(December 10) It all began with coffee at a local café. Jessica Thangjom, the wife of Degel Menashe’s executive director Yitzhak Thangjom and herself a member of the board of KeepOlim, an NGO that lobbies for the rights of immigrants, has an old friend, Mona Judah. One day about a month ago, Mona, an executive at the World Jewish Congress who hails from the Bene Israel community of Indian Jews in Israel, called Jessica and said that she wanted to meet. When they got together, Mona told Jessica her that she had been following her activities on Facebook and would like to contribute her share by giving a Hanukkah present this year to the B’nei Menashe. Did Jessica have any suggestions as to what form this might take?
Mona Judah.
The two talked it over and decided that the best present would be gift cards to a needy B’nei Menashe community. The most useful gift, they concluded after considering the possibilities, would be food and the most deserving community that of Tiberias, whose new B’nei Menashe immigrants have been struggling while showing a commendable ability to organize and take matters into their own hands.
Some of the food card recipients: B’nei Menashe Torah students in Tiberias.
Their strong commitment to Judaism has been a part of their economic difficulties, since many of their menfolk are Torahstudents who do not hold paying jobs.
Mona and Jessica turned to the Tiberias community’s recognized leader, Aharon Chongloi, who agreed to draw up a list of worthy recipients. Ordering the food cards from the Rami Levi supermarket chain took longer than expected, but at the last minute they arrived just in time for the last candle of the holiday. “It was a minor Hanukkah miracle,” Jessica says – and a much appreciated one by the gift cards’ recipients.
(December 2) As Hanukkah was celebrated this week, Degel Menashe’s fifth round of emergency food relief to the Covid-stricken B’nei Menashe communities of northeast India was in full swing. Some eight tons of rice and hundreds of bottles of cooking oil were distributed to nearly 300 families in the two states of Mizoram and Manipur, bringing to 70 tons the total amount of rice made available since the relief campaign began in the spring of 2020. The money for this latest round was generously donated by the American Jewish NGO Scattered Among the Nations, whose chairman Bryan Schwartz has been a consistent B’nei Menashe supporter.
Bryan Schwartz.
In Manipur, as in the past, this week’s aid operation was conducted by the B'nei Menashe Council, which used Churachandpur’s Beit Shalom synagogue, the largest of all B’nei Menashe houses of worship, as its main distribution center. One-hundred-and-eighty families from Churachandpur and nearby villages came to the synagogue, where communal candle lighting ceremonies were also held, to collect their allotments of roughly 50 kilos of rice and one bottle of oil per household. Another 70 families were supplied from depots in Imphal, Kangpokpi, and Sajal.
Candle lighting in Manipur.
Although constituting a sizable percentage of the B’nei Menashe population of Manipur, the number of food recipients was lower than in previous rounds. The reason for the decline, our Newsletter was told by BMC advisor Nechemiah Lhouvum, is that more families succumbed this time to pressure from Shavei Israel, which again let it be known that acceptance of Degel Menashe-sponsored assistance may jeopardize chances for Aliyah. Because 2021, Lhouvum said, saw a resumption of Shavei-Israel controlled B’nei Menashe Aliyah after several years of abeyance, and there has been talk of its continuing in 2022, families have grown more reluctant to be helped by Degel Menashe, even though they are financially hard-pressed. Yet many stood firm. “The epidemic has put us through a difficult two years,” Lhouvum said. “Even though Shavei has managed to frighten many who could have benefitted from the aid, there are many others who have taken it and are happy that they did.”
In Mizoram, where Shavei’s dominance is greater than in Manipur, rumors of a new Aliyah contingent that will leave for Israel next summer has had even more of an effect. “Several families," says Asaf Renthlei, director of the state’s B”nei Menashe Emergency Relief Committee, “dropped out after reporting having been threatened by the Shavei functionaries, while others were dissuaded by friends.”
Asaf Renthlei.
This happened, he observed, even though the B’nei Menashe community in Mizoram is suffering badly. The state is currently one of the worst-hit by Covid in India despite its having been among the strictest in imposing anti-Covid lockdowns.
One explanation of this seeming paradox, Renthlei observes, is that the isolation caused by the lockdowns led to a decrease in asymptomatic infections and to the immunity provided by them, which is now taking its toll. Although no Covid-related deaths among Mizoram’s estimated 1,000 B’nei Menashe have been reported, some 50 have tested Covid –positive and five have been hospitalized. Moreover, since most B’nei Menashe are day laborers, the economic slowdown caused by the epidemic’s surge had made it difficult for them to find work, a situation that is particularly dire in the capital of Aizawl, where the cost of living is higher and most of Mizoram’s B’nei Menashe live. “It's difficult to say exactly,” Renthlei says, “but I would guess that at least half and perhaps as much as two-thirds of the state’s B’nei Menashe are in bad economic trouble.”
All in all, 125 individuals from 32 households, approximately 12 percent of Mizoram’s B’nei Menashe population, braved Shavei’s threats and took the proffered aid. About one-third were from Aizawl, with the rest from the towns of Pukpui, Kawlkuhl, and Tuirial, where Shavei’s grip is weaker. Allocations were on a per individual basis, with each person receiving eight kilograms of rice. As opposed to Manipur, the distribution took place by a system of vouchers, which could be exchanged at grocery stores for food.
In addition to the food aid, Renthlei and his Relief Committee colleagues organized modest communal Hanukkah meals in Aizawl, Pukpui, and Kawlkulh. Those attending them lit candles, sang Hanukkah songs and ate chhangban.
Two stages of chhangban.
Chhangban, Renthlei explained, is a traditional Mizo winter delicacy that has become a B’nei Menashe Hanukkah dish. It is made from sticky rice flour that is soaked in water overnight and then pounded into a dough that, at one time wrapped in banana leaves and boiled, is now more commonly deep-fried. Eaten with “jaggery,” an Indian sugar cane-and-date syrup, it’s a meal in itself, says Renthlei, whose description makes it sound very much like a B’nei Menashe latke. In Manipur it is known as changman, and Beit Shalom is planning to stage the eighth and last candle lighting of the holiday with a changman festivity.
Chhangban takes time and effort to prepare and is prepared only by a few in Israel, most of whose B’nei Menashe prefer to buy their Hanukkah treats, such as the traditional Israeli sufganniya or jelly doughnut, in supermarkets. (Not that making genuine, homemade sufganiyyot isn’t time-consuming, too!) Nor, apart from a gathering in Tiberias, were there B’nei Menashe communal meals this Hanukkah in Israel. The community’s main holiday event was a doubles badminton tournament held in Ofra, a town in Samaria north of Jerusalem.
Gadi Hangshing (left) and Oz Menashe in badminton finals.
Badminton is a major sport in India, and the players came from virtually all of the 14 Israeli townships with B’nei Menashe populations. The winners were the hometown players Gadi Hangshing and Oz Menashe, who beat their fellow finalists, the brothers Binyamin and Ya’akov Ralte of Nof ha-Galil.
(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.”
