Jacob Raz (Hebrew: יעקב רז; born in 1944) is a professor emeritus[1] in the Department of East Asian Studies[2] at Tel Aviv University, a researcher of Japanese culture and a translator of Zen writings, a writer and a poet who writes, among other things, haiku poetry in Hebrew.

Jacob Raz was born in the south of Tel Aviv, and grew up in the city center, on King George Street.

Jacob Raz studied at the 'Ahad Ha'am' elementary school and later studied the realism major at Urban High School A. Raz learned to play the piano starting at the age of six with private teachers and at the Israel Conservatory of Music in Tel Aviv, and played a lot of classical music and jazz until his late twenties.

Raz was an apprentice in the scout movement in the tribe "Gosh Scofus Kishishim" in Tel Aviv, in the army he served in the Nahal Brigade and was a member of Kibbutz Hatzerim for several years.

In his academic studies, he continued to show a growing interest in Eastern cultures, encouraged by Prof. Ben-Ami Sharpstein.

When Raz returned to Israel, he began teaching in the theater department at the Faculty of Arts at Tel Aviv University.

Later, since his interest in the world of Asia was multidisciplinary - philosophy, anthropology, art and aesthetics - he moved to teach in the Department of East Asian Studies at the Hebrew University.

Later on, the research focused on the anthropological aspects of the Japanese crime world, the yakuza, which Raz studied for about five years.

Since the nineties, Raz's main interest is Buddhism, both as a subject for research and as a possible way of life for the modern Western man.

He also deals with the interaction of Buddhism and the West, in various fields such as psychology, society, social involvement, ecology, peacemaking and more.

[7] In 1978, Yoni, Raz's only son, was born, a child with special needs, who completely changed his life, and added a deep meaning to his understanding of the Buddhist teachings.

He managed to get in touch with one of the big yakuza bosses in Tokyo, and for five years he traveled between Japan and Israel and held hundreds of interviews with Japanese mafia members, lived with them, and formed friendships with some of them.

The novel tells the story of the ten-year search after Yuki, who had in the meantime risen to prominence in the yakuza organization, fell and disappeared.

This field of activity has produced a large number of articles and books, among them: Zen Buddhism - Philosophy and Aesthetics (2006).

The Buddhist tradition is replete with many stories of Tibetan, Chinese and Japanese teachers whose practice was strange to the point of madness.

One of the great teachers, Ikkyo, who lived in the fifteenth century, called himself 'Mad Cloud', and while serving as the head of one of the largest orders in Japan, he spent time in taverns, brothels, wore sackcloth, lived in a simple cabin, and wrote, besides deep philosophical poetry, also poetry Daring erotic until his last days at an extreme age.

This launch between 'getting out of mind', and the possibility of experiencing the world at different levels of consciousness than the usual, has fascinated Raz for a long time.

The book is based on a series of paintings accompanied by poems published in China in the 12th century, from the brush of the Zen teacher Guo-en.

"The Narrow Road to Oko" is a travel diary of Matsuo Bashō, one of the greatest Japanese haiku poets.

"The Return to Tokyo" - is a personal, partly autobiographical travel diary that describes an actual journey and also a series of encounters with various characters in Japan, some real and some fictitious.

Among the poems, which weave the Buddhist world of the soul into Raz's life story (for example, treatment of his son with Down syndrome), famous koans, Japanese calligraphy and rabbinic wisdom are interspersed.

In 1972 he directed a play based on a story by Heinrich von Kleist, "Michael Kohlhaas", adapted by Aliza Alion-Israeli.

The show is based on an ancient Kabbalistic story, which tells about Rabbi Yosef Della Reina, who lived in Safed, and decided to set out with his disciples to free the Messiah from his chains.

This is a common folk tale in Europe, and Agnon added new content to the legend, when he put the pagan woman in front of the innocent Jew, who almost fell into the trap.

In 1986, he directed the play "The Stories of Yehezkel Fairman", by Danny Horowitz, about the character and life of Yosef Haim Brenner at the Khan Theater.

The association is engaged in many programs that are concerned with shaping the possibility of a life partnership between Jews and Arabs, and also in other areas of challenging cultural encounter, such as between Israelis and veterans and Ethiopians, and more.

In 2000, Yaakov Raz and the clinical psychologist Nachi Alon founded the Psycho-Dharma Center, a school of Buddhist psychology, which today operates on the Cypress campus in Tel Aviv.

The school first engaged in the training of therapists, mainly psychologists, in the basics of Buddhist teachings, in order to apply them in their professional world.

He is a member of a meditation group, which he guides and accompanies with dharma talks, which discuss issues from everyday life.

In the last months of 2013 he was among the founders and activists of the 'Leadership Network for Social Political Engagement' together with other activists - Iris Dotan-Katz, Nachi Alon, Steven Polder and others, with the aim of creating a different kind of dialogue and activity between rival groups that are not in dialogue and cooperation, within society the Israeli, and between Israeli and Arab groups.