Berger, Meir
BERGER, MEIR
BERGER, MEIR (1901–1981), Mexican Jewish educator. Born in Suwalki, Poland, he studied in a yeshivah and in a teachers' seminar in Lithuania. Later he taught in a Hebrew school. He immigrated to Mexico in 1924 and in the same year founded the first modern Jewish school there: Colegio Israelita de Mexico – Yiddishe Shul. This school imparted Jewish and general knowledge and Berger was its principal until 1944. In that year he was replaced by the educator Avraham *Golomb. Berger participated in the establishment of the first Zionist institutions in Mexico: in 1925 he was secretary of the Zionist Organization and in 1926 he headed the local Keren Kayemet le-Israel office. He was also the first editor of the Zionist periodical Farn Folk and he published numerous essays and articles in the Yiddish newspaper Der Veg.
[Efraim Zadoff (2nd ed.)]