Comeback Mission    

On the line was Uri Zohar himself.

“I thought about it again, and I’m asking you not to publish the interview,” he requested. “I really try to avoid media,” he said, “and I’m sorry for the inconvenience, but I’d appreciate if you could honor my request.”

We shelved the interview (knowing from experience that we were taking a risk), missing a “scoop” perhaps, but happy that we were helping this giant of a man keep to his resolution and continue living in the shadows. Little did we know that just a few weeks later, it would become his eulogy.

Former actor and director Uri Zohar, icon of the secular Israeli entertainment industry in the 1960s and early ’70s until he turned his back on it all to study Torah, passed away last week at age 86, after four decades of creating his own Har Sinai.

Half of Rabbi Uri Zohar’s life was spent as Israel’s most famous cultural icon, and then he spent the second half of his life trying to escape that same public adulation. At a certain point, after he became a baal teshuvah, he even tried to purchase the broadcast rights for all the movies he had acted in. But he wasn’t able to do it, and to this day, he’s remained a sort of cult figure in the Israeli entertainment world.