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.
He and his wife Bluma had 2 children; a son named Tzvi Yehuda and a daughter named Esther Shulamis. His son was murdered in the Holocaust together with his young son Aron while trying to escape the Nazis. The rest of his family, including his wife, his daughter-in-law Breindel with her two other sons Sholom Yosef and Michoel, and his daughter Esther with her 2 young sons, were rescued with Rabbi Steif, on the Kastner train. His son-in-law Aron Bleier (Esther's husband) was in the concentration camps at the time but miraculously survived and was re-united with the family after the war. A third son was born to them in 1950.[citation needed]
He resettled and was appointed as rabbi of Kehal Adas Yereim in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York, which had been founded by Orthodox Jews who came from Vienna living in New York, and he was known as the Wiener Rov (rabbi of Vienna). He was 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 God's Commandments".A number of other works were published later, and are still being worked on today.
