KADDARI, MENACHEM ZEVI (1925– ), Hebrew scholar and linguist. Born in Mezoekoevesd (Hungary), Kaddari studied philosophy and Semitic languages at the Pazmany-Peter University of Budapest and Jewish bibliography, Bible, and Jewish philosophy at the Rabbinical Seminary (1945–46). He immigrated to Israel in 1947 and continued his academic training in Hebrew, Bible, Jewish philosophy, and Kabbalah at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1947–50). In 1953 he submitted his Ph.D. thesis on Grammar of the Aramaic Language of the Zohar (published in 1971). Teaching at Bar-Ilan University from 1961, he was appointed full professor in 1970, where he also served as dean of the Faculty of Humanities (1967–70) and rector of the University (1971–74). He also taught at several universities abroad, among them UCLA (1967), the University of Leeds, U.K. (1978), and the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (1979–81). Kaddari was elected a member of the Hebrew Academy in 1973 and its vice president in 1994. He received the Israel Prize in 1999. Kaddari's major fields of research are Aramaic, Hebrew syntax, biblical and rabbinic Hebrew, and, mainly, modern Hebrew. Among his major works are Oẓar Leshon ha-Mikrah: Konkordansi'ah Mele'ah u-Millon Ivri ve-Angli, letters י–ת, initiated by Y. Blau and S. Loewenstamm, with whom he had already collaborated in the publication of vol. 3 (letters ז–ט), and Taḥbir ve-Semantikah ba-Ivrit shel-le-ahar ha-Mikra: Iyyunim ba-Di'akhroni'ah shel ha-Lashon ha-Ivrit, 2 vols. (1991, 1995). A full list of Kaddari's works and scientific publications appeared in Meḥkarim ba-Lashon ha-Ivrit ha-Attikah ve-ha-Ḥadashah li-Khevod Menachem Zevi Kaddari (ed. S. Sharvit, 1999, 413–24).

During World War II, Kaddari was active in the clandestine pioneering Zionist movement in Hungary (1943–46) and a member of the joint secretariat of the ma'pilim (*"illegal" immigration) camps in Cyprus (1946–47). During Israel's War of Independence, he fought in the Haganah in *Gush Etzyon (*Massu'ot Yitzḥak) and Jerusalem.

Sources: Encyclopaedia Judaica. © 2007 The Gale Group. All Rights Reserved.