Literatureאברהם יערי

Abraham Yaari

Abraham Yaari was a bibliographer and historian who studied the Hebrew book, the history of the Jewish community in the Land of Israel and the history of Eastern Jews.

1899 to 1966Bibliography of the Hebrew bookBibliography of Passover HaggadotRescuing Jewish books after the Holocaust

Born: 5 August 1899, Tarnobrzeg
Died: 13 October 1966
Occupation: translator, bibliographer, historian, librarian

Abraham Yaari was born in 1899 in Tarnobrzeg

Abraham Yaari was born Abraham Wald in 1899 in Dzików, Galicia, to Pesia and Chaim Yosef. He studied in a heder and in yeshivas and also received a general education. His younger brother was the writer Yehuda Yaari.

He moved to the Land of Israel in 1920 and changed his surname to Yaari, the Hebrew form of Wald. He trained at the Hebrew teachers' seminary in Jerusalem and taught in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. He then joined the National and University Library and studied librarianship and bibliography at University College London.

He worked at the library until he retired and was an editor of the quarterly Kiryat Sefer. His research exposed printing forgeries and described unknown books, including the first commercial catalog of Hebrew books from the press of Menasseh ben Israel. In 1946 he went to Europe with Gershom Scholem to help save Jewish books seized by the Nazis.

He married Hava Salant in 1929, and they had 2 children, Gur and Tzila. Gur was killed near Tulkarm on 3 November 1948. Yaari also presented radio lecture series on Kol Israel, fell ill in 1965 and died in 1966.