Yaakov Yitzchok Scheinberg and Yuspa (Yosefa) Tamback.

Earlier that year his father had gone to America to avoid conscription into the Polish army and with the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the family lost contact.

By 1919, Scheinberg's father had saved enough money to open his own tailor shop and pay for his wife and children to go America.

At age 9 he moved with his family to an apartment on the Lower East Side.

After briefly attending public school, Scheinberg enrolled in the Rabbi Jacob Joseph School where he studied until he was 14, when Yaakov Yosef Herman encouraged him to go to Rabbi Yehuda Levenberg's Beis Medrash LeRabbonim yeshiva in New Haven, Connecticut, where no secular subjects were taught.

Herman also wanted Scheinberg to marry his daughter, Bessie, who was then only 12 years old.

Scheinberg left the yeshiva at the age of sixteen and a half, having studied the entire Talmud.

At age 17 Scheinberg went to Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary where he studied under rabbis Shlomo Polachek and Moshe Soloveichik.

When Scheinberg was 19 Herman suggested Scheinberg marry his 17-year-old daughter Bessie and the Scheinbergs agreed.

Scheinberg received rabbinic ordination before his wedding.

Scheinberg and his wife moved to Mir, Belarus (then Poland).

where they lived next-door to a yeshiva where Scheinberg studied, and where he was one of the few students who was married and one of the few American students at the yeshiva.

His wife's brother Nochum Dovid sister Ruchoma moved to Mir with their spouses.

Scheinberg's younger brother, Shmuel, came to study at the Mir at the age of 14; he escaped on one of the last ships leaving Europe before World War II broke out.

The Scheinbergs' first two daughters, Fruma Rochel and Rivka, were born in Poland.

When they were expecting their first child, Scheinberg and his wife visited Rabbi Yisrael Meir Kagan (known as the Chofetz Chaim), a leader of Ashkenazi Jewry at the time, to receive his blessing.

When Scheinberg asked for an additional blessing since he had come all the way from America to study, the Chofetz Chaim said, "Moses came down all the way from heaven to teach the Jews Torah. What’s the big deal about coming from America to Europe?!” Then he blessed them.

While in Europe, Scheinberg also studied at the Kaminetz yeshiva and received rabbinic ordination.

In 1935 the Scheinbergs returned to America because his American citizenship would have expired after more than five years abroad.

Soon after his return, Scheinberg was offered the position of mashgiach ruchani (spiritual supervisor) of the Yeshiva Chofetz Chaim in Queens founded by Rabbi Dovid Leibowitz, a position he held for 25 years before leaving to open his own yeshiva, Torah Ore.

During this time, Scheinberg also became the rabbi of Congregation Bakash Shalom Anshei Ostrov on the Lower East Side, where he gave Torah lectures to working men.

The Scheinbergs had two more daughters, Chana and Zelda, and a son, Simcha, in New York.

Zelda was married to Rabbi Nisson Alpert.

They also raised Rivky Kaufman, one of the seven orphans of Bessie's sister Freida, after the latter's sudden death in 1938.

With the help of his brother Shmuel and his son-in-law, Rabbi Chaim Dov Altusky (Fruma Rochel's husband), Scheinberg opened the Torah Ore yeshiva in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn in 1960.

The yeshiva started with six students and went on to enroll many local Sephardi boys.

Rabbi Asa Wittow, a married student who had learned under Scheinberg since 1960 and who also served as his driver in New York, made aliyah with him and moved into the same apartment building.

Scheinberg first established the Torah Ore yeshiva in the Diskin Orphanage building in Jerusalem's Givat Shaul neighborhood.

In 1963 Bessie's sister Ruchoma visited their father in Israel and toured a planned Haredi housing development in northern Jerusalem called Kiryat Mattersdorf, which was founded by Rabbi Shmuel Ehrenfeld, the Mattersdorfer Rav, who was Ruchoma's neighbor in New York.

Upon her return, Ruchoma told Bessie about her desire to buy an apartment there, and Bessie also expressed interest in buying an apartment.

Though Scheinberg was skeptical about relocating his family and his American yeshiva to Israel, he made a pilot trip to tour the development and decided that it could work.

Ehrenfeld's son, Rabbi Akiva Ehrenfeld, who was his representative in supervising the construction and sale of the apartments, encouraged Scheinberg to relocate his yeshiva to Jerusalem from Bensonhurst, Brooklyn by offering attractive terms for apartments and land for the yeshiva.

The Scheinbergs, their daughter Fruma Rochel and her family, their son Simcha and his family, and over 20 of Scheinberg's students moved into their new homes in May 1965.

When the Six-Day War broke out in June 1967 and many American tourists headed home, Scheinberg encouraged his students to stay, and none of the American students at Torah Ore left the yeshiva.