Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach הרב שלמה זלמן אויערבאך
head of the Kol Torah yeshiva, authority on halakhah and technology
Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach was born in Jerusalem in 5670 to a kabbalist's family and barely left the city. For more than half a century he headed the Kol Torah yeshiva in Bayit Vegan.
His particular field was the new question. He studied how electric current and refrigerators actually work in order to determine what happens when they are switched on during the Sabbath; he consulted doctors and engineers; with technological institutes and hospitals he worked out solutions for wards where equipment cannot be turned off. His rulings cover milking machines, hearing aids, lifts, medical tests and treatment on the Sabbath, and the sabbatical year. His responsa are collected as «Minchat Shlomo».
He was known for his respect for people. He is said to have risen for every visitor, whoever they were; he forbade his students to speak dismissively of the non-observant; at his wife's funeral he asked her forgiveness aloud, before everyone.
With Rav Elyashiv and Rav Wosner he set the halakhic practice of Israel in the second half of the twentieth century.