Moshe Bar-Asher

Moshe Bar-Asher was born in 1939 in Errachidia

Moshe Ben Harush, later Bar-Asher, was born on June 29, 1939, in Ksar es Souk, now Errachidia, in southeastern Morocco. His parents were Rabbi Avraham and Sarah Ben Harush. His father was a scribe and a tradition bearer of the Sharh, the Maghrebi translation of the Bible.

He came to Israel with Youth Aliyah on December 25, 1951, after a training period at a Gordonia camp in France. He studied at Yeshivat HaDarom in Rehovot, finishing high school and a teachers college there. His family arrived in Israel in November 1955.

From the summer of 1958 he did a combined service of teaching in frontier towns and in the Armored Corps. He helped found the religious high school in Ashkelon. He married Nechama Barbitz in December 1962, and they have 4 children.

He earned his PhD from the Hebrew University in 1976 and taught there for many years. He chaired its Department of the Hebrew Language from 1981 to 1983 and its Institute for Jewish Studies from 1983 to 1986. His research covers Rabbinic Hebrew, Palestinian Syriac and Jewish languages.

He became vice president of the Academy of the Hebrew Language in 1987 and its president in 1993, serving until 2022. He also headed the World Hebrew Union from 2005 to 2015. He is a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities.