Uri Zohar, avant garde Israeli director turned rabbi, dies

Uri Zohar, an avant-garde Israeli satirist, and filmmaker who left the secular arts when he embraced ultra-Orthodox Judaism and became a rabbi, died on Thursday aged 86, the Culture Ministry said. Born in Tel Aviv, Zohar was a bawdy icon of the Israeli bohemian scene of the 1960s and 1970s. He wrote, directed, and starred in cult films such as "Metzizim" ("Peeping Toms") and "Big Eyes" and was a regular on the TV sketch show "Lool" ("Coop").

He grew religious in middle age, appearing on screen in a skullcap until finally withdrawing from popular culture for an ascetic life of biblical scholarship in Jerusalem. Asked how he regarded his former career, Zohar told an interviewer: "I respect it, the way a mature adult remembers his childhood. But there's no escaping the fact that I was a child."

In a statement, the ministry mourned Zohar as "among Israel's greatest artists and a cornerstone of Israeli culture".

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