Former actor and director Uri Johar, who turned his back on the world of entertainment to become an ultra-Orthodox rabbi, died on Thursday. He was 86 years old.
Tel Aviv-born Zohar was known for his outlandish personality and wavy, shoulder-length hair, and most of all for his 1960s bourekas films, heavily slapstick films that almost any Israeli and particularly Since then, used to ridicule the treatment of new immigrants. to Israel.
He directed and starred in “Hole in the Moon,” “Three Days and a Child,” “Every Bastard is a King,” “Big Eyes” and “Peeping Toms” (“Metzitzim”).
Zohar was lauded for her masculinity and exploration of masculinity, relationships and the influence of the military in her films.
“Three Days and a Child”, based on the novel of the same name by Abby Yehoshua, became a classic of Israeli cinema by winning at the Cannes Film Festival. Several of Zohar’s films, including “Peeping Toms” and “Big Eyes”, were made with her close friend, singer Eric Einstein.
However, the Zohar disappeared from Israel’s pop culture scene in the late 1970s and became an ultra-Orthodox rabbi in Jerusalem, a shocking move at the time.
He was active in the movement to bring secular Israelis back to religion and in the 1990s only acted in film to create political advertisements for the Shas political party.
“I tested myself a few years ago,” said Zohar, in “Zohar – The Return,” a 2018 documentary made by Dani Rosenberg and Yaniv Segalovich about the life of Zohar. “I said, maybe I’m making a fool of myself. Maybe I was too happy then.”
Rabbi Uri Zohar, known as one of Israel’s earliest film actors and directors, died on June 2, 2022 at the age of 86 (Courtesy CC0, via Wikimedia Commons)
Einstein wrote songs about how he felt for the Zohr’s disappearance, including a song dedicated to the Zohar, called “Hu chazar be’tshuva” (“He returned to religion”). Is.
The lives of the two men remained intertwined. Einstein’s ex-wife also became ultra-Orthodox, and two of Einstein’s daughters married Zohr’s sons, making the two friends the grandfathers of only one child.
When Einstein died in 2013, the Zohar praised him.
“You went around all of us,” said Zohar, “You are in a world of truth. I say goodbye to you, but we will not leave you. Privilege goes to you, whatever good you have done. God wanted you to be close to him. ,
Zohar was born in Tel Aviv, attending high school there before serving in the military entertainment troupe while serving in the military.
His first marriage to singer Ilana Rovina ended in divorce. He began wearing a yarmulke in the late 1970s hosting a television game show, and was awarded the Israel Prize for Cinema in 1976, which he declined.
