Yair Qedar

Yair Qedar was born in 1969 in Afula

Yair Qedar was born on June 13, 1969, in Afula, where he grew up. He earned bachelor's and master's degrees in Hebrew literature at Tel Aviv University.

Qedar worked as a journalist and editor, writing for Schocken, Haaretz and Davar. From 2000 to 2005 he was editor and deputy editor of the travel magazine Masa Acher. He won the B'nai B'rith prize for world Jewish press and a European Union award for reporting in the Mediterranean.

He has been an LGBTQ activist for many years. He founded the culture magazine Tat Tarbut in 1995 and the newspaper Hazman Havarod, and helped found gay and lesbian studies in Israel. In 2021 he initiated, with Itai Pinkas Arad, the Israeli LGBTQ heritage center.

In 2005 he launched the Hebrews, a project of documentaries about figures of Hebrew culture, which has won 40 prizes. His films include Gay Days in 2009 and works on Leah Goldberg, Yona Wallach, Bialik, Brenner and Zelda. In 2026 he founded Aleph, an international festival for the Hebrew language.

His son Michael Ron Qedar was born in 2003. In 2017 he married Gidi Yona in Denmark. He divides his life between Berlin and Tel Aviv.