Ernst Akiva Simon (Hebrew: עקיבא ארְנְסְט סימון; March 15, 1900 in Berlin – August 18, 1988 in Jerusalem) was a German-Jewish educator and religious philosopher.
Ernst Avika Simon was born in Eisenstadt, Austria. His father Ludwig was a shoe factory worker. In 1938, at the age of eight, he witnessed Jewish prayer books and Torah scrolls being burned by the Nazis in what was later known as Kristalnacht. His parents secured him a place on the Kindertransport. He was reunited in the UK with his parents and brother, Kurt, a month later. Simon later attended Leeds University, where he was awarded a degree in economics and commerce.[1]
In the 1920s, Ernst Simon co-founded Brit Shalom along with Martin Buber, an organization espousing a binational solution for promoting the co-existence of Jews and Arabs in the State of Israel. From 1930 to 1933 he taught at the Hebrew Reali School Haifa, headed by Arthur Biram. In 1942, he was one of the founders of the binationalist Ihud party.
In 1967, Simon was awarded the Israel Prize, for education.[2]
