Yona Sabar (; born 1938 in Zakho, Iraq) is a Kurdistani Jewish scholar, linguist and researcher. He is professor emeritus of Hebrew at the University of California, Los Angeles. A native speaker of Northeastern Neo-Aramaic, Sabar has published more than 90 research articles about Jewish Neo-Aramaic and the folklore of the Jews of Kurdistan.
Early life
Sabar was born in the town of Zakho in northern Iraq in 1938 as Yona Sabagha. He was the last known Jewish boy bar mitzvahed in Zakho. Due to the Arab-Israeli conflict of the 1950s, his family moved to Israel in 1951, when Sabar was 13 as a part of Operations Ezra and Nehemia.
Sabar initially struggled to adapt to Israel as a lower-class immigrant who spoke Aramaic. He worked in the National trade union Histadrut. After living in Israel, the family changed their surname to "Sabar" from the word for sabra, meaning prickly pear.
Career Sabar received a B.A. in Hebrew and Arabic from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1963 and a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Literatures from Yale University in 1970. In 1972, he was hired as a professor of Hebrew and Aramaic at UCLA.
Sabar has written multiple articles for the Jewish Journal on the etymology of Hebrew words, such as the roots of "Mount Sinai".
Sabar served as the Aramaic dialect coach for the 2013 6x05 episode of True Blood "Fuck the Pain Away."
My Father's Paradise His immigrant journey from the hills of Kurdistan to the highways of Los Angeles is the subject of an award-winning memoir entitled My Father's Paradise: A Son's Search for his Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq by his son, Ariel Sabar, an American author and journalist. Ariel Sabar's book on his father's life won the 2008 National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography.
Works The Folk Literature of the Kurdistani Jews: An Anthology, Yale University Press, 232 pp., 1982.
References
External links Yona Sabar's UCLA website My Father's Paradise by Ariel Sabar Hollywood Calling by Ariel Sabar Prof. Sabar on the claim that Barzani is Jewish by JTA