Carving Out Hanukkah in Mizoram

(November 26) If placed on a table, you would have to stand on a ladder to light it. If put on the floor, you might have to bend a bit. It’s Isaiah Bawithang’s latest hanukiyyah or Hanukkah menorah, and although it was made in Aizawl, the capital of Mizoram, one of India’s remotest states, it could hold its own in any exhibit of modern Judaica.

“I‘ve been involved with woodworking all my life,” Isaiah, a member of Aizawl’s Khovevei Zion synagogue, told our correspondent. “I’ve never taken a single class or lesson in it, but it was a hobby since childhood. My father noticed my love of carpentry early on, and while he himself didn’t know much about it, he bought me all the tools and materials that I needed. By the time I was in my early twenties, I was a serious carpenter.”

Isaiah was born in 1959 in Vankal, a small village in the Champhai district of central Mizoram. When he was still a boy, his family moved to the larger, nearby town of Kawlkulh, where he still maintains a residence alongside a second home in Aizawl. For many years he ran a cattle farm there, an occupation he gave up after formally adopting Judaism in 2014. “Raising cattle calls for long-term investment,” he says. “You have to plan years ahead. Since we’ve begun living Jewishly, all our thoughts are of moving to Israel. It’s only there that we can perform all the commandments of Judaism in a proper and thorough manner. You can’t operate a farm while waiting to leave it on a moment’s notice. We haven’t even kept up our house in Kawlkulh, which is in a dilapidated state. There’s no point in sinking money into it with Aliyah always on the horizon.”

Like all B’nei Menashe of his generation, Isaiah, whose given Mizo name is Lalthanga, came to Judaism via Christianity. For many years he was active in various branches of The Church of God, a Messianic denomination that emphasizes Christianity’s Jewish roots. It was under the influence of his three children, the twins Samuel and Ruth, born in 1990, and Esther, who followed eight years later, that he decided to conclude the journey to Judaism that his Christianity had begun. “I’ve always had a strong religious bent,” he says. “Riches and wealth never meant anything to me. I might even have become a clergyman were it not that, growing up in a rural pocket of Mizoram, I had no access to education and never went beyond third grade. But I was active as a lay leader in the church and even served as chairman of the Champhai division of The Church of God Seventh Day. When I finally opted for Judaism, my fellow Christians couldn’t believe it and refused to accept my resignation even after I returned my chairman’s seal!”

Making Jewish ritual objects is not something Isaiah does just for his own satisfaction. “Such items have to be brought from Israel and we B’nei Menashe in Mizoram can’t easily acquire them,” he says.

Other Hanukiyyot made by Isaiah.

“Shavei Israel, the organization that pretends to be responsible for us, doesn’t provide them and our community loses out on the opportunity to fulfill the commandments that depend on them. I’m using my skills for it, too. I don’t make only hanukiyyot. I also carve mezuzahs, which are otherwise too expensive for most people to .buy. It’s true that they don’t meet halakhic requirements, because we don’t have an authorized Torah scribe to write their verses, but it’s better than nothing. We try to follow the commandments as much as possible. We know that Mizoram isn’t the ideal place to practice Judaism. That’s why our hearts are always in Israel.”

Isaiah Bawithang is one of the few B’nei Menashe in Mizoram who has been willing to speak out against Shavei Israel openly. In Manipur, the anti-Shavei forces are much stronger. “But now that the injustices and corruption of Shavei Israel are coming to light,” he declares, “things are beginning to change here, too. I call on every one of us who has a voice to speak out, so that our Aliyah can be conducted in a free and fair manner. We can’t afford to wait for it any longer, as Shavei Israel has made us do. Most of us here in Mizoram have trouble finding work due to anti-B’nei Menashe discrimination and we’re constantly meeting with ridicule and contempt from the Christian public. Aliyah is an urgent matter for us.”

And Isaiah’s latest creation? It’s indeed meant to stand on the floor. “There’s a group of us B’nei Menashe here in Aizawl who are close neighbors,” he relates. “Or at least we’re close in local terms – we all live within two kilometers of each other, measured up and down hills. Although we’ll be lighting Hanukkah candles in our own homes, we’ll also be meeting every evening to light them together. For that we need a big Hanukkiya that we can all stand around. It will add to the festive spirit.”

B’nei Menashe Come From All Over To Demonstrate

(November 18) They came from Kiryat Arba -- and there would have been more of them had not a last-minute Corona quarantine kept some back. They came from Sderot. They came from Bet-El. They came all the way from Tiberias, and Bet-She’an, and Ma’alot. They almost came from Nitzan, a carload from which got lost in the streets of Tel Aviv and never made it. They came from all over when, for the first time in its history the B’nei Menashe community of Israel turned out to demonstrate for its rights.

A demonstrator holds sign saying: “Minister Tamao-Shata: How Long Will You Ignore us?”

The over 50 B’nei Menashe demonstrators gathered shortly after 1 p.m. on Thursday, November 11, in front of the Tel Aviv offices of the Ministry of Immigration and Absorption, against whom the protest was partly aimed. Its other target was Shavei Israel, the Jerusalem-based private organization to which Israel’s government has, for the past 17 years, outsourced the B’nei Menashe’s Aliyah from India. Shavei Israel’s monopoly on the handling of this Aliyah has led, it has been repeatedly charged, to numerous abuses. These range, the allegations go, from financial corruption to playing favorites in the composition of Aliyah lists, which have been used to reward Shavei’s supporters and punish its opponents, thus turning the B’nei Menashe’s Aliyah into a weapon for the exertion of organizational power and control. And though frequently informed of these abuses, it is claimed, the Ministry of Immigration, which is comfortable with an arrangement that produces some immigrants while making few demands on it, has looked the other way.

The demonstrators carried Hebrew placards stating their grievances. One read: “An Entire Community Held Hostage By A Private NGO: Can It Be?” Another asked“Minister [Pnina] Tamano-Shata: How Long Will You Ignore us?” A third declared: “We Want Our Rabbis!” This referred to the fact that while the B’nei Menashe community now has three ordained rabbis of its own, all graduates of Israeli yeshivas, Shavei Israel has shunned them and preferred to bring in paid and easily manipulated able rabbis of its own to vet the Jewish practice of prospective B’nei Menashe immigrants.

At center, Miri Regev with B’nei Menashe Council Chairman Lalam Hangshing, visiting Israel from Manipur. At right (with black hat), Mangsat Kipgen, holding flyer.

The placard that garnered the most attention read “Free Shavei Israel’s Prisoners of Zion!” and bore the photographs of B’nei Menashe said to have been blackballed by Shavei Israel and denied Aliyah by it for long years.

“Prisoner of Zion” placard.

Flyers telling their stories were distributed to the journalists who were present and to passers-by. One of them was handed out by Natan Mangsat Kipgen, 81, of Kiryat Arba, who has not seen four of his children and 22 of his grandchildren, all living in Manipur, since his immigration to Israel in 2003; they were left behind, the flyer explained, in retaliation for their continuing to use the Ashenazi liturgy they were used to rather than the Sephardic one introduced by Shavei Israel when it seized control of the Aliyah process. “I’ve suffered from the separation all this time” Mangsat told listeners.

Placard on right says: “An Entire Community Held Hostage By A Private NGO: Can it be?”

“This demonstration has finally given me a chance to be heard after nearly twenty years.”

Yehuda Mate, 42, also of Kiryat Arba, agreed.” This is the first time Bnei Menashe have come forward to make public the injustices that have been inflicted on us by Shavei Israel and the government institutions that support it,” he said. “We’ve let ourselves be exploited by Shavei because we’re a quiet people, but just because we haven’t shouted our problems from the rooftops doesn’t mean they don’t exist.” The B’nei Menashe demonstrators were joined by a group of Israelis of Indian origin, who came to show their solidarity.

Demonstrators with sign saying: “Indian Jews in Israel Support B’nei Menashe’s Struggle”

One, Elias Dandekar of Binyamina, our Newsletter: "As a scion of the Bene Israel, one of the diverse Indian Jewish groups in Israel, I’m shocked by what the B’nei Menashe have had to go through. It’s time the government lent an ear and freed them from their subjugation to Shavei Israel. It’s an honor to stand together with them in a peaceful protest full of soul and song.”

The singing, which included the B’nei Menashe anthem Ka Thange, Ka Thange and Chavang Kolni, a traditional song of longing for Zion, long-standing favorites, brought workers of the Ministry to their windows, They ran to them again when, over an hour into the demonstration, ranking Likud Knesset member Miri Regev, Israel’s former minister of culture and, more recently, of transportation, appeared to express her support. Regev, a vocal supporter of the B’nei Menashe community, spoke to the demonstrators and assured them that she would do everything to see to it that their grievances were addressed. It was unacceptable, she said, for their Aliyah to be in the hands of a private organization and she would fight to have it transferred to the government, which was responsible for the immigration of all other groups to Israel.

Miri Regev addresses demonstration.

No official from the Ministry of Immigration came to speak to the demonstrators, who were turned back when they sought to enter the building. Although promised that the written material they had with them would be passed on to ministry personnel, there was, a week later, still no response to it.

The demonstration ended with the singing of Hatikvah.

First-Ever B’nei Menashe Demonstration in Israel Held in Tel Aviv

(November 12) A demonstration protesting Shavei Israel’s monopoly on B’nei Menashe Aliyah, and the complicity in it of the Ministry of Aliyah and Absorption, was held in Tel Aviv yesterday in front of the ministry’s offices on Esther ha-Malkah Street. Following similar demonstrations in Manipur and Mizoram, the gathering marked the first time that Israel’s B’nei Menashe have turned out to register their anger at the outsourcing of their Aliyah to a private organization that has repeatedly abused its power over them. Over 50 demonstrators were in attendance. A full account of the event, which featured an appearance by Knesset member and former cabinet minister Miri Regev, will appear in next week’s Newsletter.

A group of demonstrators. Center, Miri Regev. To the left of her, B’nei Menashe Council chairman Lalam Hangshing, on a visit to Israel from Manipur.