Shavei Israel Embezzlement Hearing Put Off

(October 25) Scheduled for October 17, a pretrial hearing of Sarah Freund vs. Shavei Israel, a case in which the former wife of Michael Freund is accusing her ex-husband of embezzling IS50,053,751 (close to $15,000,000) of the family’s money and transferring it to Shavei Israel, the organization he founded and heads, has been put off with no new date so far set by the court. No reason for the postponement was given by Tel Aviv District Court judge Naftali Shilo, the justice presiding over the case.

Sarah Freund’s suit to recover funds said by her to have been fraudulently taken from money belonging to her family has yet to reach the evidentiary stage. Thus far, court sessions have been procedural, starting with the plaintiff’s motion to transfer the case to a civil court from the family court in which it was initially argued after the couple’s separation in 2016.

Judge Eitan Orenstein

In rejecting this motion, in a ruling given on June 21, 2020, Tel Aviv District Court Judge Etan Orenstein summarized Sarah’s claims.

“The plaintiff,” Judge Orenstein wrote, “contends that she received from her father, Pinchas Green, millions of dollars that were intended for the needs of her and Michael’s family. However, she says, Michael took possession of these funds and transferred them to an amuta [a non-profit organization. i.e., Shavei Israel] and to individuals connected to it, thereby violating an understanding between them that was based on mutual trust and fidelity. The plaintiff states that Michael, who founded the organization and was its chairman, devoted most of his time and energy to it, whereas she had no involvement with it and no intention of giving large sums to it or to persons associated with it. According to her, the defendants illicitly enriched themselves at her expense and stole money that belonged to her and that must now be returned.”

Judge Orenstein’s summary were based on Sarah’s statements to the family court, whose proceedings took place behind closed doors, in keeping with the such courts’ policy of protecting the privacy of family members. One of her motives in requesting the transfer to a civil court, apparently, was to permit her accusations to be made public. To this end, her lawyers dropped Michael Freund from the list of defendants, reducing it to Shavei Israel, Shavei’s lawyer Eitan Tsafrir, and former Shavei employee Rabbi Eliyahu Birnbaum. These two persons, according to the Israeli investigative website News 1, were said by Sarah Freund to have received, respectively, IS1.6m and IS1.7m of the embezzled funds.

In rejecting the plaintiff’s motion, which was opposed by Michael Freund’s lawyers, Judge Orenstein ruled that the case belonged in family court after all, saying:

“Given the plaintiff’s claim that she was duped by her husband, who acted fraudulently and in violation of the fidelity owed her, investigating the circumstances of the matter clearly calls for examining the conduct of the couple [the Freunds] in the course of their married life and the relationship between them as life rather than business partners, including their joint bank accounts.”

Rather than send the case back to family court in its present form, however, the judge wrote that he was dismissing it entirely in the expectation that Sarah Freund would file a new family court suit reinstating her ex-husband as a defendant.

Yet Shavei Israel’s victory, which would have succeeded in keeping Michael Freund’s alleged misdeeds out of the public eye, was short-lived. Judge Orenstein’s decision was appealed to the High Court of Justice by Sarah’s lawyers, Zohar Lande, Gal Lifschitz, and Zohar Haim-Levinger of the Tel Aviv firm of Barnea. On the 6th of December, 2020, High Court justice Anat Baron upheld the dismissed motion in a succinct verdict that stated that“Given that the main parties to the case [i.e., Sarah Freund and Shavei Israel] are not related, the jurisdiction over it belongs to the district and not the family court.” Overruling Judge Orenstein’s decision, she ordered the case returned to the Tel Aviv District Court, where it was reassigned to Judge Naftali Shilo.

Judge Anat Baron

Still seeking to keep the case under a mantle of secrecy, Michael Freund’s lawyers, led by Tal Shapira of the firm of Tel Tzur & Partners, now petitioned Judge Shilo to hold the District Court’s hearing, too, behind closed doors. This request was based on two arguments: 1) That inasmuch as the District Court would be required to examine testimony given before the family court, this testimony would become public knowledge despite the family court’s ban on its disclosure; and 2) That such a disclosure might cause “irreparable harm” to Michael and Sarah Freund’s children.

The second of these arguments was dismissed by Judge Shilo out of hand: the Freunds’ children, he observed in a decision handed down on January 22 of this year, were no longer minors and did not need such protection. Nevertheless, the judge promised, addressing the first argument, if “intimate matters” came up at the District Court trial, he would consider striking them from the protocol.

Judge Shilo’s ruling was, he wrote,based on “the principle of the public nature of trials,” which is “one of the foundations of our system of law” and is stronger than Michael Freund’s right to privacy.

Judge Naftali Shilo

Moreover, the judge stated, Shavei Israel, which has no such right, was not merely a passive recipient of the funds said to have been stolen. This was because it was also charged by Sarah Freund in family court that “the non-profit organization was falsely registered with the Registrar of Amutot”on documents “in which her signature had been forged. In addition, she claimed that there were ‘grave and substantial’ defects in the organization’s administration and pointed to the many flaws and failures that, so she said, took place in it.

The alleged forging of Sarah’s signature on Shavei Israel’s registration papers and reports to the Registrar of Amutot would presumably have been meant to facilitate the counter-claim that the transfer of money to Shavei could not have occurred without her knowledge and consent.

The way was now cleared for the trial to begin. On April 20, 2021, the litigants met in Judge Shilo’s courtroom and set last week’s date of October 17 for a preliminary session, the reason for whose last-minute cancelation has not been given. Asked by our Newsletter to comment, Sarah Freund’s lawyer Zohar Lande did not reply.

In a related development, the Israeli daily business newspaper Calcalist reported earlier this year that, in a separate suit filed against Michael Freund by Sarah Freund’s father Pinchas Green, a Tel Aviv family court presided over by Judge Shmuel Bar-Yosef ordered Freund to return to Green the IS50,000,000 shekels determined by it to have been illegally taken from money given by Green to his daughter, plus an additional IS2m. in court costs. The decision is currently being appealed by Freund’s lawyers. What would be the fate of Sarah Freund vs. Shavei Israel should Judge Bar-Yosef’s decision be upheld is not clear.

Mizoram’s B’nei Menashe Join Anti-Shavei Protest

(October 21) The anti-Shavei Israel protest movement spread from Manipur to Mizoram on Sunday with a demonstration against Shavei in the state’s capital of Aizawl. More modest than the previous week’s turnout in Churachandpur, it was the first ever to take place in Mizoram, whose B’nei Menashe community has been slow to join the growing opposition to Shavei.

“We were very determined people, ranging from young to old, all with a deep sense of grievance,” our Newsletter was told by Asaf Renthlei, one of the demonstration’s organizers. Although it was, Renthlei said, a particularly hot day and motor traffic is banned in Aizawl on Sundays as part of an anti-pollution campaign, some of the demonstrators walked for miles up and down the hills of the city in order to reach the site of the protest.

The demonstration featured a Mizo and English banner asking Shavei six questions:

The first of these questions was explained to our Newsletter by one of the protest’s participants, Isaiah Bawithang. Of the 722 B’nei Menashe who have arrived in Israel in three groups since December 2020, all on the basis of a list drawn up by Shavei Israel and finalized with the Israeli authorities in 2015, only 113, Bawithang said, were from Mizoram, the rest being from Manipur. This happened, he went on, despite Shavei Israel;s having originally informed the Mizoram community that it would be given 250 places on the list, for the rabbis who came to Mizoram in 2015 under Shavei’s auspices in order to approve the 250 departed mysteriously after meeting with less than half of them. To this day rumors, all unconfirmed, circulate about the reason for their sudden departure.

As a result of this, according to Bawithang, over 130 places on the 2015 list that should have been filled by B’nei Menashe from Mizoram were re-allotted to B’nei Menashe from Manipur. Morever, when Tsvi Khaute, Shavei Israel’s director-general, visited Mizoram a year ago, he unsuccessfully sought to persuade the 113 also to give up their places and to come as one group with the others at a later date; this stoked suspicions that Khaute, who hails from Manipur and has closer ties with its B’nei Menashe than with Mizoram’s, wished to replace the 113, too, with more from Manipur. But what was it, the Aizawl demonstrators asked, that kept the entire group of 250 from coming in its entirety in the first place?

The remaining five points on the banner were similar to those raised by the protesters in Churachandpur and had to do with Shavei’s cronyism in choosing candidates for Aliyah and its blackballing of all who have not hewn to its dictates or who have associated with rival groups, such as the B’nei Menashe Council and Degel Menashe.

Another of the participants, Leah Renthlei, told us her story. “Along with my family,” she said, “I have been

observing Judaism since 2005. And yet Shavei Israel has overlooked us each time a new group was chosen for Aliyah because we refused to follow it blindly – most recently when I took part in last summer’s Degel Menashe Covid Relief campaign that Shavei opposed. Now Shavei is once again drawing up lists of immigrants to Israel and we’re again being ignored by its emissary, Yitzchak Kawlni, who has been entrusted with the job. It’s important to me to make a stand against Shavei’s injustice. The government of Israel and the Jewish Agency must be made aware of what a corrupt and oppressive organization Shavei is and of how we need to be freed from its control.”

Demonstrators with Hebrew signs. Leah Renthlei is at right, bottom.

The demonstrators held homemade Hebrew placards with signs that said “Free the B’nei Menashe,” “We are the prisoners of Zion of Shavei Israel,” “Enough! Shavei Israel go home!”, and “Where is the Jewish Agency?” The eldest of them, our Newsletter was told, Daniel and Miriam Hualngo, have been practicing Judaism for 20 years and are members of Aizawl’s Shavei-controlled Khovevei Tzion synagogue.

Miriam and Daniel Hualngo.

Yet they, too, despite their seniority and age, have repeatedly been denied Aliyah by Shavei, and Kawlni has made no attempt to contact them since arriving in Aizawl last week. Old as they are, they climbed the steep hill to the demonstration’s site, eager to make their voices heard.

B'NEI MENASHE'S OLDEST ELDER PASSES AWAY

Aviel (Tongkhohao) Hangshing, the oldest member of the B'nei Menashe community, and among its most respected, passed away in Israel, in the town of Kiryat Arba, on Saturday evening at 11 pm. His well-attended funeral, presided over by Rabbi Shimon Gangte, was held the next day . He is survived by his four children, all living in India. His eldest son Lalam Hangshing is the chairman of the B'nei Menashe Council of India.

Aviel Hangshing was born in Kangpokpi, in northern Manipur, in 1925. His father, Seilal Hangshing, was one of the first Kukis to receive a western education and taught at the Kangpokpi Mission School. At the outbreak of World War II, Aviel worked as a guide for British surveyors building military roads in preparation for a Japanese invasion of the Indian northeast and then joined his family in fleeing to Imphal when heavy fighting broke out. At the war's end, he enrolled in Imphal's Johnstone Higher Secondary School. After graduating, he went on to study Philosophy at Guwahati's Bishop Cotton College.

Hangshing in his early 20s.

Unable to find a suitable job in Manipur after obtaining his B. A. degree, Aviel and his newly- wed wife, Boisi Gangte, moved to New Delhi. There, Aviel found work as an Upper Division Clerk at the Indian Defense Ministry and served there for the following five years, during which he was promoted to Section Officer. In the late 1950s he and his family, which now included three children, moved back to Imphal, where he was given the post of a departmental Undersecretary. In the early 1970s, he joined the elite Indian Administrative Service and remained with it until his retirement as a Commissioner to the Government of Manipur in 1988.

Aviel Hangshing was one of the pioneers of the Judaizing movement in northeast India. A practicing Christian, he became attracted in the early 1970s to various Christian denominations that emphasized Christinaity’s Jewish roots. In 1981, he traveled to Israel with his wife and met with Rabbi Eliyahu Avichayil, who would soon bring Orthodox Judaism to Mizoram and Manipur. The contact with Rabbi Avichayil was one of several factors that led Aviel to abandon Christianity entirely and embrace Judaism without reservation. By the mid-1980s, he was a leader of the B'nei Menashe congregations of both Kangpokpi and Imphal. Relatively well-off, he donated money and services to the community and sponsored many of its festivals.

Aviel and his wife during their years in Imphal.

Throughout the 1990s, Aviel worked closely with Rabbi Avichayil and the B'nei Menashe Council in organizing and advancing Jewish life in Manipur. This continued until the split between Rabbi Avichayil and his organization, Amishav, and the newcomer Michael Freund's Shavei Israel, which divided the community in two. Aviel sided staunchly with Rabbi Avichayil and lost his position of leadership when Shavei Israel triumphed over Amishav in 2004.

Because of his association with Amishav, Aviel was denied Aliyah by Shavei for ten years. In 2014, he finally came to Israel, where he lived in the northern city of Acre until moving to Kiryat Arba in 2017. A venerable figure in B;nei Menashe life, he is fondly remembered for his many generous contribution to it.