Uri Zohar (Hebrew: אורי זוהר‎, b. November 4 1935) is a former Israeli film director, actor, and comedian who left the entertainment world to become a rabbi.

Biography

Uri Zohar was born in Tel Aviv in November 4 1935. 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 Jerusalem. He was sentenced to three months of community service on charges of marijuana possession. In the 1960s, he directed and starred in Israeli films, among them Hole in the Moon, Three Days and a Child, Every Bastard a King, Big Eyes and Metzitzim. He was the first filmmaker to win the Israel Prize, which he declined.



In the late 1970s, Zohar turned to religion, becoming a Haredi Orthodox Jew and a rabbi. In 1977, he began wearing a kippa on the television game show he was hosting. He is active in the movement to attract secular Jews to religious orthodoxy, and uses his entertainment skills to promote this objective. In the 1992 Israeli elections, Zohar directed the television broadcasts for Shas.

In 2005, he was voted the 48th-greatest Israeli of all time, in a poll by the Israeli news website Ynet to determine whom the general public considered the 200 Greatest Israelis.