Kalman Kahana

Kalman Kahana was born in 1910 in Brody

Kahana was born in 1910 in Brody, Galicia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and now in Ukraine. His father was Rabbi Binyamin Zeev Kahana. His brother Yitzhak Kahan later became President of the Supreme Court of Israel.

He was ordained as a rabbi at the Hildesheimer Rabbinical Seminary in Berlin. He studied philosophy, Semitic languages, history and pedagogy at the universities of Berlin and Würzburg and earned a PhD in philosophy. He then taught Hebrew in Fulda and assisted his father-in-law, Rabbi Baruch Kunstadt, at the Fulda yeshiva.

In 1938 he moved to Mandatory Palestine and settled at Kibbutz Hafetz Haim, where he became the rabbi in 1940. He edited the Sha'arim newspaper and rose to lead Poalei Agudat Yisrael. He sat on the Provisional State Council and signed the Declaration of Independence.

He served in the first 9 Knessets, sometimes on joint religious lists. He was Deputy Minister of Education and Culture in 5 governments. In December 1976 he filed a no-confidence motion that led to early elections.

His party failed to pass the threshold in 1981 and he left politics. In Jerusalem he founded an institute for the study of agricultural Jewish law. He wrote dozens of books, including Taharat Bat Yisrael, and died in 1991.