KAHANA, KALMAN

KAHANA, KALMAN (1910–1991), leader of the Po'alei Agudat Israel movement. Born in Brody, Galicia, Kahana studied at the Berlin rabbinical seminary and the universities of Berlin and Wuerzburg. He was one of the founders of the Agudat Israel youth movement in Germany and moved to Palestine in 1938 with a group of young Orthodox settlers, joining the Po'alei Agudat Israel movement. Kahana was a founder of kibbutz Ḥafeẓ Ḥayyim (1944) and a member of the knesset from its establishment in 1949. He was deputy minister of education (1962–69). He became president of the Po'alei Agudat Israel movement. Kahana published several studies in rabbinics and wrote on Maimonides. (Menachem Friedman) In later years Kahana occupied himself with the halakhah pertaining to the agricultural laws which apply in Israel. In 1976 he published Miẓvot ha-Areẓ and in 1980 tractate Shevi'it according to both the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds with the notes and commentary of Elijah, Gaon of Vilna, and as an appendix his own commentary to the Mishnah and the Tosefta to the order Zeraim.