The levaya of Rav Shimon Alster zt”l, who was niftar Friday following a brief illness, will take place at his shul at Bedford and Avenue L in Flatbush at 10 am Sunday, followed by a second levaya in BMG’s Bais Yitzchok bais medrash at 2 PM.
Lakewood live Hook-up: 857-347-0100 conference id 125005
Kevura will be in Deans.
Rav Shimon was the only child of Reb Yosef Shmuel and Gittel Alster, who were natives of Galicia but grew up in Antwerp, where they got married in 1935. He lost his father at a very young age, when in 1946, a plane crash claimed the life of his father and nearly two dozen others when it struck a mountainside in Gander, Newfoundland.
As a young mesivta bochur, Rav Shimon went to Eretz Yisroel to learn, enrolling Yeshivas Kol Torah and taken in under the wings of its giants, including its famed rosh yeshiva, Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach zt”l. Upon returning to the U.S., he studied in Yeshivas Chasan Sofer under Rav Binyomin Paler zt”l.
Over time, Rav Shimon became an acclaimed marbitz torah, taking a shtellar as a maggid shiur at the Mesivta of Long Beach, where he taught for decades before opening his yeshiva in Cliffwood, New Jersey, where he was mechanech hundreds of talmidim over the years.
He was additionally the rav of Bais Medrash Torah U’tefillah, a position he used to raise an entire kehilla’s level of ruchniyus and avodas hashem.
he was one of a kind a full self made גדול grew up with no father and reach true greatness in all areas. יהי זכרו ברוך