KAHAN FAMILY
The Kahans are among the families that claim descent from King David through Aaron, the older brother of Moses. After the Exodus from Egypt, Aaron became the High Priest (Kohen Gadol). His male descendants were Kohanim, members of a priestly caste who were separated from the rest of the Jewish people by their religious role and the laws they were required to observe. According to oral tradition and some written histories, the Kahan family is descended from one of four leading families from the tribe of Yehuda (Mishevet Yehuda family), who were among the 5,000 or so captives that Titus brought to Rome after destroying the Second Temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD.
Scholars long believed that the Kahan family is descended from the Tapuchim family, who “Latinized” their name to DePomis. (Tapuach is the Hebrew word for apple.) David ben Isaac de Pomis (1525-93) of Spoleto, a rabbi and physician who received his medical degree from the University of Perugia in 1551, was a well-known member of this family. More recent information suggests that the Kahan family were not Tapuchim but descendants of the Anav family, who were brought to Rome as were Haadumin and Hazekanim. The Adumin family became DeRossi, and the Anavi, also called Anau in Rome, took the name DeNonsi. The Anav and Kalonymus families founded the yeshiva in Rome during the 8th or 9th centuries.
Detail from the Arch of Titus depicts the menorah and other items captured by the Romans when they sacked the Temple in Jerusalem.
Yechiel ben Abraham Anav was the head of the Yeshiva of Rome in the mid-11th century. His son, Natan ben Yechiel, (1035-1106), the chief rabbi of Rome and head of the Rome yeshiva, has been identified as the first of our ancestors who used the Kahan name. Natan haRomi, as he was known, was the author of the Talmudic dictionary HaAruch, which he completed 15 Kislev 1105. Because of this accomplishment he earned the title Baal haAruch. In his youth, Natan lived in the Provence area of France, where he was a disciple of Rabbi Moshe haDarshan, the earliest known Talmudic scholar from this part of Europe.
The portico of Octavia’s market on Via Portico d’Ottavia, the main street in Rome’s Jewish quarter
Natan's grandson Yehiel ben Avraham, the Gaon of Rome, was a confidant and financial minister to the Pope in Rome. One of his daughters was an ancestor of the Heller family, which included well-known Rabbis Yom Tov Lipman Heller and Yehuda ben Yosef Heller-Kahana, considered to be the first rabbi of Sziget, Hungary.