A product of the Medill News Service, ImmHT provides a cross-national perspective on immigration, enhancing exposure to world affairs for Americans, providing public space to air compelling stories about diaspora populations, and serving as a repository of facts and figures in an arena of often misleading information.
Home > The Bnei Menashe tribe leaves India for Israel and the West Bank
Tzvi Khaute, a native of a remote area near India's border with Myanmar, thanks God every day for allowing him to return to his ancestral home here in this West Bank settlement.
Khaute is one of about 1200 immigrants claiming descent from the lost Jewish tribe of "Bnei Menashe," or "Children of Menashe," a group of Indians who have to come to Israel and its settlements to reconnect with their spiritual roots.
The community was reinforced in late November 2006 by the arrival of 218 new immigrants, the largest group of the community to come in one fell swoop. Their plane tickets and initial expenses were paid by American Christian evangelicals who believe they will be blessed for helping to fulfill the biblical prophecy of returning the Jewish people to their homeland.
Their immigration, for the first time, was also sanctioned by the government. But their ordeal is far from over.
Finding Zion
The Bnei Menashe's immigration is a saga fraught with controversy over the age-old debate: Who is s a Jew, and, some say, who is a desirable Jew?
Secular politicians in Israel, suspecting the group is using religious claims to leave India, have blocked the community from entering the country. Religious authorities have accepted the group's claim that it descends from the lost Jewish tribe of Menashe, but still require a rigorous conversion process.
This latest group, whose members were converted to Judaism by traveling rabbis in India, has angered some Indian politicians opposed to proselytizing.
Some experts wonder whether they're not just victims of racism. The Bnei Menashe are ethnically Tibetan and Burman, and have Asiatic features.
Though politics have made it harder, the Bnei Menashe say all they want is to practice their
religion on sacred soil. But still close to 7000 remain stranded in India, hoping for a chance to
come to the "promised land."
"When I was small boy in India, we never knew where is Zion, where is Jerusalem," said Khaute, who keeps framed pictures of rabbis on his wall and a skullcap centered on his head. "Whenever we sang a song that mentioned 'Zion' or the name 'Jerusalem,' we thought it was in the heaven."
The Bnei Menashe hail from a northeastern corner of India where, they say, their ancestors landed after the Assyrians banished them from biblical Israel in the 8th century B.C. In the course of the centuries, they became animists, and then in the 19th century, British missionaries converted many of them to Christianity.
But the group continued to practice ancient Jewish rituals, including sacrifices, which they say
had been passed down orally for thousands of years.
When Israel was established in 1948, the group experienced a religious "awakening" and many picked up the modern Jewish traditions. Legend has it that when a tribal leader named Challianthanga had a dream in which his people returned to Israel, some set out on foot in the direction of "Zion."
The Bnei Menashe began finding "Zion" in the late 1980s, when a few came to Israel with the help of Jewish activists dedicated to the return of lost tribes. They were not recognized under Israel's "Law of Return," which grants automatic citizenship to Jews.
Most lived on tourist visas, and moved to the Orthodox settlements in the West Bank and Gaza where they received financial support to settle. The largest group of 450 settled in Kiryat Arba, near the Palestinian town of Hebron.
A Life Without Papers, Caught up in Politics
Their new life, without work papers and healthcare, was arduous for some who say they led
better lives in India.
Odelia Ester Ezra, a 42-year-old single mother, had been a marketing coordinator for American
Express in India but could only find domestic housework in Israel. Khaute said he left behind his
studies and white-collar job prospects to work in a greenhouse.
Others left behind lives of poverty.
In 2003, then-Interior Minister Avraham Poraz, from the secular Shinui party, froze the group's
tourist visas, a policy that remains in effect.
"I saw nothing that really linked them to Jewish people," said Poraz, who is now out of
government. "If they are Jews, they don't have to convert."
Poraz accused the group of coming to Israel in search of a better life, not religious fulfillment. He also claimed the settlers were using the Bnei Menashe to strengthen Israel's claims to the West Bank.
"They were brought to Israel because they were ready to go to the West Bank," he said. "The whole idea came from rabbis who were very close to the settlers. The reason was political."
Such allegations are brushed off by immigrants like Avigdan Hangshing, 49, who said he was a
contractor in India but has since worked as a supermarket clerk and a garbage man. Hangshing's wife, Neelie, came just after back surgery but had no access to doctors.
"How can we live in the city?" Hangshing asked in the den of his four-room West Bank apartment. "City life is very fast and everything is expensive.
"In the settlements, we also have more attachment to our religion," he added.
Some experts say a racist element among Israeli politicians, particularly from the left, may be
reflected in Poraz's policies.
"I think there is some racism there, though not racism of the crudest kind," said Israeli author
Hillel Halkin, who wrote a book about the Bnei Menashe. "If there had been a similar story with the Russian population, with several thousand people living as Jews in Russia and sincerely wanting nothing more than to come to the Jewish state, there would be no problem."
"I don't think it's most people on the street," Halkin added, saying it plays out in the politics
of left wing political parties.
Khaute agreed and added, "In the Israeli government, some people judge according to the appearance of our faces," he said. "Maybe, biologically (we look) like the Asians, but the soul is not the same at all."
Ticket to Citizenship
Rivka Rei, 49, left India in 1988 to come on the first organized trip, and now lives in the West
Bank settlement of Ofra.
"It was like we fell from space," Rei said. "Israel did not have foreign workers from the far
East. It was a very rare occurrence and we looked totally different."
Despite the hardships, the Bnei Menashe studied, sometimes for more than a year, for their official conversion, which was a ticket to citizenship. Once converted, most became modern Orthodox Jews, but some politicians maintained the religious practices were just a smoke screen.
In an effort to settle the religious question, one of Israel's chief rabbis, Shlomo Amar,
dispatched two rabbinical court judges to the Indian states of Mizoram and Manipur, where the
community was concentrated.
In India, the rabbis found a group that now practices common Jewish rituals, with some nuances.
Families pack into more than 40 synagogues on religious holidays, observe the Jewish Sabbath and sing prayers in Hebrew, even if only sounding out the words phonetically. Services, however, are led by a cantor because there is no ordained rabbis and they eat pork for lack of kosher meat.
The Bnei Menashe still sanctify a newborn boy on the eighth day after his birth, but Khaute said
they commonly pierce a hole in the newborn's ear rather than perform a circumcision.
Still, after studying the judges' reports, Amar formally recognized them in 2005 as a lost tribe
and agreed to restore the Bnei Menashe to the Jewish people, on the condition that they undergo Orthodox conversions.
Amar sent a conversion team to India, which converted 218 Bnei Menashe in Mizoram before news of the conversions spread across the country. Indian politicians opposed to missionary work raised a ruckus, and Israel, fearing a diplomatic flap, called the rabbinical team home before it could make it to Manipur, where hundreds more were to be converted.
The New Arrivals
The 218 new converts began arriving Nov. 21, 2006, in Israel's Ben Gurion International Airport and were expected to settle in the Galilee. They had been scheduled for an airlift by charter plane, but the Indian government canceled the flight in an effort to downplay the event. The new immigrants arrrived on passenger planes in the middle of the night.
Nevertheless, the first group of 51 was met with a swarm of photographers, cameramen and reporters when they stepped off the plane at 3:30 am. As Jews, they were handed immigrant papers on their arrival by Israel's Absorption Ministry. They also recieved plastic Israeli flags, which they waived in the air with great pride.
"I feel lonely a little bit, but this is our home," said Arbi Khiangte, 21, just after she stepped
off the flight. Khiangte left her entire family behind.
"This is the promise of God, the promised land of God," she said, with tears in her eyes.
The journey of these one-time animists to the Jewish state is being funded by American Christians, through a group called the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, which channels millions of dollars a year in donations from evangelicals to Israel.
The new group was met in the airport by an anxious Israeli Bnei Menashe community, who said
prayers and waved banners inscribed with a biblical passage: "The sons shall return to their borders.''
Most of those who came to greet the new group, Bnei Menashe members who came to
Israel in the past decade during more trying times, have since integrated into society.
The community in Israel now prays side by side with its neighbors. Its teenagers serve in the
Israeli army, and two have become ordained rabbis.
Kihangte, one of the newest arrivals, said her first task is to bring a prayer, written on a tiny
scroll of paper by her family members in India, to the Western Wall. It is common Jewish practice to write down prayers and lodge them in the ancient crevices of Judaism's holiest shrine, hoping they will be answered.
Khinagte said the prayer was the chance to come to Israel.
"They wanted me to come here," she said. "They wanted to come too, but now they have no chance."
With their tourist visas still frozen and more conversions in India unlikely, it is unclear when
Khinagte will see her relatives again. Several families, who have been separated for years, will
continue to wait for the day they reunite.
Khaute says he is waiting for the Bnei Menashe to be accepted without the need for conversions,
and for immigration without the need for tourist visas or approval by secular politicians.
"When the messiah comes, he will determine who is a Jew," he said.
RSS
