Avital Inbar
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Avital Inbar (Hebrew: אביטל ענבר; born September 29, 1944) is an Israeli author, translator, journalist, and restaurant critic.
Avital Inbar was born in Tel Aviv, Israel. His parents, Mordechai Burstein, a native of the Kiev region and Rachel Shilensky, born in Kaunas, Lithuania, were intellectuals and polyglots. They spent much of their lives in France and were imbued in its culture.
From the age of 13 to 26 he lived in France, including two years in Marseille, where he learned French, and two years in what was at the time French Algeria, which was in the midst of a war of independence. These intense, unmediated impressions still affect his perspective of the Jewish-Palestinian conflict and internal Israeli divisions.
In Paris, he graduated high school at the Alliance Gymnasium, where he studied philosophy from the famous Emmanuel Levinas. He then earned his degree at the Paris Institute of Political Sciences.
On his return to Israel in 1970, he served as a foreign correspondent for French media, among others, for the daily Combat, founded by Albert Camus.
Since 1976, Inbar has focused on literary translation and he translated into Hebrew several major works of French literature, as well as some English titles. He traveled frequently to Paris to meet with publishers and writers and to choose titles for translation for Israeli publishers. He became friends with leading French figures, such as Marguerite Duras and Yves Montand. Altogether, Inbar has translated some 120 titles.
In 1995, together with the French-Israeli businessman Jean Frydman, he founded the Yonatan Guides Ltd, which received a franchise from the French restaurant and hotel guide Gault Millau to produce a similar guide in Israel.
Since 1997, Inbar wrote nine experiential, hedonistic, travel books dedicated to France and its regions.[1][2]
He also wrote Parisian Pictures, devoted mainly to his encounters with writers and artists in France and the complex relations between France, Israel and the Jews. Since 2018 he has been focusing on Japanese Cuisine and in 2019 published Gourmand in Tokyo, dedicated to Japanese gastronomy.
Awards
For his literary work and the dissemination of French culture in Israel, he received two decorations from the French government ‒ officer in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres[citation needed][3] and officer in the Ordre des Palmes académiques[citation needed].[4] In July 2019, Inbar was conferred French citizenship, for his contribution to the influence of France and the prosperity of international economic relations.[citation needed][5]
