Menachem Porush

Menachem Porush (, 2 April 1916 – 22 February 2010) was an Israel politician who served as a member of the Knesset for Agudat Yisrael and its alliances between 1959 and 1975, and again from 1977 until 1994. Biography Early life Porush, a seventh-generation Jerusalemite, was born in Jerusalem in 1916 to Rabbi Moshe Glickman-Porush, and studied at the Etz Chaim Yeshiva. In 1932 he was expelled from Etz Chaim for unseemly conduct at a Purim party, where he allegedly slighted chief rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook. (He later stated that he did not know ahead of time that Rabbi Kook would be denigrated in the Purim play.) After that he went abroad to work as a correspondent for Orthodox Jewish publications, returning in 1938. By 1949, he had become assistant editor of the newspaper Kol Yisrael. In 1954 he became a member of the Agudat Yisrael Center in Israel, and a member of the Executive of the World Agudath Israel. In 1955, he was appointed chairman of the Agudat Yisrael Center in Israel. During this time, Porush also founded Children's Town to promote Jewish education and combat missionary influence. 1959-1994 In 1959, he was elected for the first time to the Knesset on the Religious Torah Front list, an alliance of Agudat Yisrael and Poalei Agudat Yisrael. He was re-elected in 1961, 1965 and 1969. Between 1969 and 1974 he also served as deputy head of the Jerusalem City Council, and in 1973 he established Kiryat HaYeled, an educational center for Haredi children.