Degel Menashe Announces 2021-22 Scholarships

(September 3) Degel Menashe announced this week its third annual round of academic and vocational scholarships. Applications for the scholarships will be accepted from now until October 1.

As stated in the announcement, which was issued by the scholarship program’s director and Degel Menashe board member Batel Rently, any member of the B’nei Menashe community, or child to at least one B’nei Menashe parent, will be eligible for the grants on the condition that he or she is enrolled in a recognized academic program or a vocational course of at least 12 months’ duration.

Applicants will be required to present evidence of their enrollment in an academic or professional program for the year 2021-22; a statement of its tuition fees; and a personal letter explaining the nature and purpose of their studies. If on an academic track, they will have to commit themselves to 12 hours of service to the B’nei Menashe community in the course of the year. For those on a vocational track, the requirement will be six hours.

Applications should be sent to rentlyb@gmail.com. Applicants with questions are invited to address them either to Batel, at telephone number 054-440-8393,or to Degel Menashe’s executive director Yitzhak Thangjom, at 054-6707-853

Degel Menashe Food Relief Campaign Continues

(August 27) As rigorous Covid19 lockdown restrictions in Manipur and Mizoram have been relaxed only slightly despite a significant decrease in daily cases of the illness in late August, Degel Menashe has launched a new round of food relief this week for the B’nei Menashe communities of both states. The food comes just in time for Rosh Hashana and Sukkot.

Our correspondent in Manipur writes:

“There has been great anticipation of the aid arriving right before the High Holidays. There couldn’t have been a better time for it. Moreover, compared with Degel Menashe’s previous food campaign in Manipur in the summer of the 2020, the aid money will go further this time. Then, the market was in chaos, with prices of essentials shooting up in the panic that followed the first lockdown, and the blackmarketeers were having a field day and overcharging for everything. Now, the government has taken measures to control prices and we expect the cost of rice, our daily staple, to drop by as much as a third.”

The food relief campaign in Manipur will be administered by the B’nei Menashe Council, whose executive board met recently to plan the operation. As opposed to last year, when food was distributed at central depots, generally local synagogues, a voucher system will be used. Local suppliers, our correspondent reports, will be designated in each area, and families will pick up their allotments from them directly and have their purchases charged to the BMC. A BMC team will make the rounds of the suppliers to make sure the system is functioning smoothly.

Presided over by its chairman Lalam Hangshing, the BMC’s Manipur executive plans food relief.

In Mizoram, where a similar system was employed earlier this summer, it is being resorted to again. This time, our Mizoram correspondent writes, a greater effort has been made to expand the operation beyond the capital of Aizawl, located in the north-central part of the state, where most of its B’nei Menashe reside. Food aid will be available as far south as the town of Pukpui in the Lunglei district, whose B’nei Menashe community has been isolated from such campaigns in the past.

“It’s hard for me to express my feelings,” Pukpui resident Merabi Khupchawng told our correspondent. “This is the first time that we’re receiving any outside attention or assistance from anyone.” To which her fellow townsman, Benjamin Fanai, added: “May the aid organized by Degel Menashe for Rosh Hashanah and Sukkot be to the eternal merit of all those who are making it possible. May we all be sealed in the Book of Life!”

A B’nei Menashe family with its food aid.

Shavei Israel To B’nei Menashe: Sign A Loyalty Oath Or No Aliyah!

(August 26) J.P. is a member in good standing of Manipur’s B’nei Menashe community, but he has asked for the initials of his name to be changed in order to protect his identity. He and his family are on the list of B’nei Menashe approved for Aliyah in 2016 who have not yet come to Israel and who are slated to compose the next group of immigrants in the months ahead J.P. has also been a supporter of the B’nei Menashe Council, the representative body chosen by Manipur’s B’nei Menashe last November in democratic elections that Shavei Israel sought to prevent and whose outcome it subsequently tried to undermine.

Recently, J.P. received a call on his mobile phone from Manipur’s Shavei Israel administrator Sehjalal Shlomo Kipgen. If he wished to make Aliya, Kipgen told him, he was required to report immediately to Shavei Israel headquarters at the Beit Shalom synagogue in Churachandpur , where he would be given a form to sign. J.P. relates:

“When I reached the office, I was directed to sit in a waiting room. There were two or three other B’nei Menashe there – whether for the same reason I was, or for something else, I don’t know. When my turn came, I was asked to enter an inner room. Sehjalal was sitting at a table. on the other side of which, typing on computers, were Avior Haokip [the editor of of Shavei News] and Bentzion Suantak [a Shavei activist]. Sehjalal handed me a typed statement in Kuki and said: ‘Read this. No one is forcing you to sign it. But remember:

Shavei Israel is in charge of the B’nei Menashe’s Aliyah. Whether you sign or not is up to you. If you don’t, though, don’t blame anyone but yourself for losing your chance for Aliyah.”

J.P. was not allowed to take a copy of the document with him when he left and could not remember its exact wording. He did, however, recall five things that he was made to declare:

Sehjalal Shlomo Kipgen

1. That his name had been put without his knowledge on a B’nei Menashe Council petition asking for the community’s Aliyah to be taken out of Shavei Israel’s hands. (Signed by over a thousand B’nei Menashe, this petition was sent last February to The Jewish Agency and Israel’s Ministry of Immigration.)

2. That he wished Shavei Israel to have sole jurisdiction over the B’nei Menashe’s Aliyah with no involvement of outside organizations such as The Jewish Agency.

3. That he did not in any way support Degel Menashe or its activities.

4. That he regretted having registered as a BMC member and acknowledged the errors of his way.

5. That he did not recognize the BMC or its chairman W.L. Hangshing as legitimate representatives of Manipur’s B’nei Menashe.

“What could I do?” J.P. told our Newsletter. “Not a word of it was true, but I didn’t want to be taken off the Aliyah list with my family. I had no choice but to sign and I did.”

In recent days, our Newsletter has learned, this scene has been repeated many times at Beit Shalom. A phone call is made, a summons is issued to a family head to report to Shavei’s office, and the statement described by J.P. is handed him to sign with the same warning of what will happen if he refuses. The great majority of those contacted have come to the office and signed. They were encouraged to do so by Degel Menashe, which issued a communiqué, disseminated over B’nei Menashe social media, urging all prospective Aliyah candidates to submit to Shavei’s ultimatum rather than put their Aliyah at jeopardy.

“Shavei can make you sign a piece of paper,” said the Degel Menashe statement, “but it cannot make you change your thoughts and feelings. We know that in your hearts many of you will continue to support us. Sign what you are asked to sign with our blessing!”

Here is the full text of the WhatsApp announcement:

“What Shavei is doing is obscene,” says Yitzhak Thangjom, Degel Menashe’s executive director, in whose name the communiqué was issued. “It is using its control over the Aliyah process to coerce people into violating their consciences and knowingly putting their signatures to lies. It was a difficult decision for us to tell them to go ahead and sign, but we felt that we had to do it. Aliyah comes before all else. Once those who signed are in Israel and out from under Shavei’s thumb, they will be able to be their true selves again.”

Despite Degel Menashe’s urgings, there were those who refused to give in. One of them was Demsat Yosef Haokip , 57, a Churachandpur rice cultivator and BMC advisor. “I’m proud to be associated with the BMC,” he told our Newsletter, “and I won’t pretend otherwise. If anyone should be denounced, it’s Shavei for having divided our society by sabotaging the BMC."

Demsat Haokip

Demsat continued.. "And I won’t sign anything against Degel Menashe, either. It’s the only organization that has taken our grievances seriously and that has provided aid during the Covid pandemic. Aliyah is my right. I don’t have to sell my soul to a corrupt organization like Shavei to be entitled to it.”

Bidan Lalthang Singson, 55, a rice farmer too, agreed. “In the end, I’m sure I’ll get to make Aliyah even if I don’t sign,” he said. “It’s been promised me by Minister Pnina [Tamano-Shata, Minister of Immigration] and I’m confident she’ll keep her word.”

And Nachshon Haokip, 37, a plumber and mason, declared:

“If Shavei wants me to sign, let them give me a copy of what I signed for my records and so that I can show everyone what I was made to do . Otherwise, they can forget about it.”