Elaine "Sissy" Goldberg Hoffman

Sissy, 73, died peacefully on Thursday, January 30, 2025, following a series of medical complications. 

She is predeceased by her loving parents Joseph Goldberg and Frances Hornstein Goldberg. 

She was born in Savannah on June 12, 1951, and was a proud graduate of Savannah High, Class of 1969, where she helped to produce the Blue Jacket yearbook before attending Stephens College in Missouri - a school she frequently told others she selected primarily because there was no math requirement. She later obtained a master's degree from the Teachers College at Columbia University where she studied the Montessori method.

Her formal study trained her for a lifelong career as a teacher, but her capacity to teach was ever present from her earliest years, a native talent that lived deep inside her - whether as a swim instructor at the JCC, tutor, or friend. Always at the vanguard of educational movements, she was an early educator in the Head Start program and started her career in San Francisco working to broaden educational access, beginning with children who fled the horrors of Vietnam and made their first home in the US in the Bay Area. This theme of “access for all” would continue throughout her long career in teaching and afterwards in her retirement. After graduating from Columbia, she taught in New York - both at exclusive private schools in Manhattan, where she guided the children of the rich and famous, and also in outer borough schools where children relied upon her for their only guaranteed meals. Her capacity to move between spaces like that - so freely able to navigate the most privileged and the most bereft - was unmatched. Her magnetism, generosity, and enthusiasm was a gift she bestowed freely and former students often told her family that she was the first to really see them.

It was in New York that she met Joe Hoffman, whom she would later marry. Their love affair lasted 48 years - from their early dates walking her dog Shaney in Central Park and during bizarre elevator rides with Salvador Dali, to her last moments when he sang to her. They married in Savannah in 1978 before settling in Atlanta where she gave birth to her two beloved daughters. In Atlanta, she was the Director of the Gateway School, a progressive preschool whose innovative teaching methods and focus on the whole child were groundbreaking for their time. When the family moved to Southern California in 1988, she began a new chapter of her educator’s journey, teaching for many years in the Torrance Unified School District, where she was a leader in curriculum development and English as a second language, frequently choosing to teach in schools with dozens of languages spoken. This yielded immense loyalty and gratitude from the many immigrant families who would bring her gifts of moon cakes, tamales, various breads, cards, scarves, and handwritten letters during the holidays, much to the delight of her family.

Her teaching was interrupted in 1995 when, at the height of her career, she was diagnosed with an aggressive lung cancer, mesothelioma, caused by asbestos, to which she was likely exposed in the many classrooms where she had worked. California’s best doctors said that her illness was untreatable, but together with the unflinching determination of friends and family, she made her way to Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, where Dr. David Sugarbaker, of blessed memory, saved her life through a dramatic surgery that removed an entire lung, and most of her diaphragm. She was the first woman in the United States to undergo the surgery and later became its longest-living survivor. For years following her surgery, she worked with Brigham and Women’s as a patient advocate and educator, raising money for research for women’s health, and speaking with countless families, often late at night, to help them through their perilous moments of illness.

 She and Joe returned to Savannah in 1998, where she credited her long, extraordinary recovery with daily medicinal walks on Tybee and fresh ocean air. The beach was always her home and she knew the tide and phase of the moon at all times. She gradually returned to the classroom and taught for many years in the Savannah Public Schools System where she worked with Special Ed students in mainstream and specialized classrooms alike, frequently helping students to graduate when so many others had given up on them. For many years, she organized massive food drives through Second Harvest, through which she gathered thousands of pounds of food and fed hundreds of families. No trip out of the house was ever complete without a stop to procure and deliver food, clothing, books, diapers, and school supplies. This drive for justice and betterment led her to be an active participant in democratic life, whether by writing hundreds of postcards to inform voters or to battling her way through crowds at the 2016 Women’s March in DC - a demonstration in which she participated with the help of a motorized scooter.

After her formal retirement, her teaching extended until her final days and was reignited in August 2021 following the fall of Kabul. As Afghan families began to arrive in Savannah that autumn, Sissy sprung into action, working tirelessly to feed, clothe, and diaper dozens of families in need. She was especially invested in ensuring that these newly-resettled Afghan children were enrolled in the right schools, with the right services, and drew upon her years with the school district to remove obstacles for these children, especially the girls whose education had been interrupted by Taliban rule. She was so close to this special community that they called her “Grandma” and she lovingly called them her “Af-grands”. They frequently opened their homes to her and “Joe Brother” and she moved freely in those spaces, helping the women to learn English, encouraging them to learn to drive, and finding scholarships and new opportunities for their children.

Throughout her life, she was deeply connected to her Judaism and the value of Tikkun Olam - repairing the world - and her justice-seeking work was informed by her sense of obligation to others, a tenet of her faith. A fourth generation Savannahian, her great grandfather Rabbi Charles Blumenthal was an early Rabbi of Bnai Brith Jacob synagogue and saw record growth in their religious school. The pandemic’s strictures in 2020 gave rise to a rebirth in her Judaism and she found a virtual home in Adas Israel of Washington, DC, where she remained a member for the rest of her life. Her travel to Israel reaffirmed this connection and also gave rise to later trips with Joe to Italy and Mexico.

Sissy was deeply connected to both of her daughters and engaged with all moments of their lives great and small - taking joy in big moments like the births of her grandchildren and the granting of degrees as well as the small - a bargain find or the delight of a fresh haircut. She spoke with her daughters daily with overlapping calls frequently interrupting each other. To call Sissy was also to be unwittingly placed on speaker phone and introduced to those around her whether friends, Afghans, or store clerks. She made every birthday and holiday special, sending countless cards, packages, cakes, and cookies. Following her surgery in 1996 especially, she was an aggressive seeker of joy and celebration and took delight in marking all occasions with fanfare, specialty napkins, and candles.

She is survived by her loving husband, Joe Hoffman, two deeply devoted daughters, Jenna Hoffman Ben-Yehuda (and her husband Gadi) of Chevy Chase, MD, and Dory Elsa Hoffman of Silver Spring, MD. She cherished the blessings of three grandchildren with whom she enjoyed a deep and abiding closeness, Lila Sivan Ben-Yehuda, Samuel Charles Ben-Yehuda, and Ada Eliza Ben-Yehuda, of Chevy Chase, MD.

 The family wishes to thank the devoted team of physicians and nurses who cared for her. Donations may be directed to Second Harvest of Coastal Georgia.

The funeral service will be held at 11 AM Sunday, February 2, at the graveside, Bonaventure Cemetery, conducted by Rabbis Avi Nitekman and Josh Brown.