| Uri Zohar | |
|---|---|
| Born | November 4, 1935 Tel Aviv, Israel |
Uri Zohar (Hebrew: אורי זוהר, b. November 4 1935) is a former Israeli film director, actor, and comedian who left the entertainment world to become a rabbi.[1]
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Zohar was born in Tel Aviv in 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.[2]
In the 1960s, he directed and starred in Israeli films, among them A Hole in the Moon, Three Days and a Child, Every Bastard a King, Big Eyes and Metzitzim. He was the first filmmaker to win the Israel Prize, which he declined.
In the late 1970s, 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.[3] He is active in the movement to attract secular Jews to religious orthodoxy, and uses his entertainment skills to promote this objective.[4] In the 1992 Israeli elections, Zohar directed the television broadcasts for Shas.[5]
In 2005, he was voted the 48th-greatest Israeli of all time, in a poll by the Israeli news website Ynet to determine whom the general public considered the 200 Greatest Israelis.[6]