New BMC School Opens – And Closes -- In Churachandpur

(May 11) For the first time in its history, the B’nei Menashe community of Manipur had its own school…for half a week. Then the flare-up of Covid19, which has been taking a savage toll all over India, led to a statewide lockdown and the school was forced to shut down.

“We’ll reopen as soon as the lockdown is over,” says the school’s director Ohaliav Haokip, General Secretary of Manipur’s B’nei Menashe Council, which is sponsoring the new school. “We have 56 students already registered, although we started with only 14. This was because we had planned – and still plan – to use the facilities of the Beit Shalom synagogue in Churachandpur, and even before the total lockdown, there was a ban on gatherings in all places of public worship. This forced us to start in a private home, where space was limited. Once the synagogue is available to us, we’ll be able to accommodate all who have registered and still more.”

Ranging in age from five to 17, and joined by several curious adults, the 14 students met from 6 to 8 pm in the home of BMC executive member Nechemia Lhouvum. Although all can read and write, only five, Haokip told our Newsletter, have been going to public school. “The others have had no access to formal education” he explained. “Most come from B’nei Menashe families that originated in Nagaland and Assam and moved to Churachandpur years ago when told by Shavei Israel to gather here in preparation for their Aliyah to Israel. Yet that Aliyah never took place, and the families, deprived of their lands and former occupations, were reduced to working as day laborers in the lowest-wage jobs. None could afford to send their children to private schools, and the public school system in Manipur is barely functional. Many government schools exist only in name. Teachers draw salaries but don’t teach or are absent most of the time, and although there are no tuition fees, admission and registration fees have to be paid. These, too, are more than many families can come up with. ”

In its present form, the new school, whose small budget comes from a grant from the Jewish Federation of New Mexico, resembles the proverbial “little red schoolhouse.” Its two teachers, Gideon Lhouvum and Shlomo Vaiphei, will divide the instruction between them, Gideon being responsible for Hebrew and Jewish subjects and Shlomo for English, arithmetic, and science. “Our aim,” says Haokip, “is to develop a curriculum that will help equip B’nei Menashe youngsters for life in Israel once they get there. This would mean as much Hebrew and Jewish knowledge as possible, and a sufficient grounding in secular subjects to enable them to succeed in Israeli schools.”

For the moment, though, all this seems a distant dream. “We don’t have any Hebrew speakers in our community,” Haokip says, “so all we can do right now is teach these children to read without comprehension and follow the words in the prayer book and the Bible. Perhaps in the future, volunteers from Israel will help make up for this. We don’t yet have proper textbooks, either, neither in Hebrew nor in other subjects. We simply don’t have the money for them.”

Still, Haokip told us, the new school has aroused great interest and excitement in the B’nei Menashe community. “We’re already getting requests from other places, and even from distant villages, to open similar schools for them. I’ve told them that if this first project succeeds, we’ll expand it. But we need outside help: funds, books, teachers. Perhaps Israel and the world Jewish community will provide some of it.”

And the new school’s name?

“It doesn’t have one yet,” was the answer. “We’re open to suggestions.”

Anybody?

Sixty Names That Can’t Be Named

(May 6) “I, [name withheld], a Bnei Menashe widow from Mizoram (India), humbly present before you a petition of grave importance,” began the email that Degel Menashe received this week with the request that it be forwarded to Isaac Herzog, Chairman of The Jewish Agency. The petition was signed by sixty members of Mizoram’s B’nei Menashe community. Along with it came the following additional request from its sender:

“Please do not hesitate to upload our petition onto your Website. However, I ask you not to include the names of the people who signed it. I realize this is a strange request to make for a public petition. As you may be aware, though, the signatories of our petition have already been subject to threats and intimidation for expressing their opinions. Although they were aware that their action would incur the wrath of Shavei Israel, they are determined to stand by this petition come what may. Still, I fear for their well-being if the publication of their names were to cause Shavei Israel to retaliate.”

She herself, the petition’s sender wrote, was not afraid to make her name known. “My family,” she declared,” has faithfully practiced Judaism in Mizoram for several decades. We were adherents of Judaism before Shavei Israel began overseeing the Aliyah of the Bnei Menashe. Now, we have lost all trust in it. Although I don’t want needlessly to put anyone beside me in a tight spot, I personally am ready to expose myself and my family to Shavei’s censure and opprobrium. I take courage from the example of our female forbearers, Miriam, Deborah, Esther, and Judith, who stood up for their people when all others had lost heart. If my family and I are to be made scapegoats and denied Aliyah for fighting for our fellow Bnei Menashe, we gladly welcome the privilege.”

Nevertheless, Degel Menashe has decided not to leave the petition’s sender exposed and has chosen to conceal her identity along with that of the other signatories, whose names will remain, for the time being, with us and The Jewish Agency. The statement they are affixed to accuses Shavei Israel of responsibility for the slow pace of B’nei Menashe Aliyah and for its underrepresentation in the Mizoram community. (See our Editorial, “Be Quiet and Obey,” on this page.) The members of this community, it states, “have been dismayed to discover that their path to Aliyah is being hindered by the very same Shavei Israel representatives who are supposed to lead them on it” and “have been driven to the brink of despair.”

“In light of the steep rise in those infected with a more communicable and deadlier strain of Covid-19,” the petition goes on, “the outlook for our brethren from the Bnei Menashe community in Mizoram is growing ever bleaker. Here in Mizoram we are three weeks into a strict lockdown that sees no signs of being lifted any time soon. The incidence of the virus has been much higher than it was a year ago and has more severely affected our community, several members of which are now in quarantine. Already hard-pressed to find gainful employment in a Christian country, we are now in dire straits and closer to the edge of disaster.”

The petition concludes with an appeal to Isaac Herzog:

“According to a recent community-wide census, there are currently about 1,000 Bnei Menashe in Mizoram. However, due to the unrelenting stance taken by Shavei Israel toward any dissent or criticism of the organization, most of us have been brow-beaten into compliance with it. Although we may have privately expressed our bitterness and disillusionment with Shavei, we have feared to give this public expression lest we jeopardize our chances for Aliyah. Now, however, I fervently beseech you to rise up and champion the cause of our vulnerable brethren in Mizoram who daily await with impatience the fulfillment of the biblical promise that they will return to the blessed and beautiful land of their forefathers Joseph and Menashe.”

Yours sincerely,

[Name withheld],

on behalf of the Bnei Menashe Community,

Aizawl, Mizoram,

India.”

Degel Menashe has forwarded this petition to The Jewish Agency.

“Be Quiet and Obey!” An Editorial

Shavei Israel’s once iron grip on the B’nei Menashe community of northeast India, already under serious challenge in Manipur, is now slipping in Mizoram, too. Two new developments point to this. The first is a petition sent to the Jewish Agency by sixty members of the Mizoram community who have been, so they declare, “driven to their wits’ end by the recklessness of the Shavei Israel organization.” (See our article “Sixty Names That Can’t Be Named” on this page.) The other is a WhatsApp message to the B’nei Menashe of Mizoram posted by Azriel Pachuau, Shavei administrator in Aizawl.

Azriel Pachuau

Pachuau’s message was written in Mizo. Translated into English, it begins:

“By the grace of G-d and the Shavei Israel Organization, another round of Aliyah is finally on the horizon. It appears that about 600 people from the Manipur community will be making Aliyah in this round….Let us be reminded that this current round of Aliyah of some 600 people from Manipur is only for those who have already been selected and approved for Aliyah following an interview with the dayyanim [rabbinical judges].”

Pachuau was referring to a list drawn up by Shavei and Israel’s Rabbinate in 2016. Some 250 individuals on this list, three-fifths from Manipur and the remainder from Mizoram, arrived in Israel last December. The remainder, slated to arrive sometime later this year, are all from Manipur. Addressing the disgruntlement this has led to in Mizoram, one of the subjects of the 60-signature petition, Pachuau’s WhatsAp post continued:

“All of us here in the B’nei Menashe community of Mizoram are undoubtedly highly motivated and eager to make Aliyah. However, let us learn to respect the plans and endeavors of our Shavei authorities. It is of vital importance that we obediently follow their word. Instead, let us devote all our energy to religious observance.”

In other words: Be quiet and obey! Go to synagogue, keep the commandments of Judaism, and don’t think for yourselves, because thinking is Shavei’s job, not yours. And alluding to the many B’nei Manashe who have nevertheless begun to think for themselves, both about Aliyah and other things, Pachuau went on:

“There may be other groups or organizations that seek to interfere in the Aliyah process. Let us be especially wary of them. Let us be reminded once again that Shavei Israel is the sole and only organization which labors for us and our Aliyah. Therefore, let us obediently await its instructions and guidelines for us.”

What “groups or organizations” can Pachuau have had in mind? Was it by any chance Degel Menashe? Certainly, we can claim part of the credit for the B’nei Menashe in Mizoram having begun to ask hard questions about Shavei. “Indeed,” Pachuau wrote, “there is an unhealthy amount of gossip and hearsay that is making inroads into our community. Which is why we must learn to shut our ears to all loose talk and anything that does not come from authorized spokespersons of the Shavei organization.”

Unhealthy? I can’t imagine a healthier development than the B’nei Menashe of Mizoram waking up to the fact that, for long years now, Shavei Israel has been lying to them, deceiving them, and manipulating them. At long last, this is beginning to be talked about.

The petition of the sixty is a sign of this. Sending it to The Jewish Agency while preferring to remain anonymous reveals both courage and fear: the courage to speak out against Shavei’s abuses and the fear of the retaliation this may bring down. But as courage grows, fear decreases. It has happened in Manipur. It’s happening now in Mizoram.

Yitzhak Thangjom