Yehoshua Sofer

Who is Yehoshua Sofer?

Yehoshua Sofer an Israeli hip hop musician and martial artist. He was born in 1958 as Nigel Wilson into a Breslover Hasidim family in Jamaica. His family moved to Los Angeles in 1963 where he studied Tang Soo Do, receiving a black belt by 1968, aged ten. He studied Kuk Sool Won from 1974, advancing to 6th dan, and worked as a trainer and bodyguard during the 1970s and 1980s.

He moved to Israel in 1989, and in 1993, he recorded a minor Israeli hip hop hit in Hebrew, חומוס מטמטם Humus Metamtem. In 2000, he ran a Kuk Sool Won school at the International Convention, Jerusalem.

In 2002, he founded the Abir Warrior Arts Association of Israel, teaching his own style of "Abir-Qesheth Hebrew Warrior Arts" in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, claiming an unbroken tradition dating to Israelite antiquity preserved by an underground school of "Bani Abir" in Habban, Yemen, and styling himself Aluf Abir אלוף אבי״ר "Grandmaster of Abir". The word אביר abir in Modern Hebrew means "knight", interpreted as an acronym אבי״ר, for אדוננו, בוראנו, יוצרנו, רופאנו.

The school's logo spells the word in the Phoenician alphabet as