Zinwert, Meir Shimon

Son of Rivka Yentel and Avraham Avish. He was born in Jerusalem on 16 April 1910. Meir Shimon studied at the Talmud Torah and at the Yeshivat Gur Hasidim, and in 1929 he married Matel Hadassah and worked as a milk salesman in Tnuva, where they raised their nine children. Meir Shimeon was careful to teach his children a life of honesty, decency and caring to all, and he spent his entire life learning Torah with friends during his spare time. He was famous for his voice and served as cantor in the Great Synagogue in his neighborhood. On 2 Tamuz, (07/09/1948), Jews were killed in the city. Among those killed was Meir Shimon, who was hit by a shell when he was in the center of the city on his way to his guard at the People’s Guard, which helped protect Jerusalem. He was thirty-eight years old when he died. Survived by a pregnant wife, five sons and four daughters. Two weeks after his death, his daughter, Miriam Sima, was born. Meir Shimon was brought for burial at the Harai cemetery in Sheikh Bader and after a few years he was laid to rest in the cemetery at Har Hamenuchot in Jerusalem. The memory of Meir Shimon is commemorated with the other fallen of the Beit Yisrael neighborhood, in a memorial plaque in the synagogue on Sonnenfeld Street in Jerusalem.