Simon Paskal

Simon Paskal ( or ; February 8, 1877 – October 17, 1930) was a Romanian-born American Yiddish Theater actor and tenor who recorded numerous Yiddish-language discs during the early twentieth century.

Early life Paskal was the son of a blacksmith, and worked for his father as a youth; due to his excellent singing voice he also became a choirboy for Cantor Abraham Osher in Galați. According to his First World War draft registration card Simon was born on February 8, 1877.

During the 1899 anti-Semitic riots in Romania, Paskal left the country on foot (part of the movement called the fusgeyers), eventually arriving in the United States in 1900 according to the Lexicon of Yiddish Theatre, or 1903 according to census documents. In addition to Yiddish music, he also recorded a number of Romanian language songs for those labels.

Paskal left the United States for Montreal during this time, and joined a troupe headed by Jacob Silbert; by 1913 he returned to the United States and joined Louis Coopersmith's Cleveland Royal Theatre, acting in such plays as Bar Kokhba and Shulamis. Another advertisement in the Morgen Zhurnal two years later described "an entirely new English novelty act".

Seeking a change of career, he eventually trained as a cantor and performed less and less in the theater the early 1920s. Some notable appearances he did make were in a 1921 Yiddish-language production of La Juive at the Lexington Theatre, and the titular role in Bar Kokhba in a 1922 production. He began to record more Hebrew liturgical music for Victor Records and OKeh Records during the early 1920s, although he continued to record Yiddish songs as well.