Yona Sabar Explained

Yona Sabar (Hebrew: יוֹנָה צַבָּר; 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. He is a native speaker of Northeastern Neo-Aramaic and has published more than 90 research articles about Jewish Neo-Aramaic and the folklore of the Jews of Kurdistan.

Sabar was born in the town of Zakho in northern Iraq. His family moved to Israel in 1951. He 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.

His immigrant journey from the hills of Kurdistan to the highways of Los Angeles is the subject of an award-winning memoir by his son, Ariel Sabar, an American author and journalist.^[1] Ariel Sabar's book My Father's Paradise: A Son's Search for his Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq won the 2008 National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography.^[2]

Works

• The Folk Literature of the Kurdistani Jews: An Anthology, Yale University Press, 232 pp., 1982.
• Book: Sabar, Yona. Yona Sabar. A Jewish Neo-Aramaic Dictionary: Dialects of Amidya, Dihok, Nerwa and Zakho, Northwestern Iraq. 2002. Wiesbaden. Harrassowitz Verlag. 9783447045575.
• Book: Sabar, Yona. Yona Sabar. Aramaic, once an International Language, now on the Verge of Expiration: Are the Days of its Last Vestiges Numbered?. When Languages Collide: Perspectives on Language Conflict, Language Competition, and Language Coexistence. 2003. Columbus. Ohio State University Press. 222–234. 9780814209134. https://books.google.com/books?id=EnEFNOcYIrUC.
• Sabar. Yona. Yona Sabar. Mene Mene, Tekel uPharsin (Daniel 5:25): Are the Days of Jewish and Christian Neo-Aramaic Dialects Numbered?. Journal of Assyrian Academic Studies. 2009. 23. 2. 6–17. https://web.archive.org/web/20200715114728/http://www.jaas.org/edocs/v23n2/Full%20issue%2023-2-English.pdf. 2020-07-15.

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

Notes and References

1. From Generation to Generation: My Father's Paradise . Erdos, Agi . . October 2012 . 12 . 1 . 48–49 . dead . 2012-11-20 . 2020-01-11 . https://web.archive.org/web/20200111044358/https://www.jewishrenaissance.org.uk/taste-jr/my-fathers-paradise.pdf .
2. Eiland . Murray . 2021 . Interview with Ariel Sabar . A Harvard Professor, a Con Man,and the Gospel of Jesus' Wife . Antiqvvs . 41-44 . 3 . 2.