Regev, Tamano-Shata, In Knesset Showdown Over B’nei Menashe

(December 23) An empty Knesset floor did not prevent Likud MK and former cabinet minister Miri Regev, and current Minister of Immigration and Absorption Pnina Tamano-Shata, from sending sparks flying when they faced off this week over the issue of B’nei Menashe immigration to Israel. Although the confrontation was a prearranged one, set for a December 22 plenary session in which Tamano-Shata had promised to reply to a Parliamentary Question filed by Regev weeks earlier, it had all the emotion of a spontaneous clash.

The query put by Regev to Tamano-Shata concerned the Israeli government’s longstanding policy of placing the B’nei Menashe’s Aliyah in the exclusive hands of the Jerusalem-based NGO Shavei Israel. Why asked Regev, were the B’nei Menashe, alone of all immigrants to Israel, being made “the prisoners of a private organization?

Regev reads her opening question.

And why, especially, were they subjected to such an arrangement when this organization had been repeatedly accused of abusing the monopoly given it? Was she aware, Tamano-Shata was asked by Regev, of the charges of corrupt practices made against Shavei Israel? Why was The Jewish Agency not involved in the Aliyah of the B’nei Menashe, as it was with other groups of immigrants?

Tamano-Shata then took the podium to reply. After praising the B’nei Menashe for being a “wonderful community,” she stated that seeking the help of NGOs in the Aliyah process was not unusual. Although she was aware of the complaints against it, Shavei Israel, she said, was the sole organization involved with bringing B’nei Menashe to Israel because no other body had asked to participate in public tenders related to their Aliyah.

Tamano-Shata replies.

As the first minister of immigration to seek to involve the Jewish Agency in the process alongside Shavei, she was happy to report that it was now “studying the subject,” and she hoped that it would play a greater role in the future.

It was now Regev’s turn to follow up on her original question. Speaking with evident passion, she held up a batch of letters that were, she said, but a few of the complaints against Shavei Israel that had come to her attention.

Regev with letters of complaint.

Many of these, she declared, had been originally written to the minister herself. Was Tamano-Shata, she asked, aware of them? Did she know that they included dozens of accusations that Shavei had played favorites with B’nei Menashe candidates for Aliyah, accepting those that had curried favor with it and rejecting those who had refused to obey its dictates? That it had often resorted to threats and intimidation in order to keep the B’nei Menashe community under its control? That one letter even accused it of covering up the rape of a B’nei Menashe widow’s young daughter by one of its cronies? Why hadn’t the Jewish Agency intervened in such a case? Why had the Ministry of Immigration and Absorption let the B’nei Menashe community be Shavei Israel’s plaything?

As per Knesset protocol, the last word was reserved for the minister. Visibly stung and angry, she retorted that the charges against Shavei Israel were unproven. “If anyone has a complaint,” she declared, “let them go to the police!” It wasn’t her job, she said, to investigate such things. Shavei Israel had been operating on its own for long years before her term of office and had amassed “a fund of experience.” Nevertheless, she said, no one had done more than she had to bring The Jewish Agency into the picture. “There’s nothing to any of your insinuations!” she exclaimed to Regev.

A stung minister defends herself.

With this, the brief but fiery exchange ended. Contacted by our Newsletter, Degel Menashe’s chairman of the board Hillel Halkin reacted to it by saying: “The minister’s reply to Miri Regev was at its best evasive and at its worst simply untrue. Her claim that no organization other than Shavei Israel has sought to play a role in the B’nei Menashe’s Aliyah by participating in a public tender is doubly false. In the first place, there has never been any such tender. And secondly, last June the Ministry of Immigration and Absorption specifically asked the Finance Ministry to award Shavei Israel a 10 million shekel contract for B’nei Menashe Aliyah without a tender and then requested that the matter be kept a secret. We have the documentation to prove this. How the minister could have said what she did with a straight face is beyond me.”

Halkin also scoffed at the minister’s call to the B’nei Menashe to take their grievances against Shavei Israel to the Israeli police. These grievances, he said, citing the case of alleged rape, had to do with Shavei’s behavior in India, not Israel. “If the minister didn’t realize that the appeal of the raped girl’s mother was sent to her from Manipur, she must never have read it in the first place,” Halkin said. “And in that case, one can only assume that she never bothered to read any of the other letters sent to her by Shavei Israel’s B’nei Menashe victims, either.”

Meanwhile, our Newsletter has learned from Miri Regev’s office that, following the Knesset debate, Regev was approached by Tamano-Shata with the request that she help arrange a Zoom meeting between her and the heartbroken mother so that she might hear the latter’s story. No confirmation of this could be obtained from the ministry.

The Optimistic Pessimists of Phalbung

(December 16) What is optimism? It is when seven families in a small village in a remote region of the world build a handsome synagogue because they believe in their Jewish future.

What is pessimism? It is when seven families in a small village in a remote part of the world build a handsome synagogue because they do not believe that their dream of this future being in Israel is coming any closer to fulfillment.

When our Newsletter first visited Phalbung in the summer of 2020, during the first round of Degel Menashe’s Covid-19 emergency food distribution campaign to the B’nei Menashe of Mizoram and Manipur, the synagogue was already under construction. Today, a year-and-a-half later, it is nearing completion, with only the interior finishing, electrical wiring, and furnishings still to be installed.

There are about 23 families living in Phalbung, a hamlet located in a hilly countryside off the road leading from Imphal, the capital of Manipur, to Kangpokpi, the main city in the state’s north. “We’re all related and belong to the Lunkhel clan of the Haokip tribe,” we were told by Yaacov Haokip, the head of the local Jewish community, whose relative Yechiel Haokip, serves as Phalbung’s recognized chief.

Yaacov Haokip.

“Seven families practice Judaism, five are Messianics [Christians who emphasize Christianity’s Jewish roots], and the rest belong to the Kuki Baptist Church [Manipur’s main Protestant denomination]. We get along well and don’t try to proselytize or convert one another, though the Messianics have shown an interest in Judaism. They don’t have a place of their own to worship in, and now that we will, who knows? Perhaps they’ll take the next step and join us. They’re halfway there already.”

Phalbung’s B’nei Menashe community itself grew out of Messianic Christianity, which it renounced for strict Jewish observance in the 1990s under the guidance of Eliyahu Avichail, the Israeli rabbi who brought Orthodox Judaism to northeast India. Back then, Haokip says, the B’nei Menashe of Phalbung formed a single congregation with the B’nei Menashe of the nearby town of Motbung, five kilometers away, with whom they prayed and celebrated Sabbaths and Jewish festivals.

“Morale in those days was very high,” Haokip recalls. “The first groups of B”nei Menashe had already left for Israel with Rabbi Avichail’s support and we were sure we would all follow soon.” These hopes, he went on, were dashed when the Jerusalem-based organization Shavei Israel came along in 2004, pushed Avichail aside, took over administration of the Aliyah process with the consent of the Israeli government, and demanded that the B’nei Menashe switch from the Ashkenazi liturgy that Avichail had taught them to the Sephardic one.

Rabbi ELiyahu Avichail.

“It was an ultimatum,” says Haokip.” There was no discussion, no attempt to explain or reason with us, nothing.”

The Motbung community gave in to Shavei Israel’s demand and adopted the Sephardic prayer book, and when the B’nei Menashe of Phalbung refused to do the same, they were expelled from the Motbung congregation “Suddenly, we were homeless", Haokip relates. “There was a single B’nei Menashe woman in Motbung, a widow with two small children, who sided with us and offered us her home to pray in. Since it was easier for us to trek the five kilometers to Motbung on Sabbaths and holidays than for her to walk with her children to Phalbung, we accepted her offer and made her home our place of worship.”

This makeshift arrangement continued, Haokip says, until 2019. By then, told point-blank by Shavei Israel officials that that they had no chance of ever making Aliyah as long as they adhered to the Ashkenazi liturgy, the Phalbung community had decided to build its own synagogue.

Yaacov and Yechiel Haokip at synagogue’s side.

Yaacov’s fellow villager, Yechiel donated the land, timber, and bamboo for construction and most of the money needed to pay the masons and other skilled workers, and the members of the community contributed the rest of the labor in what spare time they could find.

Since there was not much of that, construction proceeded slowly. Phalbung’s B’nei Menashe are a busy group. For inhabitants of a small agricultural village in Manipur, the level of schooling among them is surprisingly high. Besides tending the rice fields, vegetable gardens, and domestic animals they all have, their seven families number several college graduates, two M.A. students, and three elementary school teachers. Yaacov Haokip himself has a degree in political science from the University of Manipur and Yechiel has one in English. And yet, says Yaacov, despite possessing the education that would enable most of them to succeed in the outside world, the children and grandchildren of the original founders of Judaism in Phalbung all still live in the village. “We’re a tight-knit community,” Haokip says. “We’ve been together for the last thirty years and no one has left us except for brief periods to pursue their studies. They’ve always come back in the end.”

A tight-knit community.

Do Phalbung’s B’nei Menashe have regrets about not having acceded to Shavei’s demands so that they might be living Israel today, as do most of the former congregants of Motbung, whose Jewish community no longer exists? After all, the differences between Ashkenazi and Sephardi prayer are not that great. Shavei Israel’s insistence on the latter had nothing to do with religious belief and was solely a matter of asserting the organization’s power over Manipur and Mizoram’s B’nei Menashe. Wouldn’t it have made more sense to let Shavei have it way?

“But it was a matter of religious faith!” answers Yaacov Haokip. “Not which liturgy to pray in: I agree, that doesn’t matter. But the real choice wasn’t between Ashkenazi or Sephardi prayer, it was between worshiping the one true God or worshiping Shavei Israel. We were not going to practice Judaism by bowing down to Shavei. God sees everything, and justice and righteousness will prevail in the end. If we had to decide all over again, we would make the same choice.”

Meanwhile, though they have not relinquished their dream of living in Israel, the B’nei Menashe of Phalbung are not counting on being allowed to settle there any time soon. Their immediate future, lies in Phalbung – and with a real synagogue that they soon will be able to pray in. “At the moment, we’re short of funds to finish it,” Haokip says. “Any help would be appreciated.” Donations can be made via Degel Menashe.

Still to be finished: the synagogue’s interior, bima, and aron kodesh.

Third Annual Degel Menashe Scholarship Award Ceremony Held in Ramla

(December 9) Degel Menashe’s 2021-22 academic scholarships were awarded this week to 18 recipients, four more than the previous year. The award ceremony was held in the city of Ramla, near Tel Aviv, and presided over by the city’s mayor Michael Vidal.

The award winners, all young members of Israel’s B’nei Menashe community, will be studying for degrees or professional certificates in a wide range of subjects, including nursing, engineering, education, psychology, fine arts, social work, interior design, medical instrumentation, and business administration. The institutions to be attended by them include Ben-Gurion University, Ariel University, The Holon Institute of Technology, The Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, The Shenkar College of Engineering, Design and Art, Tel-Hai Academic College, Hadassah Academic College, and other places. The average scholarship will cover approximately 40 percent of tuition costs.

The ceremony was hosted by Ramla’s municipality, which volunteered to sponsor the event as part of its effort to attract future B’nei Menashe immigrants. “You have a wonderful community, while we’re one of the most diverse cities in Israel,” Mayor Vidal told the award winners, to each of whom he handed a grant money check. “Besides native-born Israelis, both Jews and Arabs, we have immigrants from Ethiopia, Bukhara, Georgia, India, South America, and the Bene Israel community of India, to name a few places. We’ll welcome you with open arms if you come.”

A B’nei Menashe presence in Ramla would be a positive development, our Newsletter was told by Degel Menashe’s executive director Yitzhak Thangjom, a Ramla resident himself. “Until now,” said Thangjom, “B’nei Menashe have all been sent, without consulting them or taking their needs or desires into account, to small towns in Israel’s north, where educational and employment opportunities are fewer than in a centrally located place like Ramla. Many B’nei Menashe, particularly the more talented and ambitious, could benefit from being in the Tel Aviv area.”

The 18 scholarship recipients were also addressed by deputy mayor Avraham Dozrayev and municipal councilor Ronen Rothstein, as well as by Ministry of Immigration and Absorption representative Meir Yechieli, who gave them a detailed explanation of their rights as children of immigrant families and of the ways in which the ministry can assist young students like them.

Award winners, speakers, and guests of honor.

Remarks were also made by Avner Isaac, chairman of Israel’s Indian Jewish Heritage Center. Isaac stressed the need for B’nei Menashe youngsters to strengthen their community by engaging the government and its offices and taking a pro-active stand on issues affecting them.

The award winners listened attentively. “I learned a lot from the discussion of our rights,” said Yitzhak Lungdhim, who is studying social work at Hadassah College in Jerusalem. Ziva Gin, a B.A.. student at Tel Hai College in the Upper Galilee, added: “It gave me a good feeling to know that there are people who are concerned for our community and want to see it advance and flourish,” And Ronia Lunkhel, who is enrolled in a program for traditional Chinese medicine at Reidman College in Tel Aviv, spoke for everyone in thanking Degel Menashe for “opening up educational opportunities for all of us.”

Lunkhel also served as master of ceremonies as a last-minute replacement for Degel Menashe board member and scholarship program director Bat-El Rently, who broke her glasses shortly before the proceedings began. This was one of several hitches that occurred at the event, which saw the mayor and his entourage arriving, not late as politicians usually do, but half-an-hour early, taking the organizers by surprise. Yet the difficulties were all overcome in good spirits and the evening ended with a chance to socialize over a buffet Indian dinner.

The 18 scholarship winners are:

Top row, from left to right: Dina Kipgen Rachmim (M.A. English), Yael Lunkhel (BSc, Industrial Design), Yiftach Gangte (Engineering), Edna Gin (BFA).

Second row, from left to right: Osnath Lotjem (Medical Instrumentation), Bracha Haokip (Interior Design and Planning), Yossi Kipgen (B.A. Lab Technician), Tehilla Sharon ( B.A. Psychology).

Third row, from left to right: Nitzana Lhungdim (B Ed), Betzalel Gin (Engineering), Yitzhak Lhungdim (B.A. Social Works), Emuna Boitlung (Nursing).

Fourth row, from left to right: Atara Menashe (B Tech), Akiva Lhungdim (MBA), Ronia Lunkhel (Traditional Chinese Medicine), Ziva Gin (B.A, Multidisciplinary).

Scholarship winners whose photographs do not appear are: Rivka Gangte (Nursing) and David Lotjem (Business Administration).