Leonid Gofshtein was a Ukrainian born Israeli chess Grandmaster. He was born on April 21, 1953, in Zhytomyr, Ukrainian SSR and died on December 25, 2015. Gofshtein was the chess champion of Ukrainian SSR in 1978. He made notable achievements in team chess competitions. In 1998, Gofshtein took part in the 33rd Chess Olympiad in Elista and won two individual bronze medals. In 2000, he contributed to Israel's silver medal win at the 34th Chess Olympiad in Istanbul.
His notable games involve those played against Alexey Shirov and Artyom Timofeev. In 2005, a match dispute took place between Gofshtein and an Azerbaijani chess player, Teimour Radjabov, where the former accused the latter of refusing to shake hands before the start of the game citing religious reasons.
Leonid Gofshtein was active as a chess player up until the year of his death in 2015. His world ranking at that time was 889, and his highest ranking was the 261th place in the world in January 2004.