Zivion

Benzion Hoffman (; 1 May 1874 – 14 October 1954), best known by the pen name Zivion (, Tsivyen), was a Yiddish writer, journalist, and political activist.

Biography Leadership of the Jewish Socialist Federation in 1917. Seated (L-R): Ben-Tsien Hofman (Tsivion), Max Goldfarb, Morris Winchevsky, A. Litvak, Hannah Salutsky, Moishe Terman. Standing: Shauchno Epstein, Frank Rozenblat, Baruch Charney Vladeck, Moissaye Olgin, Jacob Salutsky (J.B.S. Hardman). Hoffman was born in the village of Krug, near Boysk, in the Courland Governorate. He studied at various yeshivas in the region, meanwhile becoming acquainted with Maskilic literature, before moving to Vilna at the age of sixteen. There, he was ordained as a rabbi by av beis din Rabbi Shlomo ha-Kohen. He later studied at the Universities of Karlsruhe, Heidelberg, Berlin, and Bern, and obtained a doctorate in engineering.

Hoffman published under the pseudonyms Zivion (, a near-anagram of ), Tz. , Ish Tikva (, 'Man of Hope'), Afna, and Rozman. His first articles appeared in Hebrew in Ha-Melitz in 1895; he would go on to contribute to , Forverts, Di tsukunft, Der yidisher arbeyter, Folkstsaytung, and Fraynd, among other periodicals. The following year, he co-founded a socialist Zionist circle in Riga and joined the Bundist movement. He attended the Fifth Zionist Congress in 1901 as a correspondent for Forverts, and later took part in the 5th Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party.

He emigrated to New York in 1908, where he became a central figure in American Jewish journalism. In the years that followed, Hoffman edited and contributed to the Hebrew daily Ha-Yom, the Yiddish periodicals Der fraynd, Di naye post, Di tsukunft, Der tog, Di naye velt, and Gerekhtikeyt, and the Yiddish section of the English-Yiddish Encyclopedic Dictionary.

He died at his home in New York City on 14 October 1954.

Selected bibliography