Yona Sabar (, born 1938 in Zakho, Iraq) is a Kurdistani Jewish scholar, linguist and researcher. He is professor emeritus of Hebrew at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is a native speaker of Northeastern Neo-Aramaic and has published more than 90 research articles about Jewish Neo-Aramaic and the folklore of the Jews of Kurdistan. Sabar was born in the town of Zakho in northern Iraq. His family moved to Israel in 1951. He received a B.A. in Hebrew and Arabic from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1963 and a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Literatures from Yale University in 1970. His immigrant journey from the hills of Kurdistan to the highways of Los Angeles is the subject of an award-winning memoir by his son, Ariel Sabar, an American author and journalist. Ariel Sabar's book My Father's Paradise: A Son's Search for his Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq won the 2008 National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography. Works The Folk Literature of the Kurdistani Jews: An Anthology, Yale University Press, 232 pp., 1982. References External links Yona Sabar's UCLA website My Father's Paradise by Ariel Sabar Hollywood Calling by Ariel Sabar Prof. Sabar on the claim that Barzani is Jewish by JTA Iraqi Jews Iraqi emigrants to Israel Kurdish Jews 1938 births Living people Hebrew University of Jerusalem alumni Yale University alumni University of California, Los Angeles faculty University of California Near Eastern Languages and Cultures faculty Kurdish scholars Kurdish social scientists American people of Iraqi-Assyrian descent People from Zakho