It is with great sadness that we report the passing of Rav Uri Zohar zt”l, the legendary leader of the teshuvah movement.
Rav Zohar was born on November 4, 1935 in Tel Aviv. In 1952, he graduated high school and did his military service in an army entertainment troupe. His first marriage ended in divorce.
By 1956, he was a popular stand-up comedian. In 1960, he studied philosophy at the Hebrew University of Yerushalayim.
In the 1960s, he directed and starred in Israeli films. In the late 1970s, the Jewish world was changed forever when Rav Zohar turned to Yiddishkeit. In 1977, he began wearing a yarmulka on the television game show he was hosting.
Rav Zohar was the leading star of the Israeli television and movie world until that fateful day almost 40 years ago when he discovered what was missing from his fame and fortune – Hashem.
Rav Zohar subsequently became one of the country’s most renowned baalei teshuvah and has since served as an icon for the P’eylim / Lev L’Achim organization.
The Zohars moved from a mansion in Yaffo to a tiny apartment in Yerushalayim.
In recent years, Rav Uri lived a quiet life, learning Torah and helping lost souls find their way back to Hashem.
Rechov Zichron Yaakov above the Mattersdorf neighborhood of Yerushalayim has the same crowded buildings, the same peeling posters, and the same dark-garbed people of most frum streets in the city. Who would believe that the home of Rav Uri Zohar, remembered as one of the most talented and intelligent comedians, television and radio talk-show hosts, social satirists, actors, and film producers ever to appear on the Israeli scene, was located there?
In the spirit of egalitarianism, Rav Zohar once turned down the Israeli Prize, Israel’s greatest civilian honor, for his gifted work as a film director. Although he has admittedly undergone a slight change of heart since then, as late as 2005 a poll of secular Israelis still voted him one of the greatest Israelis of all time.
During the 1970s, Israeli high society roiled in shock when he and other avant garde artists and musicians shed their bohemian feathers for a black-hat lifestyle and sparked Israel’s baal teshuvah movement. Rav Zohar embodies one of the greatest triumphs of Torah over Israel’s secular society.
Entering the apartment of Rav Zohar, the first thing that struck a person was its miniscule size. There was no room to swing the proverbial cat in this place. For a moment, one would think he’s in some sort of entrance hall, until one noticed the multi-functionality of the place. With a sink gurgling in one corner, Rebbetzin Zohar busy over a stove in a second corner, a fridge humming away in a third, and Rav Zohar seated at a table in a fourth, one understood that Rav Zohar felt it unnecessary to waste resources on living space. The man who helped so many Jews return to their roots in the past few decades cared little for his own needs.
But his impact is inestimable.
His legacy will live on for all time.
Yehi zichro boruch.
{Matzav.com}