Akiva Ehrenfeld

Rabbi Akiva Ehrenfeld
Rabbi Ehrenfeld in January 2011
Position	President
Organisation	Kiryat Mattersdorf
Personal details
Birth name	Akiva Ehrenfeld
Born	1923 Mattersdorf, Austria
Died	16 August 2012 (aged 88–89) Jerusalem, Israel
Buried	Har HaMenuchot
Denomination	Haredi
Residence	Jerusalem, Israel
Parents	Rabbi Shmuel Ehrenfeld Rochel Ehrenfeld
Children	Yitzchok Yechiel Golda Gittel Faiga Miriam Esther

Akiva Ehrenfeld (Hebrew: עקיבא עהרענפעלד‎‎) (1923 – 16 August 2012) was an Orthodox Jewish rabbi who helped establish the Kiryat Mattersdorf and Unsdorf neighborhoods of northern Jerusalem. He served as president of Kiryat Mattersdorf and president of the Chasan Sofer Institutions in the United States.

He was born in Mattersdorf, Austria to Rabbi Shmuel Ehrenfeld, then rosh yeshiva of the Mattersdorf yeshiva, and Rochel Ehrenfeld. His parents were first cousins. He was named after his parents' ancestor, Rabbi Akiva Eger. Akiva's great-grandfather, Rabbi Shmuel Ehrenfeld (the Chasan Sofer), was the eldest grandson of the Chasam Sofer. At the time of his birth, his grandfather, Rabbi Simcha Bunim Ehrenfeld, was the Rav of the city; upon his death in 1926, Rabbi Shmuel Ehrenfeld succeeded him as Rav. Akiva had a younger brother, Simcha Bunim, and five sisters.

The family fled Austria in 1938 with the Anschluss. They arrived in New York on September 13, 1938. Two months later, Akiva's father established Yeshivas Chasan Sofer on the Lower East Side.

Akiva studied in Yeshiva Torah Vodaas and later joined his father's yeshiva, Yeshivas Chasan Sofer. In 1954 he married the daughter of Rabbi Chaim Tzvi Krieger, formerly Rav of Brussels, Belgium. The couple had one son and five daughters.

In 1958 the Mattersdorfer Rav founded the Haredi community of Kiryat Mattersdorf in northern Jerusalem in memory of the Siebengemeinden (Seven Communities) of Burgenland, Austria, which were destroyed in the Holocaust, Mattersdorf being one of them. He appointed Ehrenfeld as his representative to supervise the construction and sale of apartments. Ehrenfeld sold some of the first apartments in the neighborhood to Rabbi Chaim Pinchas Scheinberg, his family members and students, encouraging Scheinberg to relocate his yeshiva, Torah Ore, to Jerusalem from Bensonhurst, Brooklyn by offering attractive terms for apartments and land for the yeshiva at the southeast end of the neighborhood. Torah Ore opened in Kiryat Mattersdorf in 1971. Ehrenfeld also encouraged other Torah institutions to populate the community.