Uri Zohar

Uri Zohar was born in 1935 in Tel Aviv

Uri Zohar was born in Tel Aviv on November 4, 1935, to parents who had immigrated from Poland. He graduated high school in 1952. In 1960 he studied philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

After his army service in the Nahal entertainment troupe, he was a founding member of the Batzal Yarok troupe. He acted in films such as Pillar of Fire and Exodus. Later he hosted shows on Israeli television and made sketches with the Lool group.

His first feature, Hole in the Moon, came out in 1964 and is seen as the first film of the New Sensibility movement. Three Days and a Child was nominated at the 1967 Cannes Film Festival, and Every Bastard a King drew large audiences in 1968. He then made a Tel Aviv trilogy, ending with Save the Lifeguard in 1977.

In 1976 he was awarded the Israel Prize for cinema, which he declined. Under the influence of Yitzhak Shlomo Zilberman he became religious, left entertainment by 1978 and became a rabbi in Jerusalem. He worked to bring secular Jews to religious observance.

He married actress Elia Shuster, and they had 7 children. He died at his home in Jerusalem on June 2, 2022, and was buried at Har HaMenuchot.