Rabbi Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld

Leader of the Orthodox Jewish community in Jerusalem and a staunch anti Zionist. Around 75 years ago he participated together with the martyr Professor Yaakov Yisroel DeHaan (later murdered by the Zionists for his participation) in a delegation which visited King Hussein, his sons Faisal the King of Iraq and the Amir Abdullah, in order to lucidly present to them the position of the G-d-fearing Jewish community. The Jewish delegation clarified unequivocally that Torah Jewry is totally opposed to the Zionist sovereignty over the Holy Land. Rabbi Sonnenfeld later established the anti-Zionist Rabbinical court of the Eidah Hacharedis and was appointed as its head and Chief Rabbi by the Orthodox community in Jerusalem, this court standing in opposition to the Zionist puppet "Rabbinical court" and its "Chief Rabbis".

[For more details on this event, read this article, A Historical Event from the Life of the Gaon Rav Yosef Chayim Sonnenfeld (Z”tl) on the Fifty First Anniversary of his Death (19 Adar 5692) March 27, 1932.]

After the disorders in Eretz Yisroel in 1929, the Chief Rabbi of the Orthodox Jewish Community, Rabbi Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld, zt"l, issued a touching appeal to the Arab population to live in peace with the Jewish community, and assuring them that the Jewish people have no designs on the Temple Mount nor Arab properties.

This appeal, presented in English translation, as printed in Arabic in the leading Arab newspaper as well as in Loshon Kodesh in the Agudah weekly, Kol Yisroel on November 22, 1929. READ HIS APPEAL

Rabbi Sonnenfeld stated in his public declaration "Words of Truth and Peace" printed in issue number 6 of the Jewish Guardian, volume number I. as follows:

"The Jews do not want, in any way, to take that which isn't theirs. And they certainly do not want to contest the rights of the other inhabitants to the places held by them which they regard with honor and consider holy. And in particular there is no foundation to the rumor that the Jews want to acquire the Temple Mount. On the contrary, from the time that, because of our sins, we have been lacking the purity required by the Torah, it is forbidden for any Jew to set foot upon the grounds of the Temple Mount, until the coming of the righteous Messiah, who with the spirit of the L-rd which will hover over him, will rule righteously, for the good of all creation, and will return to us the purity required by the Torah".(Ibid, p.3).

Rabbi Sonnenfeld
Rabbi Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld of blessed memory (center) with President Thomas Masaryik of Czechoslovakia (to left of Reb Yosef Chaim) while visiting Meah Shearim Jerusalem, April 1927.



Read English translation of the Arabic memorandum submitted to King Hussein of the Hejaz, great-grandfather of the present King Hussein of Jordan, by Rabbi Yosef Chaim Sonenfeld and Dr. Yackov Yisroel DeHaan, together with a delegation that visited the Monarch upon his visit to King Abdullah in Shuni -Trons - Jordan.