Sudden Death of Avihu Singsit Followed By Promised Return of Missing BMC Records

YItzkhak Seimang Haokip

(November 19) The mystery of the missing records of the B’nei Menashe Council, heightened by the sudden death of outgoing BMC chairman Avihu Singsit on November 16, appears to have been solved. The records have turned out to be in the possession of the BMC’s outgoing secretary Seimang Yitzhak Haokip. Seimang, who at first denied having them, has now promised to make them available by Sunday, November 22.

How long he has had the missing documents, which include the BMC’s registration papers and all written accounts of its activities over the years, is unclear. They were gone from the BMC office in the Beit Shalom synagogue in Churachandpur when the Council’s newly elected officials took possession of it earlier this week. At a transitional meeting on November 15 with Avihu Singsit, the BMC’s outgoing chairman, they were told by him that the records were being held by Meital Singson, Manipur coordinator of Shavei Israel. But Avihu, a diabetic who was not in good health, died suddenly the next day, and Meital then issued a written denial of having the records and told the new BMC officials that they were with Seimang Haokip.

Meital Singson’s sworn statement

The meeting with Avihu Singsit, which had been scheduled to take place at Beit Shalom, was transferred to his nearby home because he was feeling poorly. Singsit was chosen as a Shavei Israel candidate for the post of BMC chairman in 2015. He did not run for re-election in the balloting held earlier this month, the first BMC vote in five years, in which Shavei-backed candidate Shlomo Kipgen was defeated in his bid for the organization’s chairmanship by independent Lalam Hangshing. At the meeting at Singsit’s home, our Newsletter has been told, Avihu congratulated Hangshing, kissed him on both cheeks, and offered his blessings for a successful tenure in office. He died the next day.

Shavei Israel did not take its electoral loss as graciously. Having unsuccessfully sought to prevent the elections from taking place, it subsequently attempted to overturn their results and render them null and void. In a letter sent to the Election Committee on November 11, a week after the ballots were cast, losing candidate Kipgen called for their invalidation on the grounds that several B’nei Menashe congregations took part in the vote that should not have been allowed to; that other congregations that should have been included were not; and that Election Convener Aharon Vaiphei was “arbitrarily” dismissed by the Election Committee before the vote took place.

These charges were unfounded. The congregations of Saikul, Peijang, Petach Tikva, and Phalbung that participated in the vote after a floor challenge to them was defeated had been expelled from the B’nei Menashe community by Shavei for defying its dictates; the congregations of Taipul, Charonching, and Lunjaijing, which Kipgen’s letter charged were excluded, were never part of the community to begin with. As for Aharon Vaiphei, a Shavei sympathizer, his “arbitrary” dismissal took place after he had refused several times to convene the Election Committee in an attempt to delay or ward off the vote.

The removal of the BMCs records from its office was another such maneuver. Without its registration papers, the Council would lack legal status and have difficulty operating. Moreover without written accounts of the BMC’s past activities under the domination of Shavei Israel, there would no way of documenting how it had been reduced by Shavei to rubber stamp status. If Avihu Singsit’s last words are to be believed, the records were taken either before or after the elections by Meital Singson, who passed them on to Seimang Haokip when an accusing finger was pointed at her.

Both Singson and Haokip are slated to leave for Israel as part of the contingent of 140 B’nei Menashe from Manipur who have been chosen by Shavei Israel to make Aliyah next month, and the legal threat of a restraining order to prevent their departure may have swayed them to disclose the whereabouts of the records. In a late development, at a meeting held today, November 19, with Lalam Hangshing and other newly elected BMC officials, Haokip reversed himself and admitted to having the documents , which he said he would produce shortly. It will soon be known if he does.

Newly Surfaced Document Sheds Light On BMC History

(November 19) The B’nei Menashe Council, elections to which earlier this month have been followed by a wrangle over its records (see the related story on this page), has a history going back to 1995. A brochure that recently reached our Newsletter tells the story of its origins, largely forgotten under the impact of subsequent events.

Lemuel Henkhogin Haokip

The brochure was published in 2001 as a “souvenir” to mark the 25th anniversary of the beginnings of Judaism in Mizoram and Manipur. Its author, Lemuel Henkhogin Haokip, was at the time the BMC’s General Secretary and is today a resident of Aizawl, the capital of Mizoram, where he holds the government post of regional superintendent of the Central Board of Indirect Tax and Customs.

The anniversary brochure, the complete text of which appears at the end of this article, gives a brief but illuminating account of northeast India’s Judaism movement, whose roots go thousands of years back to the Bible, on the one hand, and half a century, on the other, to several small Christian churches that sought to keep the biblical Sabbath and other Old Testament customs. The full saga of the emergence of Torah-observant Judaism from such a background under the guidance of Rabbi Eliahu Avichayil of Jerusalem and his organization Amishav is not related by the brochure, which concentrates on organizational developments. Of these, the BMC was among the most important.

The B’nei Menashe Council was preceded, so the brochure relates, by several other groups that sought to represent the Jewish congregations that sprang up in Mizoram and Manipur in the 1970s, ‘80s, and ‘90s. Immediately before it, in 1995, came The Chazzan Council, an organization headed by a combination of lay leaders and chazzanim, the prayer leaders of the different B’nei Menashe communities of Manipur.

Jolly Michal Thangjom

Soon afterwards, a split led to the B’nei Menashe Council’s formation. “The idea behind the BMC,” our Newsletter was told by its first president, Jolly Michal Thangjom, who today lives in the Israeli town of Kiryat Arba, “was to be both more inclusive and less restricted to purely religious matters than was The Chazzan Council. We wanted to bring in all the B’nei Menashe communities of Mizoram and to function as an organization that would deal with all aspects of their lives.”

Within a year, in June 1996, the two groups merged again under the name of The B’nei Menashe Organization, which was changed to The B’nei Menashe Council in August 1997. Although it never managed to extend its activities to Mizoram, the BMC functioned from then on as the representative body of the B’nei Menashe of Manipur. Its officials were elected at General Meetings participated in by the entire B’nei Menashe community. These were held in Imphal, Manipur’s capital, to which B’nei Menashe congregants from outlying villages were bused to take part in democratic elections, held by secret ballot when the occasion called for them.

The anniversary brochure’s list of BMC activities in 2003-2004 shows how much it was involved in doing. This came to an end when Shavei Israel, the Jerusalem-based organization that pushed Amishav and Rabbi Avichayil aside, seized administrative control of the B’nei Menashe community in 2004. In order to bypass the BMC, it formed a handpicked body called The Shavei Fellowship, which took over the communal tasks and responsibilities that had previously been performed by the BMC. Although for the next ten years the BMC continued to hold intermittent elections, its officials were powerless, stripped of their former functions.

The BMC’s last elections were held in 2015. Following them, its two highest office holders, Chairman Avihu Singsit and Secretary Yitzhak Seimang Haokip agreed to appoint Tsvi Khaute, Shavei Israel’s chief administrator, as their official “advisor” Khaute’s “advice” was to hold no more elections, and thus, the BMC, whose bylaws called for balloting to be held every two years, effectively ceased to exist. .

Speaking to our Newsletter from Aizawl, Lemuel Henkhogin Haokip expressed his delight that the BMC has now been revived and that genuinely democratic elections have been held for its leadership once again. “This should have happened long ago,” he said. “If I hadn’t been posted by the Indian government outside of Manipur, I would have fought to see that it did. I’m sorry I’m not in Manipur to play a role now, but the news that others are fighting to bring democracy back to B’nei Menashe life makes me happy.”

25th Anniversary Souvenir Brochure

25th anniversary document

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Shavei Israel Publishes List of 253 Olim To Arrive in Israel Next Month

(November 13) After long weeks of rumors and uncertainty, Shavei Israel, the Jerusalem-based private organization that has been responsible for the Aliyah of B’nei Menashe from India, has published a list of the 253 men, women, and children chosen by it to come to Israel as new immigrants next month.

The 253, some 140 from Manipur and the remainder from Mizoram, were selected from a longer list of 722 individuals approved for Aliyah several years ago, who have been waiting for it ever since. According to unconfirmed reports, a reason for the delay was that Shavei Israel, which is known to be in financial straits, was unable to pay for the immigrants’ airfare as it had done in the past. In the end, it is said, the government of Israel agreed to foot the bill.

The group of immigrants is slated to leave Mizoram and Manipur for New Delhi on December 10 and to depart from there on an El Al flight for Israel somewhere between December 13 and 21. Although sources close to Shavei have said that it will be met in Delhi by Israel’s Minister of Immigration Penina Tamano-Shata, who will then escort it to Israel, the ministry has thus far issued no statement to this effect.

Shavei sources have also revealed that, once it arrives in Israel following testing for Covid-19 before its departure from India, the group will spend two weeks in quarantine at the Immigrant Absorption Center of Kibbutz Nordiya near Netanya. After this, our Newsletter has learned, it will be transferred to a second Absorption Center in Kfar Hasidim, east of Haifa, where it is projected to spend three months studying Hebrew and Judaism in preparation for its conversion by a rabbinical court . Subsequently, the plan is for it to be given permanent housing in Nof Ha-Galil, the former Upper Nazareth.

A construction project in Nof Ha-Galil

The release by Shavei of the list ended a period of mystery in which the immigrants were informed they had been chosen but were told to keep their identities secret. In Manipur and Mizoram, the list was greeted with mixed emotions. Many not on it were happy for those who were and for their families in Israel with whom they will now be reunited. Others, veteran members of the community, were angered to discover that relative newcomers had been leapfrogged over them because of their connections with Shavei. Complaints of favoritism and lack of transparency abounded. “There is a lot of disgruntlement,” said Lalam Hangshing, chairman of the newly elected B’nei Menashe Council, in an interview with him posted on our Website this week. “People are complaining about the unfairness of the selection. They want to know why some are on the list and others aren’t.”