Yehuda and Zohar Zisapel

Yehuda Zisapel (April 12, 1942–March 10, 2024) and his brother Zohar Zisapel (February 15, 1949–May 20, 2023) helped shape Israel’s high-tech industry during its formative decades. Through the RAD-Bynet family of companies, they moved beyond importing foreign technology and built Israeli businesses that developed, manufactured, and exported data communications products. Their decentralized model gave focused teams room to operate as independent companies and helped train a broad circle of engineers, managers, and entrepreneurs who later launched ventures of their own.

The brothers’ influence extended well beyond business. They invested in biotechnology, pharmaceutical development, and nanoelectronics; funded scholarships for students of limited means; helped teenagers strengthen their mathematics education; and made valuable musical instruments available to talented performers. Their work connected technological entrepreneurship with the development of Israel’s scientific, educational, and cultural foundations.

From Tel Aviv to electrical engineering

Yehuda and Zohar were born in Tel Aviv to Polish immigrant parents, Sara and Moshe Zisapel, who operated a shoe store on Herzl Street, then one of the city’s principal commercial thoroughfares. From that modest family business, both brothers pursued engineering, management, and industrial entrepreneurship.

Yehuda began studying electrical engineering at the Technion during his military service and completed both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in the field. He later earned an MBA from Tel Aviv University. Wounded during the Six-Day War, he joined Motorola Israel after his hospitalization and eventually managed its systems engineering department. The position gave him practical knowledge of Israel’s communications needs and of the process by which engineering expertise becomes a marketable product.

Zohar also studied electrical engineering at the Technion and business administration at Tel Aviv University. He received the Israel Defense Prize in 1977 for technological work connected with national defense. The combination of engineering training and business judgment became the foundation of the brothers’ long partnership.

From Bitcom to RAD-Bynet

Introducing communications technology to Israel

In 1975, Yehuda founded Bitcom Agencies, a small company that marketed communications equipment and represented international manufacturers in Israel. Later renamed Bynet Data Communications, it helped introduce new communications technologies to the local market at a time when Israel’s computing and data-transfer infrastructure was still developing.

The brothers, however, wanted to do more than import and distribute equipment. Zohar joined Yehuda in the early 1980s, and together they turned toward developing and manufacturing communications products in Israel for export. RAD Data Communications, their first joint company, became the oldest member of the RAD-Bynet family and a base from which additional ventures emerged.

A network of independent companies

Over the following years, dozens of companies were created within the RAD-Bynet orbit to develop, manufacture, and market products for data communications, networking, and telecommunications. Rather than place every activity inside one centralized corporation, the brothers favored relatively independent companies, each focused on a defined technology and market. The businesses could draw on shared experience, commercial relationships, and managerial support while preserving the speed and accountability of a smaller enterprise.

This model mattered because it produced more than equipment and corporate value. It gave people direct experience in building a technology business, managing product development, and entering international markets. A Tel Aviv University study reported in 2012 identified approximately 56 serial entrepreneurs who had emerged from companies founded by the brothers. RAD-Bynet consequently functioned as a practical school of entrepreneurship whose influence spread well beyond the group itself.

Among the companies associated with the family is Radware, known for networking and application-delivery solutions and led by Yehuda’s son, Roee Zisapel. Zohar’s daughter, Klil Zisapel, pursued a literary career. These paths reflect the breadth of the brothers’ world: technology and industry alongside literature and music.

Biotechnology, medicine, and research infrastructure

The brothers did not confine their entrepreneurial activity to communications. In December 1991, Yehuda and his wife, Professor Nava Zisapel, a neurochemistry researcher at Tel Aviv University, founded Neurim Pharmaceuticals. Building on Nava’s research into melatonin, the company developed a prolonged-release melatonin medicine for insomnia. Its first approved medicine was launched in the European Union in 2007, demonstrating how Israeli academic research could progress toward a practical treatment reaching patients.

Yehuda and Zohar also established the RAD Bio-Med Incubator, which provided biomedical projects with facilities, initial financing, and support services. It extended to the life sciences the approach that had characterized their technology ventures: give a focused team the practical framework needed to turn scientific knowledge into a company and a usable product.

The brothers donated $4.5 million to the Technion to help establish the Sara and Moshe Zisapel Nanoelectronics Center, named in memory of their parents. Nanoelectronics research depends on advanced equipment and cooperation across scientific disciplines. By supporting this infrastructure, they invested not only in their own businesses but also in the long-term ability of Israeli researchers and engineers to work at the frontiers of science and technology.

Education, access, and music

The Zisapels’ philanthropy emphasized opportunity. The RAD Foundation awarded hundreds of annual scholarships to outstanding students of limited financial means studying engineering and computer science. This support helped students enter disciplines central to Israel’s economic development while enlarging the pool of talent available to its technology sector.

The foundation also donated approximately 15 computer rooms each year to boarding schools and educational institutions serving children and teenagers at risk. At a time when access to computers was far from universal, these facilities gave young people practical access to learning tools and skills that were becoming indispensable to education and employment.

Under the auspices of the Technion Alumni Association, which Yehuda chaired for six years, the brothers initiated programs that recruited Technion graduates as teachers and mentors. The “Poalim from 3 to 5” program helped teenagers in northern and southern communities move from three to five units of mathematics, Israel’s advanced secondary-school track. Yehuda launched the “City of Excellence” program in Bat Yam to pursue similar goals among students in central Israel whose schools lacked sufficient resources for cultivating high achievement. Another initiative, “Engineers from the Periphery,” helped discharged combat soldiers from outlying communities improve their academic qualifications and prepare for university study in science and engineering.

Music formed another strand of their community work. Yehuda had played the violin since childhood and maintained a collection of antique instruments. The RAD Foundation loaned instruments to outstanding students and performers, including a Guarneri del Gesù violin made available to violinist Eckart Lorenzen, who served as concertmaster of the Israel Symphony Orchestra Rishon LeZion. This program kept rare cultural treasures in active musical life rather than treating them merely as objects in a closed collection.

Recognition for entrepreneurship and public contribution

In 1994, Yehuda and Zohar received the entrepreneurship award of Tel Aviv University’s business school in recognition of their work in developing, manufacturing, and exporting data communications solutions. Zohar received the Hugo Ramniceanu Prize in Economics in 1996 and a lifetime-achievement honor from the Manufacturers Association of Israel in 1999.

The Technion awarded Yehuda an honorary doctorate in 2001. In 2005, the brothers received an Israeli high-tech award from the country’s venture-capital and advanced-industries community, and in 2007 Tel Aviv University presented them with the Max Perlman Award for Excellence in Global Business Management. In 2022, the Technion awarded both brothers the Technion Medal, the institution’s highest distinction, recognizing their lifetime contribution to the university, the State of Israel, and the welfare of the Jewish people.

Why this legacy belongs in Moreshet

Yehuda and Zohar Zisapel belong in Moreshet because their influence can be seen in several foundations of modern Israeli life: a technology industry oriented toward global markets, a pathway through which young professionals could become entrepreneurs, advanced academic research, and wider access to mathematics, science, and engineering education. They did not simply build one successful company. They created an environment from which numerous companies, managers, engineers, and founders emerged.

Their profile on Moreshet.com also records a distinctly Israeli form of civic responsibility: using engineering knowledge and commercial success to strengthen research institutions, open doors for students and teenagers, and sustain cultural life. Their legacy lives in products developed and exported from Israel, laboratories equipped for future discoveries, entrepreneurs trained in their companies, and young people given a realistic route to higher education. It is a lasting connection between private initiative, the building of Israel, and investment in the human capital of Israeli society and the Jewish people.