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Rabbi Yonasan Steif (1877-1958) was a senior dayan of Budapest, Hungary, before the Second World War, a man whom Rabbi Moshe Feinstein referred to as the gadol hador (spiritual leader of the generation). He was a world-renowned posek and halachic authority.

He served as senior dayan together with Rabbi Israel Welcz. The Rosh Beth Din was Rabbi Efraim Fishel Zussman Sofer. While Rabbi Steif may have assumed the role of rosh beth din as the year 1944 approached, he was not such for most of his tenure. Nor was he Orthodox chief rabbi of Budapest.The last incumbent to hold that office was Rabbi Koppel Reich, who died in 1929.

Rabbi Steif was rescued from death in the Holocaust in 1944 as a result of a deal between a Hungarian Zionist official, Rudolph Kastner, and a deputy of Adolf Eichmann. He journeyed on a special train bound for neutral Switzerland along with other prominent Jews including the Satmar Rebbe, the Debreciner Rav and Adolph Deutsch, head of the Budapest branch of Agudath Israel.

He resettled and served as a rabbi, the "Viener Rav", in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York, where he died in 1958. A major posek, he wrote halachic responsa, works on the Talmud and two works setting forth the obligations of gentiles, one called Sefer Mitsvos Ha-Shem, "The Book of G-d's Commandments".