Zacharia Ofri

Zacharia Ofri was born in 1932 in Israel

Ofri was born in Tel Aviv on 7 August 1932 to a family of Yemenite origin. He began in sports at age 7 in the gymnastics section of Maccabi HaTzafon Tel Aviv. He took up basketball at 13.

At 16 he first played for the senior team of Maccabi Tel Aviv, and he stayed with the club for his whole career. He played center and served as team captain. He also captained the national team at the 1952 Summer Olympics, the 1953 European championship in Moscow and the 1954 world championship in Rio de Janeiro.

He played 21 games for the national team and scored 155 points. The team could not play at the 1956 Olympics because of the Sinai War, in which Ofri served in the Tank Corps. In 1957 the team made an exhibition tour of the United States.

Ofri received a scholarship to play for NYU and earned a degree in education there. He lived in Yonkers, New York, and taught mathematics at Lincoln High School. His daughter is the physician and writer Danielle Ofri.

He returned to Israel in 1983. In 2013 he entered the Israeli Basketball Hall of Fame. He died on 9 March 2018.