Leon Simon

Sir Leon Simon (; 11 July 188127 April 1965) was a leading British Zionist intellectual and civil servant who took part in the drafting of the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and served on the Zionist Commission with Chaim Weizmann. An advocate of cultural Zionism and the revival of Hebrew language, Simon was a scholar and translator of Ahad Ha'am, and produced the first modern Hebrew translations of Plato. He served as the chairman of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's executive council, and from 1949 to 1950 as the university's president.

Early life and education Simon was the son of Rabbi Isadore Simon of the South Manchester Synagogue and Kitty Avner, both of whom had moved to Britain in the late 19th century from Lithuania. He studied at Manchester Grammar School and read Greats at Balliol College at the University of Oxford. Charles Dreyfus, Weizmann's employer in Manchester, was the president of the society.

Simon edited the newspaper The Zionist Banner with Sacher, and the monthly journal Palestine.

In 1904 Simon joined the General Post Office and rose to become Director of Telegraphs and Telephones and later Director of Savings. He was made CB in 1931 and was knighted in 1944. He married Ellen Umanski, (later called by the name Lady Ellen Simon), and they had two daughters.

Cultural Zionist Under the influence of Chaim Weizmann, whose family had immigrated from Belarus to Manchester, Simon belonged to the first generation of leading British Jews who preferred Zionism to conventional religiosity and who pressed for Hebrew to supplant Yiddish as the main language of the diaspora. as well as writing his biography.

Language revival

He also wrote the first translations into modern Hebrew of John Stuart Mill's Essay on Liberty, and of several of Plato's Dialogues, work for which he received the Tchernichovsky Prize.

Balfour Declaration A draft of the Balfour Declaration, written by Simon on paper of London's Imperial Hotel on July 17, 1917, was auctioned off in 2005 through Sotheby's for $884,000 US in New York. It is the only known surviving handwritten draft of the declaration.

The draft of the declaration noted down by Simon read:

"H(is) M(ajesty's) G(overnment) accepts the principle that P(alestine) should be reconstituted as the Nat(ional) Home of the J(ewish) P(eople). HMG will use its best efforts to secure the achievement of this object, and will discuss the necessary methods and means with the Z(ionist) O(rganization)." He also served as President of Israel Postal Company Bank.

Published works Simon wrote several works on Zionism, including Zionism and the Jewish Problem published in 1917 and Studies in Jewish Nationalism published in 1920. A collection of his papers are held at Duke University.

Works Zionism and the Jewish Problem (1917) "Studies in Jewish Nationalism" (1920) Ahad Ha-Am (1927, Biography) Synopsis of the Haskalah Movement (1934) The Elements of Zionism for Young Zionists (1934)