ABSTRACT
Shlomo Zalman Auerbach was a significant Jerusalem rabbi of the Ashkenazi Haredi community and a recognized halachic authority (posek). His father, Rabbi Chaim Yehuda Leib Auerbach (1883–1954), was a well-known scholar and the founder in 1906 of the kabbalistic Yeshiva Shaar ha-Shamayim, whose name can be translated as ‘Heaven's Gate’. In turn, Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach headed the Yeshiva Kol Torah. In his works he dealt with various practical aspects of the relationship between Orthodox Judaism and modernity, and in this pursuit, he even utilized experiments, for example. He deals with such matters in his works Meorei Eish (‘Firelight’, 1935; the first book to deal with halachic regulations on the use of electricity on the Shabbat) and Ma'adanei Eretz (‘The Spices of the Earth’, 1946; a book on agriculture). He also wrote a large collection of rabbinic responsa and commentaries on the Talmud (Minchas Shlomo – ‘Shlomo's Sacrifice’). Rabbi Auerbach had close relationships with the rabbis Chaim Ozer Grodzinski, Chazon Ish and Elazar Menachem Shach. His funeral in 1995 was attended by around half a million people.
