Yotam Ben-Or grew up in Nataf, a small village near Jerusalem, and started harmonica at ten or eleven, taught by his uncle, alongside piano from age nine. He went through a joint Tel Aviv Conservatory/New School program in Israel before winning a full scholarship to The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music in New York, graduating in May 2016. In March 2015 he was selected for Betty Carter's Jazz Ahead residency at the Kennedy Center, and in 2013 he won first prize at the Rostov International Jazz Competition in Russia. He has cited mentors including harmonicist Grégoire Maret and bassist Ben Street, and named Stevie Wonder, Toots Thielemans, Miles Davis and John Coltrane as influences. An early group he played in, Jupiter, appeared on the 2013 compilation All Original: Best Young Israeli Jazz, presented by bassist and trumpeter Avishai Cohen.

He moved to New York in August 2014 and formed his working quartet in Brooklyn the following year, built around a long-standing partnership with Israeli bassist Alon Near — known to him since age eighteen — alongside Venezuelan pianist Gabriel Chakarji and, on his most recent album, drummer Alon Benjamini. He specializes in chromatic harmonica, an instrument with few working models and even fewer specialist repairers, by his own account. He has released three albums: his debut, Sitting on a Cloud (2018); two 2022 EPs, Endless and Deliberations (Hitlabtuyot); and Impermanence (June 2025), which added guest contributions from cellist Lars Danielsson and vocalist Esther Quansah. He has performed at Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola at Jazz at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, the Blue Note, and Bric JazzFest, and continues to tour internationally, including European dates booked into late 2026.

Ben-Or's playing centers on the chromatic harmonica — a genuinely rare lead voice in jazz — pursued largely through self-direction rather than formal training on the instrument itself, shaped by mentorship from Grégoire Maret and a stated listening lineage running from Stevie Wonder and Toots Thielemans through Miles Davis and Coltrane. His working quartet, anchored by longtime bassist Alon Near, has carried his writing across four releases spanning 2018 to 2025, with Impermanence expanding the palette with guest cello and vocals.