Scienceזהר עמר

Zohar Amar

Zohar Amar is an Israeli professor at Bar-Ilan University who studies the plants and animals of the Land of Israel in Jewish sources, the history of medicine and ancient dyes.

born 1960Identifying biblical plants and animalsKermes oak as biblical scarlet dyeRestoring the balsam plant to IsraelHistory of medicine research

Occupation: botanist

Zohar Amar was born in 1960 in Israel

Zohar Amar was born in Israel in 1960. He studied at the Bnei Akiva yeshiva in Netanya and at Yeshivat Mercaz HaRav in Jerusalem. He is married and has 6 children.

He served in the IDF combat engineering corps and is a major in the reserves. Afterward he worked as a tour guide and with the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel. From 1985 to 1990 he directed the Ecological Botanical Garden at Abu Kabir, on the old Tel Aviv University campus.

He earned his bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees at Bar-Ilan University. His doctorate dealt with crops of the Land of Israel in the Middle Ages, under Yehuda Feliks and Yosef Drory. He became a full professor there and headed the Department of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology.

His research joins natural science, history, archaeology and Jewish studies. He proposed identifying the biblical scarlet dye with the kermes oak insect and produced dye from it, and he started the return of the balsam plant to Israel. He also reconstructed the purple dye and studied medieval paper from the Cairo Genizah.

He won the Rav Kook Prize for Torah literature. He is a member of the Government Names Committee and of the editorial board of the journal HaMaayan.