Ministry of Aliyah: “Ties With Shavei Ended Some Time Ago”

(July 21) In a July 20 letter sent to Advocate Ron Dror of the law firm of Dror, Menchel, and Weinstein by Michal Shitrit-Revel, the legal advisor of the Ministry of Aliyah and Absorption, the Ministry has denied having any present ties with Shavei Israel. (The Hebrew term used, hitkashrut, has the sense of an operative agreement.) The letter came in reply to a July 3 letter from the law firm to Minister Pnina Tamano-Shata demanding of her, in the name of 14 senior members of the B’nei Menashe community in Israel, to cut all ties with Shavei because of its behavior.

“As of today,” Ms. Shitrit-Revel wrote, “the Ministry of Aliyah and Absorption has no tie [hitkashrut] with Shavei Israel. Over the years, when government decisions were made to bring groups of B’nei Menashe [to Israel], our Ministry entered into agreements [hitkasher] with this NGO on an ad hoc basis. Such ties ended some time ago [histaymu zeh mikvar].”

In short, the Ministry argued, it is pointless to ask it to cut its ties with Shavei because none exist. The last two operative agreements between it and Shavei, said the letter, were signed in October 2020 and May 2021, since when there have been no others. Moreover, in the 2021 agreement “the Jewish Agency was, for the first time, made an integral part of matters with the intention of turning over to it the handling of future groups [of B’nei Menashe], if and when government decisions regarding them are made.”

At the moment, stated the Ministry’s letter, no such decisions have been taken and there are no immediate plans for bringing new groups of B’nei Menashe olim. “Furthermore,” Shitrit-Revel continued, “once such plans are formulated and approved, the Ministry has no obligation to enter into an operative agreement in the matter [eyno nidrash l’hitkashrut banosey] with any particular third party. Should the Jewish Agency decline to deal with future groups of B’nei Menashe; and should, as authorized by government decisions, the task of bringing them fall to the Ministry, it will review the bodies capable of supplying such a service and ask for bids [yekayem halikh rekhesh] as required by law.”

In plain English:

1. The repeated claims made by Shavei Israel that a new Aliyah of B’nei Menashe is in the offing and that Shavei has once again been given responsibility for it are false;

2. The Ministry hopes that in the future Shavei Israel will be replaced by the Jewish Agency in everything having to do with B’nei Menashe Aliyah;

3. If the Agency, for whatever reason, chooses not to assume such a role, this will not necessarily revert to Shavei. A tender will be issued, open to all organizations deeming themselves qualified to perform part or all of the job of bringing B’nei Menashe to Israel.

Shavei Israel’s monopoly on the B’nei Menashe’s Aliyah has clearly ended. Nor, following the Ministry’s historic letter, is there any chance of its ever being restored.

The conclusion of the Ministry’s letter. On point no.7, second line reads, "The Ministry of Aliya and Absorption has nothing to do with the Shavei Israel N.G.O.

New, Expanded Avichail School Opens in Churachandpur

(July 14) After a tentative start repeatedly interrupted by Covid closures, problems of location, and the disruptive efforts of Shavei Israel, Churachandpur’s Rabbi Eliyahu Avichail Memorial Hebrew School reopened at a new site this week with an enlarged staff and a greatly increased enrollment. One-hundred-and-twelve children, adolescents, and adults have registered for classes, several times the size of the previous student body.

The new school building being inaugurated

The school’s premises are in a newly constructed and still unfinished building in the Phaijang neighborhood. This is a brisk ten-minute walk from the school’s previous location in Beit Shalom Synagogue, the city’s largest place of Jewish worship, near which much of the local B’nei Menashe community lives.

Each of the structure’s three 15-by-15-foot classrooms is equipped with ten long wooden desks, each seating four students. Roofed and walled with corrugated tin sheets, the rooms still lack ceilings, flooring, and electricity, but so great was the enthusiasm generated by news of the school’s reopening that it was decided not to wait for their completion.

Funded by the B’nei Menashe Council with the help of a grant from Degel Menashe, the Avichail School hopes to develop a full-scale program offering all-day education to the young, and night-school classes for adults, in a wide range of subjects. In its present running-in stage, explains its principal, Rivka Chongboi Dimngel, its curriculum will consist mainly of religious studies in Bible and Jewish observance, supplemented by courses in spoken English and mathematics. The Jewish side of the curriculum will be taught by two knowledgeable members of the community, Shimon Thomsong and Gideon Lhouvum, while Dimngel herself, who holds a B.A. degree in Sociology, will be the English instructor and math will be the province of Ohaliav Haokip, who is currently completing his requirements for MCA, Masters of Computer Applications.

Rivka Dimngel.

The students, Dimngel says, will be divided into three age groups, children, adolescents, and adults each of which will meet separately and sometimes together .

The aim, Dimgnel told our Newsletter, is to build a curriculum that will, on its non-Jewish side, conform to that of the Manipur school system. “Many of our younger students,” she points out, “have dropped out of this system due to economic or other difficulties, and we hope to provide them, free of cost, with the education they have been missing. We’ll go through a trial-and-error period. We’ll keep trying to improve and adjust to challenges as they arise, improvising as we go along. We’re still in need of equipment, such as computers, projectors, and a power back-up system, because electric failures are common in Manipur. And we hope to reach out in the future to B’nei Menashe communities elsewhere in Manipur, too. We intend to serve the community to the best of our ability with the tools we have at our disposal.''

Affixing the mezuzah.

The Avichail School’s formal inauguration took place on July 4, when a crowd of close to 100 people gathered to witness Shimon Thomsong affix a mezuzah to the new building’s doorpost. Donated by Machir Sitlhou in the name of the B’nei Menashe Youth Organization, it was crafted by Yonah Mangboi Lhouvum. Other community members chipped in with benches, walls fans, whiteboards, and a cash contribution raised by the newly formed B’nei Menashe Mothers’ Association.

Hand-crafted by Yonah Lhouvum.

The two-hour ceremony was launched with an opening prayer by the former vice-chairman of Beit Shalom, Rafael Hangshing. “We are blessed,” he said, “to be present at such a landmark event for our community. Let us thank God for this initiative and for the children it will serve, who are our future.” The B’nei Menashe Council was represented by its own vice-chairman, Nechemiah Haokip, who expressed his joy and excitement. “This is the first school of its kind ever to be established in our community,” he told the audience. “Let us hope it will provide us with the Jewish education we have been woefully lacking until now. Something like this should have happened long ago.”

Classroom scenes.

Degel Menashe Scholarship Winners Look Back on Academic year

(June 8) June marks the end of the academic year, and with it our Newsletter asked Degel Menashe’s 2021-22 scholarship winners to write a few words about their studies and how they were affected by the aid they received.

All, as might be expected, spoke of a lightening of the economic burden borne by them. Interestingly, though, none said that without their scholarships, which averaged forty percent of their tuition, they would not have continued their education. All were determined to have done so in any case, even though it would have meant taking part-time jobs, or working more hours at jobs they already had, at the expense of their studies. Twenty-one-year-old Osnath Lotzem from Kiryat Araba, for example, now in her third and last year of a Medical Instrument Technician’s course at Jerusalem’s College of Management, wrote:

“All along I’ve been working part-time to pay for my college tuition. If not for Degel Menashe, I would have had to work even more and would have had less time available for my schoolwork. No words can describe how much I thank you.”

Yossi Kipgen.

Yossi Kipgen from Nitzan, 29, who has just finished his second year of a three-year program in Medical Lab Science as Hadassah College in Jerusalem, expressed himself similarly:

“The scholarship helped by enabling me to cut down on outside work and invest more of my time in my studies and preparing for exams. I saw the results in the good grades I received this year as compared to the previous one, when I failed a course. With less financial worries on my mind, I felt less stressed and more able to concentrate.”

Some of the scholarship winners said that without their awards they would have been forced to take less courses and spread their studies over more time. Nitzana Lhungdim-Barsheshet, who received her B.A. degree in Special Education this year from Herzog College wrote:

“Because of the scholarship, I was able to finish my studies sooner than planned and to graduate in January rather than in June. Now, I’m already working as a fifth-grade teacher with children with communications problems.”

Yitzhak Lhungdim.

Yitzhak Lhungdim, 28, from Kiryat Arba, received his degree in social work this June from Hadassah College. Although, he said, he also had a job at a tourist center in Hebron, “it was the scholarship from Degel Menashe that made it possible to keep my head economically above water.” The scholarship gave him more time for the field work assigned him with a population he had had no previous experience with – the elderly. “In the past,” he wrote, “I had always worked with young people. At first, I was worried about working with older ones. I had a fear of old age – call it ageism, if you will. Now, though, I understand how much this age group has been left without a voice and is overlooked by the rest of society, and how much it needs younger people like myself.” Yitzhak is now thinking of making a career of working with senior citizens.

Ya’el Lunkhel.

For some, the Degel Menashe scholarship had a motivational as well as an economic value. “I’m 25 years old and a first-year student in industrial design at the Shenkar College of Engineering, Design, and Art in Ramat-Gan.” wrote Ya’el Lunkhel.“Ever since I was a girl, I dreamed of getting a higher education after my army service. But no one in my surroundings had ever gone to college before. It seemed too much to hope for.

“I felt that my feet were stuck to the ground when I wanted to fly. When I heard that an NGO was helping people from our community to study, it gave me a big push psychologically. I began to believe that it was possible, that I had someone behind me. I thought, ‘Whatever else happens this year, it’s the year I’m going to fly!’”

Ya’el, who spent three hours every day traveling from her home town of Kiryat Arba to Ramat-Gan and back, thinks Degel Menashe’s scholarship program is impacting the entire B’nei Menashe community. “We’ve always had the intelligence and an ethic of hard work,” she says. “Now that Degel Menashe has come on the scene, I’ve noticed a significant rise in the number of young B’nei Menashe enrolling in colleges and universities. For the first time, they believe they can do it, because they look around them and see others doing it, too, They’re sprouting wings and learning to fly just like I did.”