Avrohom Bornsztain (14 October 1838 – 20 February 1910), also spelled Avraham Borenstein or Bernstein, was a leading posek in late-nineteenth-century Europe and founder and first Rebbe of the Sochatchover Hasidic dynasty.

He is known as the Avnei Nezer ("Stones of the Crown") after the title of his posthumously published set of Torah responsa, which is widely acknowledged as a halakhic classic.

[5] The latter opined that Zev Nachum merited such a son due to his immersion in Torah study on Purim, a time when most people are busy carrying out the many mitzvot of the day.

After the Kotzker Rebbe's death, Bornsztain became a Hasid of his wife's uncle, Rabbi Yitzchak Meir Alter, the Chidushei HaRim of Ger.

In his introduction to his book, Eglei Tal, he noted that he dedicated all his energies to teaching Torah to his students, leaving the publication of his chiddushim to his old age.

When Rabbi Chanoch Heynekh of Alexander died in 1870, Bornsztain agreed to serve as a rebbe — with one condition: his regular shiurim and learning schedule were not to be interrupted.

His responsa, covering all four sections of Shulchan Aruch, were published posthumously in seven volumes by his son and grandson under the title, She'eilos U'teshuvos Avnei Nezer.

The homilies which he delivered before his listeners on Shabbat were collected and printed after the Holocaust in the book Ne'ot Deshe (two parts) together with the Torah thoughts of his successors as Sochatchover Rebbes.

A Sochatchover Yeshiva, called Yeshivat Avnei Nezer DeSochatchov, operates in Jerusalem under the leadership of Rabbi Moshe Betzalel Weinberg, a brother-in-law of the current rebbe.

During World War II, the Nazis uprooted all the headstones in the cemetery in which the Avnei Nezer and the Shem Mishmuel were buried and threw them into the river.

[8] In 1991, after the fall of Communism, Yehuda Vidavski, a Sochatchover Hasid from Łódź, who now lived in Tel Aviv, set out to find and restore the ohel.

He successfully petitioned the local authorities for permission to erect a fence around the perimeter of the original cemetery, and asked Rabbi Aharon Yisrael Bornsztain, a son of the Shem Mishmuel who also lived in Tel Aviv, for his recollections as to the location of the ohel.

Digging anew, Rabbi Videvski's workers unearthed remnants of wooden boards, which they later realized was the grave of the Avnei Nezer.

The graves were restored and a new ohel built over them, which was inaugurated in a ceremony led by the present Sochatchover Rebbe, who traveled to Poland from Israel for the occasion in 1993.