Yehoshua Blau

Yehoshua Blau was born in 1919 in Cluj-Napoca

Blau was born in Cluj in Transylvania in 1919, to a religious family. His father, Pinchas Paul Blau, was a merchant and journalist. The family later lived in Austria, and he began studying Arabic at the University of Vienna.

In 1938 the family left Austria and moved to the Land of Israel, settling in Tel Aviv. He studied at the Hebrew University and earned a master's degree in Arabic, Bible and Hebrew in 1942. He then taught at high schools until 1955.

During the 1948 Arab-Israeli War he served in an IDF intelligence unit that broke codes. The war interrupted his doctoral studies, and he received his PhD from the Hebrew University in 1950.

From 1957 he taught in the Arabic department of the Hebrew University and became a full professor in 1966. He joined the Academy of the Hebrew Language in 1959 and was its president from 1981 to 1993. He received the Israel Prize in 1985 and wrote on Arabic, Hebrew and Semitic languages.

After retiring he remained a professor emeritus. He died at his home in Jerusalem in 2020.