(November 12) The month of October saw the opening of new Hebrew schools, the first of their kind in years, in Aizawl, the capital of Mizoram, and Churachandpur, the second largest city in Manipur, the two large B’nei Menashe centers in northeast India. Both schools are being supported financially by Degel Menashe, with the help of the Jewish Federation of New Mexico.
Classes in the Aizawl school began the first week of October, we were told by Asaf Renthlei, the school’s director and at the moment single teacher. Since then, they have met every Sunday from 10 am to 2 pm. Plans to expand them to weekday evenings, Renthlei hopes, will soon be implemented.
So far, Renthlei reports, the Aizawl school has 15 students, all adults. “Its four Sunday hours are divided into four sessions,” he explained. “The first deals with the basics of Judaism and Torah, with a special emphasis on the weekly Torah portion. The second is devoted to Hebrew, beginning with acquiring a command of the Hebrew alphabet and the ability to read Hebrew words, so that they can be followed in the prayer book, plus a knowledge of basic Hebrew vocabulary. In the third hour, we discuss Shabbat, the Jewish holidays, and other practices of Judaism, while in the last we talk about the differences between Judaism and Christianity. “
This division, Renthlei emphasizes, is not a rigid one. “When questions come up in any of the four sessions, we’ll often pursue them even if they’re not strictly related to that session’s subject. I feel it’s important to satisfy the students’ thirst for knowledge, and to let it take us wherever it does.”
In Manipur’s Rav Eliyahu Avichail (z'l) School, named for the revered rabbi who bought traditional Judaism to northeast India in the 1980s and90s classes began in October’s second week. Nearly 30 students, ranging from eight-year-olds to adults, meet every Monday through Thursday from 6 to 8 pm, and on Sunday from 10 to 1:30, at Churachandpur’s Beit Shalom synagogue. Their two instructors, Gideon Lhouvum and Simeon Touthang, teach on alternate days. Here, too, the emphasis is on basic Hebrew and the fundamentals of Judaism, although plans are afoot to expand the curriculum to include secular subjects as well, such as English, arithmetic, and the sciences. As more students join, separate classes will be formed for the different age groups, but at the moment, a “little red schoolhouse” arrangement prevails in which all ages mingle and study together.
(November 12) Lunsat Shmida Chongloi, 30, a member of Churachandpur’s B’nei Menashe community, was found dead on a street of the city on Friday, November 5. The cause of death was unclear. Whereas B’nei Menashe social media in Manipur speculated that it might have been a drug overdose, Lunsat’s father, Na’aman Chongloi, a resident of the northern Israeli city of Safed, told our newspaper that it was a stroke due to high blood pressure.
“Lunsat was a substance abuser in the past,” we were told by Na’aman, who immigrated to Israel with his wife and two younger children in 2014. “He had been in a chronic state of depression ever since having been parted from his family by Shavei Israel when it refused to let him join our Aliyah. The reason for the refusal was petty and mean. When Shavei announced that it was holding interviews for the 2014 group of olim, Lunsat, who had been working far away in Bangalore, gave up his job and hurried home to Churachandput to sit for them.
“Unfortunately,” Na’aman continued,” when Lunsat reached Assam, from which he planned to continue to Manipur, ethnic riots broke out and paralyzed transportation. He was delayed, and by the time he reached Churachandpur, the interviews, which the rest of our family passed successfully, were over. We begged Tsvi Khaute, Shavei Israel’s coordinator, to make an exception for Lunsat, since he missed his interview through no fault of his own, but Khaute refused. He was adamant. The one ray of home he could offer us, he said, was to include Lunsat in the next round of interviews, which would take place as soon as a new Aliyah group was formed. We left for Israel without him, trusting that he soon would follow us.”
And yet when such a group was formed a year later, in 2015, Lunsat was not invited to be interviewed for it as promised. “That broke his spirits,” Na’aman said. “We’re a close family and he missed us terribly. On top of that, he couldn’t find a decent job in Churachandpur, where employment opportunities are limited. He was out of work, and I had to send him hard-earned money from Israel to support him. To escape his depression, he turned to drink, and from there he went on to drugs.”
According to Na’aman, however, the immediate cause of his son’s death was neither alcohol nor drugs. “Lunsat had a change of heart half a year ago,” Na’man said. “He told us then that he had had enough. He was turning 30, he said, and wanted to mend his ways and find a B’nei Menashe wife to start a family with. We were very happy to hear that, and we managed to find him a suitable match with a B’nei Menashe girl whose family originally came from Nagaland, as did ours. They were married three months ago.”
Lunsat found dead.
Since his marriage, Na’aman said, Lunsat was a changed person. “He stopped the drugs and alcohol and was clean. He also returned to a full observance of Judaism, donning tefillin every morning and never missing a single one of the three daily prayer services. But by then his health had been ruined by his years of unhealthy living and he was suffering from high blood pressure.
“It was the blood pressure that led to the stroke. But that was only what killed him medically speaking. If this would have happened. He would have been alive and healthy instead of dead on a Churachandpur street. For that, we have Shavei Israel to thank.”
The family rises from its shiva in Safed today, November 12.
(October 28) As attention shifted from the 250 B’nei Menashe who arrived in Israel earlier this month, the last of 722 cleared for Aliyah in 2015, to future groups yet to come, the private Jerusalem-based organization Shavei Israel has acted quickly to assert its continued control over these groups’ composition. Despite past assurances from officials in the Jewish Agency and the Ministry of Immigration and Absorption that they would from now on curb Shavei’s unlimited freedom to choose or reject whatever Aliyah candidates it pleased, there was no sign of these promises being kept.
Shavei’s attempt to create incontrovertible facts on the ground started with its B’nei Menashe Coordinator Tsvi Khaute’s visit to Manipur in late September, when the group of 250 was organizing to leave for Israel.
Tsvi Khaute in Mizoram in 2020.
While there, Khaute distributed a “Benei [sic!] Menashe Shavei Israel Aliyah Interview Candidates Form for the year 5782/2021” to most of Manipur’s B’nei Menashe congregations. This form had a line for each candidate with space for his or her name, sex, date of birth, marital status, Indian ID card number, and date of embracing Judaism. At its bottom was space for the signature and seal of the congregation’s Chairman and Secretary.
Notably, Khaute did not distribute the forms to the four congregations of Petach Tikva, Pejang, Saikul, and Phalbung, all of which have been at odds with Shavei Israel for years and are on its “Aliyah blacklist.” The main reason for Shavei’s boycott of them has been their refusal to adopt the Sefardic rite of prayer in place of the Ashkenazi one now practiced by Manipur’s other B’nei Menashe communities. (Originally introduced in the 1980s by Rabbi Eliyahu Avichayi, the original bringer of Orthodox Judaism to Manipur, the Ashkenazi rite was banned by Shavei as a demonstration of its power after it won an organizational battle for control of the B’nei Menashe community in 2003-4.)
“Khaute’s flagrant discrimination against these four communities, which continues long-standing Shavei policy, is appalling,” said Yitzhak Thangjom, Executive Director, Degel Menashe, in speaking to our Newsletter.
Isaac Thangjom.
“Yet it’s not half as appalling as is the fact of these forms being handed out in the first place. By what right does Shavei take the matter of B’nei Menashe Aliyah in the years ahead entirely into its own hands and again make itself the sole arbiter of who in the community will make Aliyah and who won’t? Who gave it such authority? Where is the Israeli government? Where is the Jewish Agency? How can they let Shavei get away with this?”
On the heels of Khaute’s visit, Shavei sent an emissary, Yehuda Singson, from Israel to Manipur in order to give lessons in Judaism that will prepare the next batch of Aliyah candidates chosen by Shavei Israel for interviews with Israeli rabbis. These interviews, traditionally held to certify the candidates’ eligibility, have long been considered farcical, since the rabbis and the interviewees speak no common language and communicate via a Shavei translator who can put whatever words he wishes in their mouths. “They’re a joke,” says Rivka Chong Lhungdim of the Israeli town of Sderot, who has been through one of them herself. “There are those who deserve to pass but do not make it to Israel, those who deserve to fail but do, and those who do even though they were never interviewed at all. In the end, Shavei takes who its wants.”
An unpleasant incident took place shortly after Singson’s arrival in Manipur on October 22. The day was a Friday, and B’nei Menashe Council general secretary Ohaliav Haokip and Council advisor Nehemia Lhouvum paid a call on Singson at Churachandpur’s Beit Shalom synagogue before Shabbat. Singson received them cordially, and asked by them if it was true, as rumored, that only supporters of Shavei Israel would be admitted to his lessons, he answered that, on the contrary, everyone would be welcome, whether pro--Shavei or not. (Since then, however, no one not in Shavei’s good graces has received an invitation to these lessons.)
Yehuda Singson (right) with Ohaliav Haokip (left) and Nehemia Lhouvum.
The two B’nei Menashe Council officials were leaving the synagogue when they were approached by Sehjalal Shlomo Kipgen, Shavei Israel’s chief Manipur administrator. Having heard that the two B’nei Menashe Council officials had paid a call on Singson, he was furious that this had taken place without his permission, and after a heated exchange he charged at Nehemia Lhouvum and tried to assault him.
“He had to be restrained physically,” relates Ohaliav Haokip. “It was quite clear that he was agitated. It’s common knowledge that he's edgy.”
Sehjalal Shlomo Kipgen.
Meanwhile, a second Shavei Israel emissary, Itzhak Colney, has arrived in Mizoram with a mission similar to Singson’s and has begun to give pre-Aliyah lessons at Aizawl’s Khovevei Tzion synagogue, a Shavei stronghold. As in Manipur, non- or anti-Shavei B’nei Menashe were not invited to participate. Ironically, one of the non-invitees was Asaf Renthlei, a 28-year-old Aizawl resident and doctoral student in anthropology who has taught himself Hebrew, of which he now commands a good reading and writing knowledge – the only member of the B’nei Menashe community in all of northeast India of which this can be said.
Asaf Renthlei.
Asaf, indeed, has served as the Jewish pedagogue of Aizawl’s B’nei Menashe, giving bar-mitzvah lessons and teaching groups of adults, all on a voluntary basis.
Asaf’s crime in Shavei’s eyes? Participating in a Degel Menashe-organized Covid-19 food relief campaign last summer despite Shavei’s threats to punish whoever took part in it, and subsequently, after he was declared unwelcome at Khovevei Tzion services, taking part in an anti-Shavei demonstration. “Shavei has tried to kick me out of the B’nei Menashe community,” Asaf told our Newsletter. “I’ve been removed from its social networks and have stopped receiving invitations for its events.
“The odd thing,” Asaf revealed, “is that all the time that Shavei was attacking me in public, it was sending me messengers in private with the offer that, if I agreed to behave myself and return to the Shavei fold, I would be put at the head of the next Aliyah list – and this despite the fact that I only joined the community three years ago and lack all seniority. I told them to take their offer and clear out. I’m not for sale. I have my principles and I’ll stand by them.”
