Matan Kahana

Kahana was born on July 29, 1972, in New York, where his father was studying electrical engineering, and moved to Israel at the age of three.[1][6] The eldest of five siblings, he described his family as closely connected to military service.[6] He grew up in the religious-Zionist community, participated in the Bnei Akiva youth movement, and studied at Netiv Meir Yeshiva in Jerusalem’s Bayit Vagan neighborhood.[2]

Kahana holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in law from Bar-Ilan University.[1] He is married to Lisa, has four children, and lives in Beit Gamliel.[1]

Kahana served for three and a half years in Sayeret Matkal before beginning the pilot training that led to his career in the Israeli Air Force.[2] His initial military ambitions had included both the Navy’s Shayetet 13 and the air-force pilot course, but he gave up the pilot-course path to join Sayeret Matkal.[6] He later recalled returning to pilot training with the support of his special-forces unit commander, completing the course, and becoming a combat pilot.[6] During his Sayeret Matkal service in the 1990s, he met Naftali Bennett, with whom he would later enter party politics.[2]

As an air-force pilot, Kahana flew F-16s and participated in the 2006 Lebanon War, including the air operation against Hezbollah’s long-range rockets at the beginning of the war.[7] He recalled flying 45 sorties during that conflict.[6] In his account, the air campaign appeared successful from the cockpit, but reflection on the experience subsequently led him, as a squadron commander, to seek closer coordination with ground forces.[6]

Kahana went on to command fighter squadrons, including the F-16 squadrons Mageni Hadarom and Emek.[7] His command of Emek included the period when navigator Tamar Ariel served in the squadron.[7] After his squadron commands, he was promoted to colonel and appointed to a department-head position at Air Force headquarters.[7] He left regular military service in August 2018 and subsequently managed the Diaspora Initiative at the Center for Educational Technology.[7]

Kahana returned to reserve service following the October 7, 2023 attacks.[8] Recalling that day, he said he initially mistook explosions near his home for signs of stormy weather and understood the scale of events only later.[8] He then answered the call to serve and spent five weeks with a battalion defending southern cities.[8]

The newly formed New Right party announced Kahana as a Knesset candidate in 2019, presenting him as a reserve colonel, former commando, and former air-force pilot.[9] In explaining his entry into legislative politics, Kahana said that solidarity among military comrades, regardless of religious identity, would guide his work.[9] The party was led by Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked, and Kahana ran fourth on its list for the election to the 21st Knesset.[1] New Right did not cross the electoral threshold in that election.[1]

In September 2019, Kahana entered the Knesset as a member of the Yamina list and was subsequently elected to the 23rd and 24th Knessets.[1] For the March 2020 election, he occupied fifth place on Yamina’s slate, which won six seats.[10] In the candidate list announced before the 2021 election, he moved to fourth place, behind Bennett, Shaked, and Alon Davidi.[11]

As a lawmaker in August 2020, Kahana joined other Knesset members calling for the Palestinian Authority’s Commission of Prisoners’ Affairs to be designated a terrorist organization.[12] He also advocated personal sanctions against Palestinian Authority and PLO public figures whom he said were involved in terrorist payments.[12] These were proposals advanced by Kahana and fellow lawmakers, rather than an independent designation or determination concerning the commission or the individuals involved.[12]

Kahana became Minister of Religious Services on June 13, 2021, and resigned from the Knesset under the Norwegian Law that same day.[1] He served as a Yamina minister in Israel’s 36th government, whose overall term ran from June 13, 2021, to December 28, 2022.[13] As minister, he appointed Muni Ma’atuk director-general of the ministry.[1]

Kahana described his purpose at the ministry as strengthening Israel’s Jewish identity and treated the ministry’s responsibilities as extending to broader questions of religion and state.[14] In a 2021 interview, he emphasized seeking agreement while working within the bounds of halacha, Jewish religious law.[14] His policy program with coalition partners centered on three objectives: changing state kashrut supervision, enabling city rabbis to conduct state-recognized conversions, and changing the method of electing chief rabbis.[15]

His position on marriage distinguished between a religious institution and the legal recognition of partnerships.[3] In 2021, he supported a legal way for citizens to formalize partnerships when they could not marry through Israel’s religious institutions, while describing marriage itself as a religious term that should remain within “the religion of Moses and Israel.”[3] In a November interview, he explicitly opposed civil marriage and said that marriage in Israel should remain within halachic Judaism.[3]

In May 2022, Kahana resigned as minister and returned to the Knesset, explaining that he intended to strengthen the coalition.[16] His return meant that Yom Tov Kalfon ceased serving as a Knesset member, and Kahana subsequently served as deputy minister of religious services.[16] On June 6, the Knesset rejected his proposed return to the ministerial post in a tied vote of 55 in favor and 55 against; coalition member Idit Silman voted against the appointment.[17]

On November 4, 2021, the Knesset passed a law opening kashrut certification to competition, a central element of Kahana’s ministerial program.[3] Passed as part of the budget legislation, the reform was intended to end the Chief Rabbinate’s exclusive authority to certify businesses as kosher by allowing other rabbinic bodies to provide certification.[18] The legislation provided for a phased change rather than an immediate transfer to the full new system.[3]

Kahana had presented the plan with Finance Minister Avigdor Lieberman in 2021.[19] It envisaged private certification organizations meeting criteria set by the Chief Rabbinate, employing and supervising their own inspectors, and operating under a Rabbinate oversight body responsible for monitoring compliance.[19] The stated aims included improving service and religious standards, improving the employment conditions of inspectors, and reducing costs.[19] Under this arrangement, the Rabbinate would move away from directly certifying food toward regulating the bodies that provided certification.[18]

The interim stage permitted religious councils to issue certificates outside their own jurisdictions beginning in January 2022.[3] A subsequent stage was scheduled to permit private organizations to award certificates from January 2023.[3] The law did not authorize non-Orthodox kashrut certificates.[3] Its design therefore broadened the range of certification providers without extending certification authority to non-Orthodox religious movements.[3]

Implementation during 2022 remained partial.[15] Many local rabbis followed the Rabbinate’s call to preserve existing regional boundaries, and only a small number of businesses switched to another religious council.[15] The planned opening to private corporations had not yet been implemented in the 2022 end-of-term review.[15] By July of that year, the principal provisions were still scheduled for January 2023, and the reform’s eventual operation and success remained uncertain.[20]

Kahana sought to authorize municipal rabbis to establish conversion courts for people of Jewish descent who were not considered Jewish under religious law.[3] The proposal would broaden authority beyond the existing national conversion arrangements by enabling regional and municipal rabbinates to conduct state-recognized conversions.[2] It did not provide for non-Orthodox conversions.[3]

The proposed system retained a state framework, with common procedures, supervision, and uniform certificates.[21] Conversions were to follow Orthodox Jewish law, and Kahana said the Chief Rabbinate would retain an oversight role.[21] He presented the measure as a way to expand access within an Orthodox, state-run system rather than to establish a separate non-Orthodox route.[21] Among its intended beneficiaries were Israeli citizens from former Soviet Union countries who lacked the documentation required under the existing system.[22]

On December 29, 2021, the government postponed a vote after determining that the bill lacked sufficient support.[3] Kahana submitted a bill on January 12, 2022, but the government again postponed a vote on the broader reform on March 20 because it could not secure a Knesset majority.[22] He continued promoting conversion reform after leaving the cabinet in May.[22]

The conversion legislation did not pass during the parliamentary session in which Kahana sought to advance it.[15] The coalition’s loss of its majority following Idit Silman’s departure effectively halted the proposal.[15] An end-of-term assessment similarly found that neither the conversion proposal nor the proposal to change chief-rabbi elections had secured a Knesset majority before the coalition began to break apart.[15]

Kahana approved new rules for selecting and employing municipal rabbis, placing the selection process more clearly in local government’s hands.[23] The regulations established ten-year terms, renewable by the city council for additional ten-year periods, subject to an age limit of 70.[23] They also required women to comprise at least 40 percent of the body choosing a municipal rabbi and established a medical process for determining incapacity.[23] Kahana said the rules would help fill rabbinic positions that had remained vacant in some cities.[23]

Women’s participation in religious administration was another area of change.[22] In May 2022, Kahana issued regulations intended to ensure appropriate representation for women on religious councils, and the government reported that he appointed nine women as council chairwomen and 20 as co-chairs.[22] These steps followed a petition demanding appropriate representation; the Supreme Court dismissed the petition on August 8, 2022.[24]

A July 2022 account described the ministry as having appointed at least 11 women to head local religious councils.[20] These councils manage community services including ritual baths, kashrut supervisors, and religious burial societies.[20] Before Kahana’s tenure, only one woman had headed such a council, and she had been selected by local government rather than appointed by the minister.[20] Kahana also led passage of a law changing the committee that selects rabbinic judges: the 13-member body was required to include at least three women.[20] As of July 2022, no rabbinic judges had yet been appointed under the changed system.[20]

The ministry was assigned oversight of the 2022 Lag B’Omer celebrations at Mount Meron following the previous year’s deadly crowd disaster.[20] The event took place without deaths or serious injuries, although stringent attendance limits and other restrictions curtailed the festivities.[20] Kahana judged the outcome successful in terms of safety but unsuccessful in producing a joyful celebration.[20]

Before the November 2022 election, Kahana left Yamina and joined the National Unity Party led by Benny Gantz.[4] He was placed ninth on the party’s candidate slate and was elected to the 25th Knesset as Gadi Eisenkot’s reserved candidate.[4][25] He served on the National Unity list for three years.[25]

On July 1, 2025, a day after Eisenkot announced his departure, Kahana announced that he was leaving National Unity and the Knesset.[25] He formally submitted his parliamentary resignation that month.[26] At the time of his departure, he had represented the party’s right wing and had been in contact with former prime minister Naftali Bennett.[26]

For the 2026 election, Kahana occupied fifth place on Eisenkot’s Yashar! list.[5] The party submitted a 40-member slate to the Central Elections Committee.[27] After the final allocation of seats, Yashar! received 21 seats, and Kahana was among those elected to the 26th Knesset, which was scheduled to be sworn in on November 10, 2026.[5]

Kahana’s ministerial record included enacted changes to kashrut certification, municipal-rabbi selection, and women’s participation in religious administration, alongside conversion legislation that did not pass.[15] The different instruments used to advance those policies had different prospects for durability: the municipal-rabbi rules rested on a ministerial decision and could, in principle, be changed by a successor.[15]

That possibility was realized in 2024, when Religious Services Minister Michael Malchieli of Shas repealed Kahana’s ten-year term arrangement for city rabbis.[28] In July 2026, the Knesset also repealed the kashrut reform, restoring the Chief Rabbinate’s authority after the reform had sought to permit additional certifiers under its supervision.[1] The municipal-rabbi reversal affected that part of Kahana’s regulations rather than establishing that every administrative change made during his tenure had been repealed.[28] His conversion proposal, meanwhile, remained an unpassed initiative when the coalition lost the parliamentary support needed to advance it.[15]

Within his own account of the reforms, broader access to religious services was to operate together with adherence to halacha and the strengthening of Israel’s Jewish identity.[14] The kashrut and conversion plans both retained Orthodox boundaries, while the administrative measures expanded women’s representation in religious councils and selection bodies.[3][22]

The Chief Rabbinate and Haredi political opponents strongly resisted Kahana’s conversion and kashrut proposals.[19][2] Supporters of conversion decentralization argued that it would expand halachic options for Israelis of Jewish descent, while opponents objected to transferring authority and raised concerns about standards.[2] Chief Rabbi David Lau warned that the conversion proposal could divide Jews, and the Chief Rabbis warned that conversions conducted without their approval would not be recognized by them and other rabbis.[18][29] On kashrut, the Chief Rabbinate objected to private bodies issuing certificates, while coalition member Alon Tal criticized the exclusion of non-Orthodox groups.[3][19]

In December 2021, an unidentified religious extremist group called for Kahana’s killing, and the Shin Bet considered the threat an immediate danger and ordered protection for him.[3] Press accounts linked the threat to his conversion and kashrut reforms, disputes over an egalitarian prayer space at the Western Wall, and his participation in a government that excluded ultra-Orthodox parties.[3]

Speaking to high school students in June 2022, Kahana said that if he could press a button placing all Arabs on a train to Switzerland, he would.[22] He subsequently explained that his intended point concerned coexistence: both Jewish and Arab populations were not going anywhere.[22]