Solomon Simon, the American
Solomon Simon: Yiddish Writer and Pedagogue | Yiddish Book Center
•
6m 2s
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 4th. The choice raises the well-documented political debates of the early twentieth century between allegiance to capitalism and the United States or communism and the Soviet Union. This political schism was the subject of heated debate both in the formal settings of Jewish organizations as well as the comfort of the Simons' home. As his descendants can attest, Solomon hated Russia, and believed in the freedom of America as a stark contrast to the corruption of his country of origin.
One of the greatest joys of life in America for Simon was having his own stand-alone home. His descendants remember fondly growing up in or visiting this house in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn, describing his desk, the library, and more.
Up Next in Solomon Simon: Yiddish Writer and Pedagogue | Yiddish Book Center
-
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...
-
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...
-
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...
