Yehuda Meshi Zahav
Avraham Zvi Yehuda Meshi Zahav (born July 19, 1959) is an Israeli social activist, a former member of the Haredi Jewish community, and founder and former chairman of ZAKA. In March 2021, following against men, women and children, Meshi Zahav attempted to take his own life but failed and was left in a coma avoiding actual charges and trial. Biography. Meshi Zahav was born to writer Menachem Mendel and Sara Zissel, daughter of Rabbi Yosef Scheinberger, the secretary of the Edah HaChareidis rabbinical court. He grew up in the Mea Shearim neighbourhood in Jerusalem, an 11th generation  family living in Jerusalem. He studied in the Talmud Torah "Etz Chaim", and in the yeshivas "Tiferet Yisrael", "Ohel Yaakov" and "Torah Ore". Public activity. As a young man, he was one of the leaders of the Haredi community's protests against the State of Israel and its institutions. As a result, he said, he was detained by the police dozens of times. During this period, Meshi-Zahav was named "Kambatz (Operations Officer) of the Ultra-Orthodox Community". His nickname on the police radio network (which he used to listen to) was "13 Black". Meshi-Zahav was the editor of  the Haredi communities newspaper "Ha’eda". With his brother Zvi, he published seven books on the struggles of the Haredi community in Israel. Founder of ZAKA Organisation. During the attack on bus line 405 in 1989, Meshi Zahav arrived with other yeshiva boys to provide first aid to the victims. On his way home, he concluded that if in the enemy's view everyone is equal, so too for him. In the 1990s, he arrived at the scenes of suicide bombing attacks in Israel, among other things, and treated the bodies of those killed. As a result, ZAKA (Disaster Victim Identification ) was founded. In his capacity as Chairman of ZAKA, he worked for inter-religious and secular reconciliation. In 2003, he lit, as one of the founders of ZAKA, a beacon at the torch lighting ceremony on Mount Herzl. He was criticized by people in the Haredi community for this, in particular for declaring the ceremony "the glory of the State of Israel." His family saw it as treason and excommunicated him. Three of his sons enlisted in the IDF, two of them for combat service, in Golani and in the paratroopers. During the Second Lebanon War, he founded the "Israel  Together" movement, which employed volunteers who assisted residents in northern communities. During Operation Protective Edge he criticised the Haredi leadership for not attending the funerals of IDF soldiers and not comforting the bereaved families. In 2018, he founded with Carmit Naimi and another "Eshet Lapidot" organization, which is a women's organization in several countries around the world that deals with community assistance. The organisation organizes resuscitation courses for women, works to care for neighbors in need, supports Haredi soldiers who are unable to return home, and more. Meshi-Zahav was a member of committees to promote the recruitment of  Haredi Jews to the IDF and their integration into the labor market. He also participated in the public committee established by Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi in December 2019 to examine the forgery of the number of Haredim who have enlisted in the IDF in recent years. Personal life. Married to Batsheva, he is a father of seven. Meshi Zahav resided in Givat Ze'ev.