The late Rabbi Uri Zohar. The first three personal memories, out of many.
• "You're not standing at the right angle, film me from here." That's what he would say over and over to me and the camera crew. I came to him so many times with a cameraman and a recorder, to the small house in Jerusalem, which barely had room for all of us. And he, with a twinkle in his eye, was a director even at the age of eighty-something. He would give us instructions. Action, cuts, and also sentences like: "Tell the people of Israel that they need to repent! And don't cut that out!".
• Inside his siddur was a dense, folded sheet of paper with names and dates. All the senior figures in the Israeli cultural industry who had passed away appeared there. They passed away one by one, and Uri – who was concerned that no one would say Kaddish for their souls – made sure to say Kaddish for them on the anniversary of their passing.
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And so Arik Einstein became Arie Leib ben Yaakov on the small page. Israel Polyakov was Israel ben Shlomo, Naomi Shemer was immortalized as Naomi bat Meir, Hanna Maron was Hanna bat Yitzchak, and his uncle Topaz was written as David ben Eliyahu. Not to mention Dan ben Amotz, he is Moshe Tehillim-Zoger ben Yisrael. I felt that only a director like him could direct a scene like this – an elderly rabbi saying Kaddish for all his good friends, all the bohemians of the past.
• He didn't always watch the articles I did about him, after they aired. He really didn't have time, he really didn't care. While I'm waiting to see how many views this text would get, the ratings Uri Zohar was looking for were different. He believed wholeheartedly that Torah, prayer, and mitzvot were the stage on which he was now appearing.
In one of his interviews, he once told me: "According to the Torah, the most significant action is in the internal system. You do things in prayer. You move worlds in prayer. You perform the most enormous and powerful action, not only in this world, in the entire universe. It's a different system.".
In memory of Rabbi Uri ben Asher Menachem Mendel Halevi, for whom Kaddish will be said this evening, at his funeral.
• From Sivan Rahav Meir's Facebook
