Rabbi Avraham Kahaneman, president of the famed Yeshivat Ponevezh (pronounced Ponovitch) in Bnei Brak, passed away on Monday night after a long illness at the age of 97. After his funeral, beginning at 11 a.m. on Tuesday, he will be buried in the Ponevezh section of the Bnei Brak cemetery. He was the son of the yeshiva’s founder, the late Rabbi Yosef Shlomo Kahaneman.
Rabbi Kahaneman began studying in the renowned Mirrer Yeshiva in what was then Poland at the very young age of 16. He was able to escape the Holocaust by leaving for Israel, and later lived for several years in the United States. Assuming the burden of administrating his father’s yeshiva in Bnei Brak, he was able to pay off its debts of millions of shekels within six years.
Yeshivat Ponovezh was originally established in Lithuania by the deceased’s father, who re-established it in 1944 in Israel. He appointed the famed Rabbi Elazar Shach - later to become the recognized leader of hareidi-religious Jewry in Israel - as the full-time Rosh Yeshiva (Dean). Ponovezh is now one of the leading yeshivot in the world, with over 1,000 students. Its Beit Medrash (study hall) is famous for a large, beautiful Holy Ark built in 1635, brought to Israel from the Great Synagogue in the Italian city of Lombardie.
Ponovezh suffered a major internal dispute in the 1990's, of which small remnants remain. The yeshiva's two camps, led by a grandson and a grandson-in-law of the yeshiva’s founder, respectively, occupy separate dormitories, but all students study in the same Beit Medrash and eat in the same dining room.