Rabbi Avraham Yoffen was born in 1886 (or 1887), the son of Asher Tzvi Yoffen. He studied at the yeshivot of Slutsk and Kobrin and under Rabbi Zalman Sender Kahana Shapiro. As a young student, then known as Avraham Pinsker, he stood out for his noble manners, his love of scholars and his extraordinary way of learning. In 1907, at twenty, he came to Novardok and drew close to its founder, Rabbi Yosef Yozel Horowitz, the Alter of Novardok, whose daughter he married in 1913. In 1914 his father-in-law sent him to found a yeshiva in Baranovich following the Novardok Mussar path.

When the Alter died on 17 Kislev 5680 (1919), he succeeded him at the head of the Beit Yosef network of yeshivot, which numbered dozens of institutions. Despite the Bolshevik ban he kept teaching Torah underground and was arrested in 1921 with some of his students. On the Chafetz Chaim's advice the yeshiva moved to Białystok in Poland, while the other Novardok yeshivot relocated to Mezritch, Warsaw and Pinsk.

At the start of the Second World War he reached the United States and reopened the Beit Yosef yeshiva in Borough Park. In 1962 he moved to Jerusalem, where he founded a kollel. He wrote works of Mussar and Talmud. He passed away in Jerusalem on 14 Nisan 5730 (1970) and rests on Har HaMenuchot.