Shimon was born in 1900 in Sanok, Galicia, Poland, to Hannah and Yaakov, who was a tavernkeeper. Shimon lost his mother at a young age, and his father married her sister. In his youth, he studied in Yeshivat Lublin. He was part of Mizrahi HaTza’ir, and apparently this is what allowed him to get a certificate for aliyah as an expert upholsterer (even though he knew nothing of upholstery). He arrived in 1933, and he started work in construction.

In 1919, he had married Sarah Harris of Stanislawów, where they lived until making aliyah. Their first son Moshe, was born in 1929 (he would be an IZL member and be detained in Latrun). Their second son, Tzvi, was born in 1931 (he was a Lehi member). Their youngest son, Yaakov, was born in 1938.

In the late 1930s, Shimon was the secretary of the Ramat Yitzhak local council (suburb of Ramat Gan). He was de facto in charge of water, guard duty, the library, etc. When Ramat Gan absorbed the neighborhood, he became a clerk in the Ramat Gan Municipality, until he retired in the early 1970s.

Shimon was a passionate and nationalist Jew, who loved his people and his land. His fondest wish was to expel the foreign occupiers and establish a Jewish State in the Land of Israel. In the 1940s, he joined Lehi and did everything he could to help. His home became a meeting-place for the underground, as well as a safehouse for fugitives and a warehouse for contraband.

He did not have a formal education, but he was an autodidact who was fluent in Polish, Yiddish, German and of course, Hebrew.

In the early 1940s, he began publishing literary articles in the daily newspapers and in the monthly BaMishor. After the Bernadotte assassination, Shimon was arrested together with many other Lehi members, spending five months in Jaffa, Acre and Jalameh.

Once the State was established, he managed the Yeda Am project, which gathered popular folklore. In his last years, he spent a lot of time on Hebrew aphorisms.

Shimon passed away on 27 Tammuz 5733, 27.7.1973. He was buried in Kiryat Shaul Cemetery in Tel Aviv.

His estate contained thousands of aphorisms which he had been working on, most of which related to animals. He had wanted to publish them, but he did not have the chance. He did manage to publish a number of volumes of Leshonenu LeAm, which contained aphorisms from the writings of major Jewish writers of the past century such as S.Y. Agnon, Mendele Mocher Sforim, Ahad HaAm and others.