Yosef Shlomo Kahaneman

Yosef Shlomo Kahaneman was born in 1888 in Kuliai

Kahaneman was born in Kuliai, Lithuania, to Ita Leah and Rabbi Yehuda Leib Kahaneman, the head of the town's community. His younger brother Moshe Kahani was among the first settlers of Herzliya.

He studied at the Telshe yeshiva under Rabbis Eliezer Gordon and Shimon Shkop. He then studied in Novardok and spent 3 years at the Radun yeshiva under the Chofetz Chaim.

In 1910 he married Feiga, daughter of the rabbi of Vidzh, and later succeeded his father-in-law as rabbi there. In 1919 he became rabbi of Ponevezh, where he founded yeshivas, a school and an orphanage. From 1923 to 1925 he sat in the Lithuanian Seimas for Agudat Yisrael.

In 1940 he left Lithuania on a mission to the United States, but chose to go to the Land of Israel instead. His wife and most of his children were murdered in the Holocaust, and the yeshiva in Ponevezh was destroyed.

In 1944 he re-established the Ponevezh Yeshiva in Bnei Brak and built orphanages, caring for the Tehran Children among others. He saw religious meaning in the State of Israel and flew its flag at the yeshiva on Independence Day. He died in Bnei Brak in 1969.