SINGER, SIMEON

SINGER, SIMEON (1848–1906), English rabbi. After serving as headmaster of Jews' College School, he was appointed minister of the Borough New Synagogue in London and from 1879 until his death of the fashionable New East End Synagogue. He edited and translated into English the Authorised Daily Prayer Book, first published in 1890 and known since as "Singer's Prayer Book," of which 522,000 copies in 27 editions had been distributed by 1970. Although minister of an Orthodox congregation, he was progressive in his religious views. He was not a Zionist but it was nevertheless in his home that Herzl first explained to Anglo-Jewry his idea for a Jewish state. He helped Sir samuel montagu (later Lord Swaythling) to draw up in 1892 a petition to the sultan in the name of the Ḥovevei Zion for the cession of lands in Transjordan for Jewish settlement. His literary remains, including some historical studies, were published in three volumes by his son-in-law israel abrahams (1908). -BIBLIOGRAPHY: I. Abrahams (ed.), Literary Remains of the Rev. Simeon Singer, 1 (1908), v–xliii; JC (Aug. 24, 31, Sept. 7, 1906); R. Patai (ed.), The Complete Diaries of Theodor Herzl (1960), index. (Vivian David Lipman)