Uri Zohar


Uri Zohar is a former Israeli film director, actor, and comedian who left the entertainment world to become a rabbi.

Biography

Uri Zohar was born in Tel Aviv on November 4, 1935. In 1952, he graduated high school and did his military service in an army entertainment troupe. His first marriage ended in divorce.
By 1956, he was a popular stand-up comedian. In 1960, he studied philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He was sentenced to three months of community service on charges of marijuana possession. In the 1960s, he directed and starred in Israeli films, among them Hole in the Moon, Three Days and a Child, Every Bastard a King, Big Eyes and Metzitzim. In 1976 he was awarded the Israel Prize for cinema, which he declined.

In the late 1970s, through the influence of Yitzhak Shlomo Zilberman, Zohar turned to religion, becoming a Haredi Orthodox Jew and a rabbi. In 1977, he began wearing a kippa on the television game show he was hosting. He is active in the movement to attract secular Jews to religious orthodoxy, and uses his entertainment skills to promote this objective. In the 1992 Israeli elections, Zohar directed the television broadcasts for Shas.

Awards and recognition

In 2012, Cinémathèque Française in Paris held a retrospective of Zohar's work. The event included lectures and screenings of all his major films. Zohar was described as one of Israel's most interesting film directors due to his exploration of manhood and machismo, male-female relationships and the impact of the military.

Books