Akiva Ehrenfeld

Biography 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. They arrived in New York on September 13, 1938. Two months later, Akiva's father established Yeshivas Ch'san Sofer on the Lower East Side. 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. Ehrenfeld also encouraged other Torah institutions to populate the community. The outermost street in the neighborhood is named Maaneh Simcha after his father's Torah work.

Akiva Ehrenfeld moved to Kiryat Mattersdorf in the early 1990s and served as president of all these institutions. Akiva Ehrenfeld also founded Yeshivas Beis Shmuel, named for his father, in the mid-1980s.

Ehrenfeld declined to serve as the neighborhood's Rav. Instead, he acted as president of Kiryat Mattersdorf while his only son, Rabbi Yitzchok Yechiel Ehrenfeld, became the Rav of the neighborhood.

Death and burial Ehrenfeld underwent surgery for an abdominal obstruction on July 16, 2012 (Tisha B'Av) but did not recover. He died on August 16, 2012, at Shaare Zedek Medical Center and was buried that night on Har HaMenuchot near the grave of his father.