History
Kiryat Mattersdorf was founded in 1959 by the Mattersdorfer Rav, Rabbi Shmuel Ehrenfeld, whose ancestors had served as Rav of the Austrian town of Mattersdorf for centuries, starting with his great-great-grandfather, the Chasam Sofer, in 1798. When the community was evicted from Austria during the Anschluss of 1938, the Mattersdorfer Rav re-established his yeshiva in New York. In 1959, he sent one of his sons, Rabbi Akiva Ehrenfeld, to supervise the construction and selling of apartments and public institutions in the new neighborhood of Mattersdorf. Today Rabbi Akiva's son, Rabbi Yitzchok Yechiel Ehrenfeld, holds the position of Rav of Kiryat Mattersdorf.
Among the institutions that Ehrenfeld set up were Talmud Torah Maaneh Simcha; Yeshiva Maaneh Simcha; Yeshivas Beis Shmuel (named for his father, who died in 1980); two synagogues named Heichal Shmuel, one for nusach Ashkenaz and one for nusach Sefard; and the Neveh Simcha nursing home, named after his grandfather. Rabbi Akiva moved to Kiryat Mattersdorf in the early 1990s and served as president of all these institutions. He established close ties with the government of Austria to obtain funding for several institutions, including Neveh Simcha and a kindergarten. Following an official state visit to Israel by Austrian President Thomas Klestil in 1994, which included a side tour of Kiryat Mattersdorf, Klestil hosted Ehrenfeld at an official reception at the Hofburg Palace in Vienna on January 24, 1995.
The first apartments were ready for occupancy in May 1965. The first occupants included Rabbi Chaim Pinchas Scheinberg and his wife Bessie; his son Rabbi Simcha Scheinberg and his family; his daughter Rebbetzin Fruma Rochel Altusky and her family; and more than 20 students from Rabbi Chaim Scheinberg's yeshiva, Torah Ore. Rabbi Akiva Ehrenfeld was the one who encouraged Rabbi Scheinberg to relocate his yeshiva to Jerusalem from Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, offering attractive terms for apartments and land for the yeshiva.
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