Hofstein protested the banning of Hebrew and the persecution of Hebrew writers, arousing the suspicion of the authorities. He therefore emigrated first to Germany and then to Palestine in 1923. In Palestine he wrote both in Hebrew and Yiddish and published in Yiddish the dramatic poem "Sha'ul–Der Letster Meylekh fun Yisroel" ("Saul–The Last King of Israel", 1924) and an expressionistic drama "Meshiekhs Tsaytn" ("Messianic Times", 1925). He returned to Kiev in 1926 only to find himself compelled to write poems adulatory of the Communist Party. In 1939, Hofstein became member of the Communist Party. Hofstein hailed the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948; however, in the same year, when Joseph Stalin withdrew his support for Israel, Hofstein was arrested, together with Kvitko, Markish and other members of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, first transported to Moscow and then to Siberia. He was executed on the Night of the Murdered Poets (August 12–13, 1952), together with twelve other Yiddish writers and artists. After the death of Stalin, they were rehabilitated, and Hofstein's selected works reappeared in a Russian translation in 1958.