ẒIVION

ẒIVION (pseudonym of Benzion Hoffman; 1874–1954), Yiddish journalist and essayist. Born in a Latvian village, he joined the bund soon after its founding in 1897 and remained a faithful interpreter of its ideology. From 1895 he wrote Hebrew articles and in 1909, the year after his emigration to New York, he edited the U.S. Hebrew journal Ha-Yom. However, his main literary medium was Yiddish, in which he is said to have written about 6,000 articles, mostly in the New York Yiddish paper Jewish Daily Forward, and in the monthly, Zukunft. Although he received a doctorate in science and engineering, he preferred to write about rather than practice in these fields. A correspondent to many national and international conferences, he proved to be a skillful interpreter of complex political problems. His readers valued his independent judgment, his simple style, and his mild humor. He popularized scientific subjects in several books and participated in the English-Yiddish Encyclopedic Dictionary (1915). On the semicentennial of his literary activities, a volume of his, Far Fuftsik Yor ("Selected Works," 1948) appeared under the editorship of H.S. Kazdan. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Rejzen, Leksikon, 3 (1929), 246–51; H.S. Kazdan, Introduction to Ẓivion, Far Fuftsik Yor (1948). (Melech Ravitch)