Yona Sabar

Yona Sabar (* 1938 in Zakho, Iraq ) is a Kurdish- Jewish scholar, linguist and researcher.

He was born in the town of Zakho in the Kurdish region in northern Iraq. His family moved to Israel in 1951. He received in 1963 a Bachelor of Hebrew University of Jerusalem in the fields of Hebrew and Arabic language. In 1970 he received his PhD degree in Middle Eastern languages ​​at Yale University. 2010 he has been professor of Hebrew at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has mastered Aramaic as their native language and has published more than 90 articles on the Jewish Neuaramäisch and the folklore of the Kurdish Jews.

His journey from the hills of Kurdistan to the highways in Los Angeles is the subject of his memoir, which was written by his son Ariel Sabar. This book entitled My Father's Paradise: A Son 's Search for his Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq won the 2008 prize of the National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography.

• The Folk Literature of the Kurdistani Jews: An Anthology, Yale University Press, 1982, ISBN 0-300-02698-6
• A Jewish Neo - Aramaic dictionary: dialects of Amidya, Dihok, Nerwa and Zakho, Northwestern Iraq, Harrassowitz, 2002 ISBN 3-447-04557-4.