Emanuel Cahana was born in Bohush, Romania, in 1929. His parents, Leon and Clara, were educated Jews who were members of the local Zionist community and the owners of a well-known delicatessen. During World War II, German Nazis entered the family home, destroying and shattering its contents. They took the family out to the yard, and stood them against the wall in order to shoot them to death. At the last minute, Leon managed to convince a Nazi commander who happened to arrive at the site to let them go, in return for a significant reward. This terrible trauma changed the course of the surviving family’s life, which they rebuilt in Bucharest.  

Cahana was creative since childhood. He was a self-taught craftsman who learned how to build a wooden bicycle and a refrigerator, and created paper lettering for youth-movement posters. In Bucharest, he enrolled in the Academy of Fine Arts. The extensive curriculum included a range of techniques, among them painting, sculpture, drawing, printing and draftsmanship. In the Shomer Hatzair youth movement, he met Marta (nee Levinson). “We would meet there to listen to music and play chess,” she recalls. “He was 22, and I was 18.” In 1954, the two married in secret, fearing anti-Semitic harassment from the communist regime. 

In 1958, Emanuel and Marta managed to flee Romania via Vienna and Italy, immigrating to Israel on board the ship “Artza.” Following in the footsteps of Emanuel’s parents, who had immigrated to the country several years earlier, they arrived at Kibbutz Gan Shmuel, and a short time later moved to live in Bat Yam with his parents. Marta pursued the medical studies she had begun in Romania, and Emanuel sought work as a graphic designer. As new immigrants with an academic background, they were allotted an apartment in a housing project in Holon. They worked and studied, read and listened to classical music, and in the evenings frequented the movies, at a dizzying speed of several films a week. “We saw all the American movies,” Marta recounts. “We had already seen the Russian ones in Romania.” Emanuel even grew a vegetable garden in the yard surrounding their apartment building. 

Cahana had a lucky strike, and within a short period of time found work in one of that period’s most important advertising agencies – Bass Advertising. At the agency, he began using local methods of photography, retouching and collage to create advertisements. Several months later, an acquaintance introduced him to Haim Peled, a talented advertiser at the onset of his career. In 1961, Peled and Cahana became partners in the Peled Agency, which gained prominence in the world of advertising. A decade later, their paths parted, and Peled continued to run the office, gradually transitioning to public work. 

Immediately after parting with Peled, Cahana received an offer to work as the head graphic designer for the INSERT NAME advertising agency. There he met INSERT NAME, and the two decided to embark on an independent path. In 1978, they established the Cahana INSERT advertising agency, where they worked with Elisheva Lemel, a young and talented graphic designer. Several years later, INSERT left to take the coveted position of President of the Advertising Association. Cahana continued to run the office, working as both a graphic designer and an advertiser, an unusual phenomenon in the local advertising world. 

In the late 1990s, Emmanuel Cahana retired and moved his studio to his home. He continued to work with several companies, and began producing children’s toys and hangers featuring illustrations. During these years, he finally had time to tend to his numerous collections (stamps, design items, Israeli art), listen to music, and enjoy his love of cooking. He edited the family photo albums, which document the history of the family since the 19th century, restored antiquarian books and repaired old radios.

Emanuel Cahana died in 2013.