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.”

Going To Court: A Degel Menashe Editorial

Taking legal action against a government ministry is not something to be done lightly. It’s a last recourse when all else has failed. But in Degel Menashe’s long battle with Israel’s Ministry of Aliyah and Integration to have the Aliyah of the B’nei Menashe taken out of the corrupt and abusive hands of Shavei Israel and transferred to The Jewish Agency, the time has come to admit it: all else has failed.

The last straw – the last failed hope – was the so-called “fact-finding mission” sent by the Ministry and the Agency to Manipur and Mizoram in early June. Such a mission had long been a goal of ours. As far back as November 24, 2020, Degel Menashe wrote to Minister Pnina Tamano-Shata: “You should consider sending a Ministry/Jewish Agency delegation to Manipur and Mizoram in order to investigate the situation there and write a report that can serve as the basis for future decisions.” We thought that an on-site commission of inquiry might convince both bodies, as countless written testimonies had been unable to, of the need for a thorough reform of the B’nei Menashe Aliyah process. We welcomed the news last April that such a mission was about to depart for India, and we welcomed it again when, after a two-month delay, it set out in June.

We were naïve. After all our bitter experience with the Ministry of Immigration and Integration, we should have known better. The “fact-finding mission” was a farce. It had no interest in the facts and did not bother to look for them. In its week in northeast India, it spent no more than four hours on hearing from Shavei Israel’s many victims and critics. Few of those wishing to relate their grievances were given a chance to. Those allowed to speak were permitted five or ten minutes each. The delegation from Israel had no time for them. It was too busy being hosted by Shavei, shepherded around by it, and attending its receptions, to which Shavei’s opponents were not invited.

In short, the Ministry/Agency mission visited Mizoram and Manipur as the guest of the organization it was supposed to investigate. Although it went through the motions of listening to both sides so that could it pretend to be fair-minded, its mind was made up in advance. If it ever files an official report, the findings are predictable. “Yes, we found a few people who claimed to have been treated badly by Shavei Israel,“ these will state. “Perhaps some were. But no organization is perfect, not even Shavei, which has promised not to let such slips recur. We fully recommend leaving the B’nei Menashe’s Aliyah in its hands.”

For words such as these, there will have been no need to have traveled to India. They could be written without leaving Jerusalem.

And all this comes on the heels of the Ministry’s refusal to answer repeated queries about what it intends to do regarding Judge Naftali Shiloh’s April 15th ruling that Shavei Israel and its chairman Michael Freund have been guilty of repeated acts of criminal fraud! No answer is an answer, too. What the ministry intends to do is obvious:

Nothing.

That is, it intends to carry on with business as usual. Yes, its business partner is a private NGO that behaves like a mafia, but clearly this doesn’t bother it.

And so, all else having failed, Degel Menashe has decided, along with fourteen senior members of the B’nei Menashe community in Israel, to go to court. If the Ministry will not change course of its own volition, it will have to be made to. The Tel Aviv law firm representing us is a leader in the field of public litigation. It has agreed to take the case on a pro bono basis as a public service. We thank it for doing so and agree with its judgment. This is indeed a public issue. It concerns not just the B’nei Menashe but all Israelis who care about clean and fair government and want their country’s ministries to care, too.

Ministry of Immigration Served Notice That Shavei Ties Must Be Cut

(July 4) The Tel Aviv law firm of Dror, Menchel & Weinstein has served legal notice on the country’s Minister of Aliyah and Integration, Pnina Tamano-Shata, that her ministry will be taken to the High Court of Justice unless it cuts its ties with Shavei Israel.

Written by the firm’s managing partner Ron Dror, the notice to the minister begins, in English translation:

“On behalf of my clients, fourteen members of the B’nei Menashe community in Israel, and of Degel Menashe, I am addressing the demand to you that the Ministry of Aliyah and Integration terminate the role of Shavei Israel in the B’nei Menashe’s immigration to Israel and its absorption here.

“My clients declare, firstly, that Shavei Israel is a morally and financially corrupt organization that has over the years abused its near-total power over B’nei Menashe Aliyah from India to Israel; and, secondly, that despite all the flaws and injustices that this has led to, which are well-known to the Ministry, its granting Shavei Israel this power has been, and continues to be, its deliberate policy.”

The five-page notice, dated July 3, proceeds to enumerate the ways in which Shavei Israel’s “corruption” has manifested itself, starting with blatant discrimination in India against B’nei Menashe who refuse to accept Shavei’s dictates, and ending with this year’s April 15 ruling of Tel Aviv district court judge Naftali Shilo that the organization and its chairman, Michael Freund, are guilty of criminal forgery and fraud. The notice also documents how the Ministry of Aliyah and Integration has condoned such acts while refusing to reply to, or even acknowledge, the countless complaints made regarding them.

The notice concludes: “Judging from all that has been said above, it is clear that the Ministry of Aliyah and Integration is determined to continue its policy of full collaboration with Shavei Israel and to ignore the weighty reasons presented to it for withdrawing the powers it has granted this organization and transferring them to other bodies. I therefore have no alternative but to inform you in the name of my clients that, unless I receive from you a speedy answer listing the steps that you intend to take in order to rectify the situation, and unless there are signs that such steps are being implemented, we will be forced to resort to legal measures that will require your ministry to cut its ties with Shavei Israel.”

The legal notice’s concluding paragraph, signed by Advocate Dror.

Dror, Menchel & Weinstein is a prominent Israeli law firm specializing in commercial and public litigation. Its third partner, Yehuda Weinstein, who acts in an advisory capacity, is a former Attorney-General of Israel. The firm, which has agreed to take on the case pro bono in recognition of its public importance, was retained jointly by Degel Menashe and 14 senior members of the B’nei Menashe community in Israel. “We have been considering such a step for a long time,” our Newsletter was told by Hillel Halkin, Degel Menashe’s chairman of the board. “We put it off until now in the hope that it could be avoided. That hope has been dashed. The Ministry of Aliyah has given us no other choice.”

Asked why legal notice to cut ties with Shavei Israel wasn’t also served on The Jewish Agency, which signed an agreement of collaboration with Shavei in May, 2021, Halkin said: “The Jewish Agency is a different matter. Its role in the B’nei Menashe’s Aliyah has until now been a small one, limited to a measure of financial support for Shavei. It’s precisely that which we wish to change: we want the Agency to take full responsibility for this Aliyah, so that Shavei has no more to do with it. The Agency now has a new, highly regarded chairman, Doron Almog, whom we hope will adopt such a policy. He can’t do so, however, without the Ministry of Aliyah’s backing, and so it’s against the Ministry that we need to act.”

Degel Menashe’s 14 fellow litigants were enthusiastic about participating in the case. “Shavei’s demise is long overdue,” our Newsletter was told by one of them, Natan Mangsat Kipgen of Kiryat Arba, who has not seen his family in Manipur for 20 years after it was black-listed for Aliyah by Shavei Israel. “Shavei has treated our community very badly, and misused and abused the authority given it, “ Kipgen said.

Another signatory to the legal notice, Eliora Mate of Bet She’an, calls Shavei Israel “a bad seed that was planted long ago in our community. Families have been separated by it, favors have been dispensed by it at whim, power has been abused by it. It has created a general atmosphere of fear in our community. The bad seed has grown fully now. The only solution is to root it out completely.”

Demsat Yosef Haokip, a recent immigrant to Israel and now a resident of Nof Hagalil who also put his name to the legal notice, adds: “Our community is afflicted with a sickness. This sickness has been brought upon us by Shavei Israel. The only remedy is to get rid of it. Shavei may have done some good work, but the evil it has done outweighs the good by far. If peace is to come to our community, Shavei must go. The courts need to address this problem.”

Rivka Lunkhel of Kiryat Arba would like to appear in court herself. “I would tell the judges everything I know about Shavei,” she told us. “Since its establishment, it has promoted nothing but division. There are people whom I never wronged who don’t talk to me, even hate me, because I don’t support Shavei. But why should I when I see all the horrible things that it’s done? Why is all this necessary?”

Unfortunately, that’s what it seems to be.