In Manchester he became a core part of a group of young anglicised Jewish intellectuals that congregated around Chaim Weizmann.[4] The group included the journalist Harry Sacher, Samuel Landman, Israel Sieff and Simon MarksofMarks & Spencer. All of them had studied at Manchester Grammar School.[4]
The group were members of the Manchester Zionist Association, where Simon and his brother Maurice Simon would hold discussions in Hebrew.[5]Charles Dreyfus, Weizmann's employer in Manchester, was the President of the Society.[6]
Simon edited the newspaper "The Zionist Banner" with Sacher and the monthly journal "Palestine".[7]
In 1904 Simon joined the General Post Office and rose to become Director of Telegraphs and Telephones and later Director of Savings.[8] He was made CB in 1931[9] and was knighted in 1944.[10] He married Ellen Umanski, (later called by the name Lady Ellen Simon), and they had two daughters.[11][12]
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.[4]
Simon came under the influence of Ahad Ha'am (Asher Zvi Hirsch Ginsberg), a leading figure of cultural Zionism, and went on to translate many of his works into English[13] as well as writing his biography.[14]
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.[16]
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)."[16]
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.[19]
^Halpern, Ben (1987). A clash of heroes--Brandeis, Weizmann, and American Zionism ([Online-Ausg.]. ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. p. 320. ISBN978-0195040623.
