Uri Zohar, an avant-garde satirist and filmmaker who left the secular arts when he embraced ultra-Orthodox Judaism and became a rabbi, died on Thursday aged 86, the Culture Ministry said.
Born in Tel Aviv, Zohar was a bawdy icon of the Israeli bohemian scene of the 1960s and 1970s. He wrote, directed and starred in cult films such as Metzizim (Peeping Toms) and Big Eyes and was a regular on the TV sketch show Lool (Coop).
He grew religious in middle age, appearing on screen in a skullcap until finally withdrawing from popular culture for an ascetic life of biblical scholarship in Jerusalem.
In a statement, the ministry mourned Zohar as "among Israel's greatest artists and a cornerstone of Israeli culture".