Yechiel Kara

Yechiel Kara was born in 1945 in Sanaa

Yechiel Kara was born in Sanaa, Yemen, on January 22, 1945, the eldest son of Meir and Ora. In 1949 the family immigrated to Israel and settled in the Katamonim neighborhood of Jerusalem. He finished the Re'em Lipschitz high school, then studied natural sciences at a teachers' seminary.

In 1963 he began compulsory service in the Armored Corps and later served as a career soldier, fighting in the Six-Day War. In reserve duty he served in the Gaza Strip area in 1968 to 1970. In 1973 he fought in the Yom Kippur War and was wounded in the ear by shelling in Sinai.

After his release he studied geography and Hebrew language at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He earned a master's degree in 1974 and completed a doctorate in 1983 on the Aramaic of Yemenite manuscripts of the Babylonian Talmud, supervised by Shlomo Morag.

In 1971 he began working at the Academy of the Hebrew Language, and he also taught at the Hebrew University and the University of Haifa. In 1992 he spent a half sabbatical in Copenhagen and Cambridge, where he studied the Cairo Geniza. He edited 24 books and published studies on Yemenite reading traditions.

He married Anelie, an immigrant from Romania, in Jerusalem in 1977, and they had 2 daughters. In 2018 a volume of studies was published in his honor on his retirement. He died on September 13, 2026.