Simon Gelberg

Born in London’s East End, Simon Gelberg (Gilbert) studied at Stepney Jewish School and eventually obtained a bachelor’s degree in Semitics from University College London. In 1897, Gelberg began reporting for the Jewish Chronicle, the leading organ of British Jewish debate and opinion, where he would eventually become a senior editor (under the name Simon Gilbert). Beginning his career during a mass influx of East European Jewish immigrants into Britain and particularly London, Gelberg became an insightful analyst of that immigrant community’s life at a time when many in Britain, and even within established British Jewry, viewed the influx with mixed feelings. Gelberg became a defender of the immigrant community amid growing suspicion of immigrants’ moral character and “alienness.” When that anti-immigrant and anti-Jewish sentiment led to the 1904 Aliens Act, which essentially ended mass Jewish immigration to Britain, Gelberg threatened to resign if the chief editor of the Jewish Chronicle refused to challenge the Aliens Act in print.