Eliyahu-Moshe Ganhovsky

Eliyahu-Moshe Ganhovsky (Hebrew: אליהו-משה גנחובסקי‎‎, 23 June 1901 – 19 July 1971) was an Israeli politician and Religious Zionist activist. He served as a member of the Knesset from 1949 until 1955.

Biography

Born in Grajewo in the Łomża Governorate of Congress Poland (then part of the Russian Empire), he studied at a rabbinical seminary in Berlin. In 1923 he was amongst the founders of the Religious Shomer and Religious Pioneer groups. In 1926, he helped organise the Young Mizrachi and League for the Religious Worker groups in Antwerp, and in 1929 became vice-president of the Belgian Zionist Federation.

In 1932 he made aliyah to Mandatory Palestine. The following year, he became a member of Mizrachi's World Central Committee, a position he held until 1942. He was also a member of the executive committee of Hapoel HaMizrachi, a founder of the Mizrachi-affiliated HaTzofe newspaper, and was part of the El Makor faction which advocated political activism.

He was elected to the first Knesset in 1949 on the United Religious Front list (an alliance of the four major religious parties), and was re-elected in 1951, when Hapoel HaMizrachi ran an independent list. He lost his seat in the 1955 elections, and died in 1971.