Moshe Yegar

Moshe Yegar was born in 1930 in Buenos Aires

Moshe Yegar was born in Buenos Aires in 1930 to Jacob and Chava Yegar. His father, an educator, helped found the first Hebrew school in Buenos Aires, named after Bialik. The family moved to Mandatory Palestine in 1935 and later settled in Haifa, where he attended the Hebrew Reali School.

He was active in the Haganah from 1946 to 1948 and served as an IDF officer from 1949 to 1955. He studied Islamic history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and earned a doctorate on the history of Muslim peoples in Southeast Asia.

He joined the Foreign Ministry in 1956 and served in Romania, Burma, Malaysia and the United States. He was consul general in New York, ambassador to Sweden and ambassador to the Czech Republic. In Jerusalem he held senior posts, including deputy director general for Asia, Africa and Oceania, and he helped establish full relations between India and Israel.

After retiring in 1995, he taught the history of Southeast Asia at the Hebrew University for 9 years. He chaired Beit Agnon, the Jerusalem Baroque Orchestra and the Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature. He was married to historian Dvorah Barzilay-Yegar, had a son and a daughter, and died in 2025.