The author and playwright Yosef Bar-Yosef, who passed away today at the age of 88, was the winner of the Israel Prize in the field of theater, and his latest book, "Father, Son, Grandma Dina," which was published last year, was nominated for the Sapphire Prize.
Bar-Yosef was born into an ultra-Orthodox family in the Mea Shearim neighborhood of Jerusalem, sixth generation on his father's side and eighth generation on his mother's side, he studied in a room and in a religious school, Hashomer Hatzair and later studied philosophy, Kabbalah and English literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Bar-Yosef's plays, including "Yasha Goren", "Hard People", "The Orchard", Winter Celebration "," Gold "and others were staged on the stages of Habima, the Cameri, the Jerusalem Khan and the Haifa Theater (directed by big names like Oded Kotler, Gedalia Besser, Lena Craindlin and Aharon Almog) and were also very successful abroad, especially in Russia. In all of them, as in his novels, the emotional depth of the characters was evident as well as the tension between the individual and the community, accompanied by unique characteristics of Israeli-Jewish society, and much preoccupation with the duality between the ultra-Orthodox world and the secular world, on the other side of the fence. Much of this tension was attributed to the fact that he grew up in a home where the father "gave up" while the mother remained ultra-Orthodox, a home where the father's betrayals were visible but the mother ignored them and generously hosted his new bohemian friends.
Bar-Yosef came to writing at the end of a winding road, which began when he served in the merchant navy and continued in the press.
He served as a military correspondent, including as a reservist who accompanied IDF forces in the Six Day War, the Yom Kippur War and the First Lebanon War.
He published stories in literary journals and published his first novel, The Life and Death of Jonathan Argaman, under the pseudonym "Yosef Bar."
He mentioned in various interviews the covert competition that had taken place all his life between him and his father, but explained that as he got older he felt reconciled.
"Father," the opening story of his latest book, is devoted to his father and a description of their complex relationship.
Yosef Bar-Yosef was married for three months to the poet Dalia Ravikovitch and then married the literary scholar and poet Hamutal Bar-Yosef.
Their son, who was a gifted musician, committed suicide at the age of 16 and a half.
Bar-Yosef said that the tragedy paralyzed him, but two years later he made a conscious decision to return to life and return to writing.