HAEZRAḤI (originally Brisker), YEHUDA

HAEZRAḤI (originally Brisker ), YEHUDA (1920–1974), Hebrew novelist and playwright. Born in Jerusalem, he served in the British Army during World War ii. He wrote several novels and plays, as well as numerous articles and sketches. Haezrahi's works include Ke-Zel Over (1946), a novel; Ananimba-Sa'ar (1947), a collection of stories; Im Shahar (1959), two novellas; a collection of three plays (1960) – Ha-Te'omim, Ha-Mishtammet, and Ha-Seruv; a novel, Panim u-Massekhah (1963); Beit ha-Sefarim ha-Le'ummi ve-ha-Universita'i (1967), a history of the national library at the Hebrew University; and Ir Even ve-Shamayim (1968), a belletristic description of Jerusalem. He edited albums of the paintings of *Alva (1954), Nahum *Gutman (1965), and Yossi Stern (1965). (A list of his works translated into English appears in Goell, Bibliography, 67.)

His wife, pepita haezraḤi (1921–1963), taught philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She published works in English and in Hebrew in the fields of philosophy, aesthetics, and ethics.

[Getzel Kressel]

Following the reunification of Jerusalem after the Six-Day War, Haezrahi played a leading part in the campaign to preserve the beauty of Jerusalem. He founded and became chairman of the Jerusalem Committee of the Council for a Beautiful Israel, and the works he published after 1967 reflected his absorption with this subject. They include Yerushalayim Asher Baharti (caricatures by S. Katz, 1970) and the text of the Sound and Light Program on the Tower of David, "A Stone in David's Tower."

bibliography:

M. Avishai, Bein ha-Olamot (1962), 157–73; A. Cohen, Soferim Ivriyyim Benei Zemannenu (1964), 109–18; Kressel, Leksikon, 1 (1965), 58. add. bibliography: M. Avishai, "Olamo shel Y. Haezrahi," in: Al ha-Mishmar (Elul 12, 1974); G. Shaked, Ha-Sipporet ha-Ivrit, 3 (1988), 240.