Solomon Simon: Yiddish Writer and Pedagogue | Yiddish Book Center
The Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project presents a portrait of prolific writer and Jewish thinker Solomon Simon, through the lens of oral history.
The prolific Yiddish writer Solomon Simon was born Shlomo Simonovich in a shtetl in what is now Belarus. At 13, he went to his first of several yeshivas in Poland. His studies were interrupted by the threat of the mandatory conscription into the Russian army, which he avoided by immigrating to the United States.
Though he was raised Orthodox, his relationship to traditional religion changed over his life. Solomon raised his three children without a traditional religious education and became a thought leader in the Sholem Aleichem secular Yiddish school system. At the same time, he never abandoned his early goal of synthesizing aspects of Judaism with modern life and thought. In an era when other Yiddish children’s writers tended to avoid the subject, his children’s stories depicted traditional religious life in positive ways. Throughout his life he tried to champion the inclusion of traditional religious texts in secular Yiddish education.
Later in life, he came to regret the wholesale rejection of religion shared by some of his generation of Yiddishists. Observing the outcome of his children’s secular Yiddish education, he reconsidered his understanding of an American-Yiddish culture and decided that simply studying Jewish history, culture, and the religious texts were a necessary but insufficient foundation and argued for more ritual practice and a renewal of Halakah (way of life guided by traditional Jewish laws), in which Judaism would infuse daily life. In the last twenty-five years of his life, he led an adult Talmud and scripture group, which explored Jewish scholarship and theology.
As part of the Yiddish Book Center’s Wexler Oral History Project, many of Solomon Simon’s descendants recalled their zeyde (grandfather) in their filmed oral history interviews.
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Solomon Simon, the American
The Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project presents a portrait of a prolific writer and Jewish thinker, through the lens oral history. In this segment, we explore his relationship to the United States.
The descendants of Solomon Simon love to tell the tale of his chosen birthday, July...
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Solomon Simon, the Dentist
The Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project presents a portrait of a prolific writer and Jewish thinker, through the lens oral history. In this segment, we explore the other side of the writer’s life, his career as a dentist.
How does a prolific writer in Yiddish pay his bills in New Y...
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Solomon Simon, the Secularist
The Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project presents a portrait of a prolific writer and Jewish thinker, through the lens oral history. In this segment, we explore Simon’s philosophical views on Jewish identity and tradition.
Simon set out to create a Jewish community without ritual or...
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Solomon Simon, the Writer
The prolific Yiddish writer Solomon Simon was born Shlomo Simonovich in a shtetl in what is now Belarus. At 13, he went to his first of several yeshivas in Poland. His studies were interrupted by the threat of the mandatory conscription into the Russian army, which he avoided by fleeing to the Un...
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Solomon Simon, the Pedagogue
The Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project presents a portrait of a prolific writer and Jewish thinker, through the lens oral history. In this segment, we explore Solomon Simon’s children’s literature and work as a Jewish pedagogue.
According to his family, Solomon Simon was a unique ...
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Solomon Simon, the Father and Grandfather
The Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project presents a portrait of a prolific writer and Jewish thinker, through the lens oral history. In this segment, we explore who he was in his family life, through the memories of his descendants.
One of Simon's greatest legacies is a large family...
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Solomon Simon, From Yeshiva Boy to Biblical Commentator
The Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project presents a portrait of a prolific writer and Jewish thinker, through the lens of oral history. In this segment, we explore Solomon Simon’s shifting relationship to religious practice and education throughout his life.
Solomon Simon was born S...
