SIMKHE GORDON

SIMKHE GORDON (b. November 10, 1910)

            He was born in Lomzhe (Łomża), Poland, the son of the head of the Lomzhe yeshiva, R. Yekhiel-Mortkhe, author of the Hebrew religious text, Netivim (Pathways).  He studied in the yeshivas of Lomzhe, Mir, and Grodno.  At age seventeen he received rabbinical ordination.  From 1929 he was living in the United States, where he came to study on a stipend at Yeshiva College.  He also studied on a scholarship at Harvard University, and there he specialized in history and Jewish learning.  He held rabbinical positions in Boston, Newark (New Jersey), and most recently in the Greenwich Village Synagogue in New York City.  He wrote poetry, essays, and historical treatises.  He also contributed to: Idishe velt (Jewish world) in Boston in 1932-1935; Keneder odler (Canadian eagle) in 1932; Tsukunft (Future) in 1948; and Morgn zhurnal (Morning journal) from 1948 until the journal closed shop.  In the anthology Koydenov (1955), he published a fragment of his work on Tsvi-Hirsh Koydenover (Tzvi Hirsch Kaidanover) and his text Kav hayashar (The just measure).