Shalhav Zohar

November 16, 1927 - December 19, 2020 DR SHALHAV ZOHAR RADAR ASTRONOMEROn Saturday, December 19, 2020, Dr. Shalhav Zohar, age 93 passed away peacefully at his home in Pasadena surrounded by his loving family. Dr. Zohar was a noted Radar Astronomer at Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He was most noted for breakthrough mapping of Venus with colleague Richard Goldstein. Dr. Zohar was born in Tel Aviv in 1927 and was a Captain in the Israeli army where he fought in the 1948 war for Israel Independence. As a member of the Palmach, he volunteered to join the dangerous Bab el Wad convoys ferrying food and water to a starving and blockaded Jerusalem. He also helped evacuate young children from a dangerously isolated kibbutz by the Dead Sea in a small Cessna, dropping bombs by hand out of the plane. Dr. Zohar's family on his father's side, (Abulafia), traces his ancestry back 12 generations in Jerusalem. His maternal grandparents, Haim and Hava Tzoar were part of the First Aliyah to Israel and early settlers in Petach Tikvah. Dr. Zohar received his BS in Electrical Engineering from the Technion, in Haifa Israel, his MS from the University of Cincinnati and his PhD in Electrical Engineering from the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute (now NYU). His original Master's Thesis can still be found for sale on line (as a collector's edition). In his leisure time, Dr. Zohar loved to scuba dive and crafted jewelry from the abalones that he frequently brought home for dinner. He loved music and opera and in the 1960's built an electronic organ, a precursor to modern keyboards which he loved to play. He was a true Renaissance man who could be engaged in knowledgeable conversation on any subject, and frequently enjoyed inviting in door to door missionaries for lively Biblical discourse. Dr. Zohar is survived by his loving wife of 71 years, Bracha Zohar, his childhood sweetheart, who has been a Hebrew teacher at Sinai Akiba Academy in Beverly Hills,and Verdugo Hills Hebrew Center among other synagogues, his daughters, Oreet Zohar of Washington, DC, and Pazit Zohar of San Francisco, and his grandson Ari Herman Zohar Kozlow of Charlotte, North Carolina. He will be laid to rest on Thursday November 24 at 2:00 PM at Mount Sinai at Forest Lawn, Dr. Zohar has gifted his brain to the UCLA Brain Bank. Contributions in his honor may be made to the American Technion Society, 55 E 59th Street NY, NY 10022. www.ats.org/zohar