Charles Hoffman; Israeli Journalist, Advocate for East European Jews

Charles Hoffman, 54, American-born Israeli journalist who reported on the Jews of Eastern Europe. Hoffman was born in Texas in 1946 and was educated at Brandeis University and the New School for Social Research in New York. He spent his junior year in Israel, where he lived through the drama and aftermath of the Six-Day War in 1967. He subsequently decided to make Jerusalem his home and earned a master’s degree in sociology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. From 1980 to 1990 he worked for the Jerusalem Post, where he pioneered critical coverage of major Jewish organizations--most notably the Jewish Agency, the massive body jointly operated by Israeli political parties and diaspora Jews--and spurred reforms. During the late 1980s he was editor of the paper’s Jewish World page, focusing on Israel-Diaspora relations and immigration issues. He developed a deep interest in Jewish communities in the former Soviet Union and Soviet bloc countries, traveling through Eastern Europe during the momentous days of 1989 and 1990, when the Communist regimes were tumbling. He wrote three books, including “Gray Dawn,” published in 1992, which reported on the fate of the Jews of Eastern Europe. During his research he was impressed with the work of the Joint Distribution Committee, a group that supported needy Jews behind the Iron Curtain. He eventually gave up journalism to work for the committee and was supervising its programs in central Russia and other former Soviet republics when he died. On Sunday in Jerusalem after a seven-month battle with cancer.