Offered here is a manuscript sermon titled A Religion of Convenience, that was given in Havana, Cuba in 1957. 11 handwritten pages [not signed by Solomon].  8 x 10 in. He also gave this sermon in Far Rockawy, New York in 1963.  Dr. Frederick K. “Fritz” Solomon (originally Solomonski) was born in Berlin, Germany in 1899. In 1938, when the synagogue he was serving at was torched by Nazis and he was subsequently summoned by the Gestapo, he fled Germany with his wife, Margot, and emigrated to England.

While still in Europe, Solomon had studied art under the German-Jewish artists Max Liebermann, Martin Brandenburg and Eugene Spiro, and German expressionist Willy Jaeckel. In England, he continued his artistic career, exhibiting his religious and expressionistic work at various galleries throughout the country, including the Royal Academy and the Kensington Art Gallery in London, where he had a one-man show. His work is in the permanent collections of the Courtauld Institute, the Bazalel Museum in Jerusalem, and the Ben Uri Art Gallery St. John’s Wood, London (now incorporating the London Jewish Museum of Art). He was the curator of this latter gallery from 1943 to 1946.

In 1954, Solomon left England to take up a position as rabbi for Temple Beth Ha Shalom in Williamsport, PA. After three years in Pennsylvania, he sought another position and, as a member of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, was appointed rabbi at Temple Beth Israel in the Vedado suburb of Havana, where he wrote sermons and hosted religious services for his congregation, a part of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations. Solomon was also active in the Jewish Progressive movement, frequently communicating with representatives of The World Union for Progressive Judaism throughout the 1950s in an attempt to officially associate his congregation with the organization.

Dr. Solomon left Havana in 1960 and relocated to Laconia, N.H., where he served as rabbi at Temple B’nai Israel until 1963. He and his wife then moved to Rochester, N.H. in 1963, where he opened the New English Art Gallery and Studio. In his later years, Solomon served as the chair of the Department of Fine Arts at Nathaniel Hawthorne College in Antrim, New Hampshire. He died in in 1980.