BAR-ASHER (Ben Harosh), MOSHE

BAR-ASHER (Ben Harosh ), MOSHE (1939– ), Hebrew scholar and linguist. Born in Ksar es-Suk (now Rashidiya), district of Tafilalt in southeast of Morocco, he immigrated to Israel in 1951 in the framework of *Youth Aliyah, studied in the Beiteinu "children's village" in Ra'anana (1951–53) and in Yeshivat ha-Darom, Reḥovot (1953–58), and served in the Israeli Army (1959–62). Bar-Asher received his academic training in Hebrew, linguistics, Bible, and Talmud, at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1963–76). He also studied at the Sorbonne and College de France (1967–68) and at Harvard (1977–79). Bar-Asher's major fields of research are Palestinian (esp. Syro-Palestinian) Aramaic, biblical, rabbinic, and modern Hebrew, Qumran texts, and the sharh (oral Maghrebian translations of the Bible and liturgical Jewish texts). Teaching at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem since 1964, he was appointed full professor in 1984 and chaired the Department of Hebrew Language (1981–83) and the Institute for Jewish Studies (1983–86). He was elected a member of the Hebrew Academy in 1977 and was appointed its vice president (1987–93) and president (from 1993). He taught as a visiting professor at various universities in France and the U.S. and lectured in many other universities around the world. He is regarded as the leading scholar in rabbinic Hebrew of the last generation and was the adviser of 28 Ph.D. students. He received the Israel Prize in 1993. Among his major publications are Ha-Surit shel Eretz Israel u-V'ayot Nivḥarot be-Dikdukah (1977); La composante hebraïque du judeo-arabe algèrien (1992); Masorot u-lshonot shel Yehudei Tzefon Afrikah (1998; 1999²); L'hébreu Mishnique: études linguistiques (1999); and Leshon Limmudum le-Rabbi Raphael Berdugo (3 vols., 2001). A full list of Bar-Asher's works and scientific publications appeared in Reshimat ha-Pirsumim shel Prof. Moshe Bar-Asher (ed. S. Elkayam, 1999).

His father R. Abraham b. Harosh (d. 2003. in Jerusalem) was one of the last greatest informants of sharh and oral Hebrew and Arabic traditions, some of which are represented in the research of Bar-Asher; others are preserved as recorded materials in the Jewish Oral Traditions Research Center at the Hebrew University.

[Aharon Maman (2^nd ed.)]