Professor Joshua Blau, the Israel Prize-winning Arabic scholar and linguist, passed away on Tuesday at the age of 101.
Blau was born in Romania in 1919 and made aliyah in 1938 with a special certificate from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He fought in the 1948 War of Independence in the battles for Jerusalem and Ramat Rachel.
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After 1948, he continued to serve in the IDF Intelligence Corps as he progressed in his career as a scholar of the Arabic language.
