“This Is The First Time That I Have Heard Of These Allegations”: Is He To Be Believed?

(January 23) In a dramatic announcement made over the B’nei Menashe Facebook site Menashe Hayom, Shavei Israel founder and chairman Michael Freund has professed shock at learning of the 2016 rape in Manipur of a B’nei Menashe child by a fellow member of the community.

Michael Freund’s Facebook post.

“This is the first time,” Freund declared, “that I have heard of these allegations and if there is any truth to them, they are simply horrifying.”

“Given the seriousness of these accusations,” Freund went on in his Facebook post, “I cannot remain silent, and I am writing to you, the leaders of the community, in both Israel and India, to request that you please send me a full and detailed account as soon as possible in order to clarify what occurred.”

Can Michael Freund really never have heard prior to this week of the rape of the eight-year-old? “There are really only two possibilities,” says Yitzhak Thangjom, executive director of Degel Menashe. “Either Freund is lying, or else he is living on the moon.”

The case of Sarah Baite and her daughter, Thangjom told our Newsletter, should have come to Michael Freund’s attention in the summer of 2020 when Sarah asked Degel Menashe to forward to Israel’s minister of immigration and absorption Pnina Tamano-Shata an English translation of a letter she had written to her.

Sarah Baite.

“In late August of that year,” says Thangjom, “I personally handed Sarah’s letter, which told the story of her daughter’s rape and Shavei Israel’s attempted silencing of it, to Almog Moscowitz, a senior aide at the ministry, with the request that he pass it on to Tamano-Shata along with many other complaints against Shavei. Then, afraid that it might get lost among so many documents, I emailed it to Moscowitz separately in early September. It was understood that he would convey it not only to the minister but to Michael Freund and Shavei as well.”

Thangjom says he can only assume that this was done. But even if Moscowitz was derelict in his duty, he says, “Freund should already have known about the rape of Sarah Baite’s daughter two years earlier, in 2018.” That, he states, was when Ohaliav Haokip, today General Secretary of Manipur’s B’nei Menashe Council, sent an 18-page letter to Freund, via Laura Ben-David, Shavei Israel’s Director of Marketing, detailing the many flagrant offenses of Shavei’s Manipur leadership.

From Ohaliav Haokip’s letter to Michael Freund.

An entire page of this letter, with photographs of Sarah Baite and her daughter’s alleged rapist, was prominently devoted to the incident. “It’s highly unlikely,” says Thangjom, “that Ben-David failed to transmit such a serious and damning letter to Freund, even though Haokip never received an answer. I don’t know whether Michael Freund didn’t think it worth responding to or whether he simply threw it in the trash without reading it.”

And yet, Thangjom asks, even if Sarah Baite’s story failed to reach Michael Freund by means of either Almog Moscowitz or Laura Ben-David, is it conceivable that Shavei Israel’s chairman was not aware in the past month of the December 23 debate in Israel’s Knesset between MK Miri Regev and Minister of Immigration Pnina Tamano-Shata, in which Regev accused Shavei, among other things, of covering up rape?

Regev and Tamano-Shata in Knesset.

“The YouTube video of the debate went viral among the B’nei Menashe,” Thangjom says. “It had over 2,500 viewers. Can it be that the whole B’nei Menashe community knew about it and that only Michael Freund didn’t? If he’s telling the truth, it can only mean that he isn’t remotely in touch with the community that his organization is supposed to be serving. In that case, I suggest that Shavei Israel find itself a new chairman. And I also have a suggestion for Freund regarding his appeal for ‘a full and detailed account’ of what happened to Sarah Baite and her daughter. Let him begin by reading what Ohaliav Haokip wrote to him in 2018. If he no longer has a copy of it, I’ll be glad to provide him with one.”

The Cat Is Out Of The Bag

A Degel Menashe Editorial

(January 23) One of Degel Menashe’s greatest difficulties has been to document its accusation that Shavei Israel systematically uses its control of B’nei Menashe Aliyah as a club with which to keep the B’nei Menashe community in line. Although it’s no secret that Shavei does this all the time, promising Aliyah to its followers and threatening to withhold it from its critics and their families, it has always done this carefully by means of whispers, innuendos, and word of mouth alone. Neither the promises nor the threats have ever been put in writing, thus making it possible for Shavei to deny that it makes use of them. Now, the cat is out of the bag.

The “cat” is a January 21 Facebook post in the Kuki language by Eliezer Baite, who holds the official position of Shavei Israel Information Secretary. Writing in the Shavei Facebook site Menashe Chate Kadam Na Uve, of which he is the moderator, Baite, who is not related to Sarah Baite, addressed the growing outrage in the B’nei Menashe community at the story, recently come to light, of how Shavei Israel leaders in Manipur sought to suppress the 2016 rape by one of their cronies of Sarah’s daughter Nelhoithem. Whoever joins in denouncing Shavei’s appalling handling of the incident, Eliezer Baite sought to make clear, will never make Aliyah. Here, translated into English, is an excerpt from his remarks:

“Aliyah is not something that can be yours just because you wish it to be. I am telling you this for your information, brothers. You need to be strong in your religion, because all of you who indulge in hearsay and say horrible things about Shavei must know that if you continue, you will not come [to Israel]….If you say bad things about your leader and do not listen to him, don't ever hope to enter the Holy Land….If you still don't understand me, [let me say that] if you want to share someone else’s food, you had better please him and not go about complaining and telling others that it’s too strongly spiced or makes you want to puke…. Your mistake [if you do this] will be like a flame at the edge of your clothing that will quickly engulf you. You’ll know it was a mistake when you never enter the holy land all the days of your life.

“And yet if you realize your mistake in time and come to us with repentance, you can be forgiven.

“Obedience to the leader is the beginning of wisdom.

“I am saying this because I love and care for you.”

Moderator, Menashe Chate Kadam Na Uve

Eliezer Baite

Eliezer Baite's Facebook post.

Thank you for your love, Eliezer. And for telling the truth about Shavei and its leader to whom obedience is owed, though he wrote in a Facebook post of his own this week (see today’s story “Is He To Be Believed?), “I realize the fact that the B’nei Menashe community is independent and has its own institutions.” Because of you, we now at last have Shavei’s idea of B’nei Menashe independence in writing. Don’t think we’re not grateful.

B’nei Menashe Join Indian Jewry At Malida Celebration

(January 20) When Ronia Lunkhel rose to address the audience at this year’s Malida celebration, she was the first representative of the B’nei Menashe to do so. Considering that Malida as an official celebration is only three years old, this may not seem like much. Yet it marked one more stage in the growing recognition of the B’nei Menashe as an integral part of Israel’s community of Jews from India.

Malida, originally the name of a rice-and-fruit dish served by Indian Jews on festive occasions, and consequently of such occasions themselves, has now joined other ethnic celebrations such as the Moroccan Maimouna and the Ethiopian Sigd as an annual day in the Israeli calendar, one coinciding with the holiday of Tu b’Shvat.

Malida: the original dish.

Largely the creation of two Israelis of Indian background, Ilana Shazor, a social worker from Hadera, and Elias Dandekar, a writer and historian from Binyamina, the annual Malida was celebrated this week in Jerusalem. The 200 guests who attended an evening of Indian food, dance, and music, and had a choice of lectures given in adjacent rooms, came from what have traditionally been considered India’s three distinct Jewries: the Bene Israel of the subcontinent’s west coast, the Cochin Jews of its southern tip, and the Baghdadi Jews of Bombay and Calcutta. To these has now been added as a fourth group: the B’nei Menashe of the northeastern states of Mizoram and Manipur. Still an unknown quantity to many Israelis, they were the subject of Ronia Lunkhel’s talk.

A Malida dance performance.

“Not many people in this country know of our history,” our Newsletter was told by Ronia, a 29-year-old student of traditional Chinese medicine who came to Israel as a one-year-old with her family, grew up in Kiryat Arba, and lives today in the Galilee. “I felt that it was both a privilege and an obligation to tell the Malida guests about us, about why we are here in the land of Israel, and about how our story has influenced me personally. Some of them weren’t easily convinced by my explanation of who we were and asked hard questions. Even though I had prepared for these, I didn’t know all the answers, which has made me determined to learn more. My hope is that we B’nei Menashe can learn to live in this country as full Israelis without losing our roots in ancient tribe of Israel.”

The Melida guests.

Some knowledge of the B’nei Menashe, says Isaac Ashkenazi, an Indian-born resident of Ra’anana who was one of the Malida guests, has long existed among at least some Indian Jews. As a child in a Baghdadi Jewish congregation in Calcutta, he recalls, “I remember sitting in our synagogue on a Jewish holiday when three or four families of B’nei Menashe walked in. My father, who was the synagogue’s sexton, welcomed them and gave them prayer books. It was a new experience for me to see people like them at Jewish prayer.”

But Ashkenazi, who would appear to be referring to a group of pre-B’nei Menashe Judaizers from Mizoram who visited Calcutta in search of a Jewish connection (the B’nei Menashe movement itself did not take shape until the mid-1970s), adds that at first Indian Jewry was wary of the B’nei Menashe and doubted their Jewishness, and that in Israel, too, it had little contact with them until the last decade, after they had been making Aliyah for twenty years. “The turning point,” he says, “was in 2010 when the Indian Jewish Heritage Center organized an event for the specific purpose of introducing the B’nei Menashe to the Indian community in Israel. But the B’nei Menashe have also become more interested in contacts with us over the years. The first generation of them in Israel was too involved in adjusting to a new world have room in its life for such a thing. It was the second generation that looked about and became aware that there were other Jews from India in Israel just as we were becoming aware of them.”

Concern about the B’nei Menashe’s Jewish bona fides has long since vanished among Indian Jews, according to Elias Dandekar.

Elias Dandekar.

“After all,” he says, “all of us Jews from India go far back in history. We may look different from one another and from other Jews in Israel, but the same blood flows in our veins.” And there are in addition, says Ilana Shazor, psychological and behavioral traits that other Jews from India have in common with the B’nei Menashe. “Although the differences between Cochin and Maharashtra [the home of most of the Bene Israel] are enormous,” she observes, “there’s a basic Indian spirit in both. There’s the same downplaying of the individual self. The B’nei Menashe have it also. Put two of them in a class of aggressive Israelis at school and you’ll at once see how Indian they are. We Bene Israel and Cochini Jews were like that, too, when we first came to Israel. We’ve lost a lot of it since then, and the B’nei Menashe remind us of how we were.”

As a fellow Indian Jew, Ilana says, she feels a special responsibility to the B’nei Menashe and a desire to help them in their adjustment to Israel.

Ilana Shazor.

“It’s embarrassing to see them being treated in the same way as immigrants like my parents were back in the 1950s,” she says. “All the red tape and uncaring bureaucracy are still there. I think of it as my duty to help them in their absorption process.” Elias Dandekar, who took part two months ago in a B’nei Menashe demonstration in front of the Ministry of Immigration’s offices in Tel Aviv, says of it, “We’re all from India and we have to march together.”

This was also the sentiment of yet another Malida guest, Avner Isaacs of Rosh ha-Ayin, who was two years old when his Bene Israel family immigrated to Israel from Mumbai. “For me, they’re not only Jews in every sense of the word,” he said, “they’re also my brothers and sisters as Indians. I think that all Indian Jewish organizations in Israel need to help them find solutions for their problems. I feel personally committed to this.”

So does Ilana Shazor, who also took part in the Tel Aviv demonstration. “When I heard that the B’nei Menashe were having problems with a private organization [Shavei Israel] into whose hands they had fallen,” she relates “I decided to give them my support. That’s why I saw to it that one of their young people was invited to speak at this year’s Malida celebration. It was important for Ronia to be heard. She explained things in the best possible way.”