BOAZ VOLFSON

BOAZ VOLFSON (b. June 1883)

            He was born in Homel (Gomel), Byelorussia, to a father who was a business employee, an observant Jew, and a scholar but with a touch of the Enlightenment.  Until age fourteen he studied in religious elementary school, later in a yeshiva, and later still as an external student he graduated from high school and went on to study law—initially in Moscow University and thereafter at St. Petersburg University, from which he graduated in 1908.  He practiced as a lawyer in Saratov, and for two years worked in the firm of Visotsky and Co.  In 1920 in Vilna, where he was a regular contributor to the daily Unzer tog (Our day), he wrote editorials and reportage pieces for the newspaper.  Politically, he was close to the Bund.  He compiled a collection of hundreds of Yiddish anecdotes and witty tales that he would recount in public evenings to great success.  In 1921 he left for Riga where he was active in the association ORT (Association for the Promotion of Skilled Trades).  A short time later, he moved to the United States.  He wrote several times for the Forverts (Forward) in New York, but then disappeared completely from the horizon.  His brother was the well-known mathematician and philosopher, Dr. Yisrael Wolfson, professor at Kharkov University, later lecturer at the senior Jewish course of study in Kovno.

Source: Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 1 (Vilna, 1928), cols. 902-3.