Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky's youngest son agreed to sell his manuscripts for $7 million; his brothers said Torah law split the estate among three sons and none of the five daughters

Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky was the de facto head of Israel's Lithuanian ultra-Orthodox community. He died in March 2022. Police put his funeral crowd at about 500,000. He lived modestly in Bnei Brak, but his handwritten commentaries had a market. The American nursing-home owner Eliezer Scheiner offered $7 million for the original manuscripts of his commentaries on the Jerusalem Talmud. The rabbi's son Shaul, who lived in the family home, agreed the price. His older brothers, Avraham Yeshayahu and Shlomo, found out by accident. Shaul told them their father had meant him to be sole heir. The brothers said their father had always said his estate would pass by Torah law. He had eight children, three sons and five daughters. Under Torah law sons inherit and daughters do not, so the estate would be split among the three sons. The sale was halted. The family asked Rubin Schron, a New York real estate investor and confidant of the rabbi, to mediate. Two grandsons who ran the household took opposite sides. Israel's civil Succession Law would give all eight children equal shares, but a rabbinical court can rule on an estate only if all heirs consent in writing. Wikipedia, citing a Haredi weekly, reports that mediation by the Beit Din Tzedek of Bnei Brak ended in an agreement for equal division^†.