Shavei Hounds Sarah Baite From Her Home

(June 30) As if it had not already persecuted her enough, Shavei Israel effectively drove Sarah Baite from her home last week. Baite, a 41-year-old widow whose teenage daughter was raped by a Shavei crony in 2016, had been mercilessly threatened and harassed by her landlord until she finally packed her few belongings and moved out. Here, as related by her in a lengthy phone conversation between Manipur and Israel, is her account of the latest episode in Shavei’s campaign against her.

Sarah Baite.

Baite and daughter had lived for many years in Churachandpur, Manipur’s second largest city and the center of its B’nei Menashe community, in a house belonging to a Shavei loyalist – a man we will refer to by his first initial of T., since we have been asked not to publish his name for fear of retaliation. T., a resident of the town of Moreh on the Manipur-Myanmar border, kept the house as a second home for himself, his family, and whatever guests he might have on his frequent visits to Churachandpur. Baite was employed by him as his housekeeper. Whenever T. arrived, she was charged with looking after him and his entourage, in return for which she and her daughter were allowed to live in the house without rent.

This arrangement, Baite says, lasted without incident until January of this year, when she filed a police complaint against her daughter’s accused rapist, who was brought by Shavei to Israel in 2018. She had waited six years to take such a step because of pressure by Shavei not to do so when the rape occurred, at which time she agreed under duress to a private settlement involving a small sum of hush money. (Not that this helped her, because, as reported by this Newsletter, she was then blamed by Shavei when news of the rape got out anyway, expelled from the B’nei Menashe congregation to which she belonged, and placed on Shavei’s black list of B’nei Menashe denied Aliyah) When she did finally go to the police early this year, encouraged by growing anti Shavei sentiment in Manipur, the campaign of intimidation against her was renewed more brutally in the form of threats of physical violence if she didn’t withdrew her complaint.

This time, Baite, backed by the B’nei Menashe Council, refused to give in, even though she temporarily had to flee Churachandpur out of fear for her safety. Yet after a brief lull following her return, the situation grew still worse when it became known that a Ministry of Immigration/Jewish Agency fact-finding mission was about to visit Manipur and Mizoram. (Originally scheduled for April, the mission arrived in Manipur on June 9th and spent several days there.) Fearing that she would be invited to appear before it and implicate Shavei in the rape’s cover-up, Shavei operatives intensified their warning that she had better retract her accusation.

Tsvi Khaute.

Things came to a head, Baite says, with the arrival in Manipur from Israel of Tsvi Khaute, Shavei Israel’s head administrator, who came in advance of the Ministry/Agency mission. Khaute called on Shavei’s supporters to descend on Churachandpur in a show of strength, and among those responding was T., who brought with him a party of Shavei supporters from Moreh. “On any given day,” Baite relates, “there were up to five of them staying at the house. I had to cook for them, wash their dishes, draw their baths, make their beds, clean their rooms, do their laundry, and still more. And far from thanking me, they treated me terribly. They would get drunk and constantly cursed me and ranted at me for being a troublemaker who should be ashamed of herself. I couldn’t talk back or defend myself, because that’s not something a servant does. I simply had to put up with it, because I had nowhere else to do go.”

Despite all the harassment, Baite appeared before the fact-finding mission and testified briefly. On June 10, Khaute, whose presence in Manipur had become known to the authorities, was questioned at the Churachandpur police station about Shavei’s complicity in the rape’s cover-up. After the mission’s departure for Mizoram on June 12, he escorted them, came back and remained in Manipur to rally Shavei’s forces. Stung by his police interrogation, he heightened the pressure on Baite still more. “My landlord kept telling me,” she told us, “that I had better go see Tsvi Khaute, apologize, and do whatever he told me. When I refused to, T. informed me that I was summoned to a meeting with Tsvi on June 22.”

Baite ignored the summons. “The next day,” she narrates, “My landlord called me up and demanded an explanation. I told him, ‘Ever since my daughter was raped, I asked to see Tsvi Khaute each time he was in Manipur. I literally stood outside his door for hours, begging to talk to him and tell him about my situation. Each time, he refused to see me. His underlings never let me through the door. And now I’m supposed to come crawling to him? It’s he who should apologize to me.”

T. reported Baite’s reply to Khaute and returned to tell her that another meeting had been scheduled for Saturday night, June 25, and that she had better attend it -- or else. Meanwhile, Baite also received another summons, this one from the headsman of the neighborhood in which she had lived at the time of her daughter’s rape, under whose jurisdiction the 2016 settlement had taken place. At this meeting she was informed that the Kuki Inpi Manipur, a roof organization of Manipur’s Kuki population, and the Kuki Lawyers Association, were both threatening to take her to court unless she honored this settlement. It was obvious to Baite that Shavei was behind this, too. “I told the headsman” she said to us, “that I had come this far to seek justice and had faced every possible humiliation and insult, and that I wasn’t going to back down now. By then, I had had enough. I realized that it was only a matter of time before I was kicked out of T.’s house, in which life had become unbearable in any case. And so I went to the B’nei Menashe Council and asked for help.”

The BMC swung into action. BMC general secretary Ohaliav Haokip and treasurer Jesse Gangte spent the morning of Friday, June 24 looking for new lodgings for Baite and found her a one-room flat that the BMC would pay for. It was decided that she should move as soon as the Sabbath was over, before anyone could arrive to drag her to a forced meeting with Khaute. Right after the Havdalah prayer that ends the day of rest, a team of seven volunteers arrived from the BMYO, the BMC”s youth organization. Within a short time, Baite and her few belongings were transferred to her new home, which was only several hundred yards away from her former one. “The next day,” Baite says, “T’s wife called me and asked me why I'd left their house without notice. I told her that considering all the harassment I went through, I should have left long ago. Now that I’m gone from there, I’m as happy as can be. It’s a huge load off my back.”

Ministry of Immigration–Jewish Agency Team Visits Manipur and Mizoram

(June 23) It can now be told. After having been asked “for security reasons” to keep its visit under wraps until it returned to Israel, our Newsletter can reveal that a joint Ministry of Immigration and Absorption-Jewish Agency fact-finding mission spent the week of Thursday, June 9--Tuesday June 15 in northeast India. Headed by Almog Moscowitz, a senior advisor at the Ministry, the team included Ephraim Nagosse of the Ministry and Ilai Oz and Yair Kannai of the Agency.

The mission was in Manipur, principally in Churachandpur, from the 9th to the 12th of June, and in Mizoram’s capital of Aizawl from the 11th on. Its supposed purpose to assess the situation of the B’nei Menashe community in the two Indian states; to review repeated accusations that the Jerusalem-based Shavei Israeli has systematically abused its administration of B’nei Menashe Aliyah to Israel; and to make recommendations for reforming the Aliyah process.

As such, the team’s trip to India was ostensibly a victory for Shavei’s critics, and especially for Degel Menashe, which has been calling for such a fact-finding mission for the past two years. And yet though encouraged by the team’s presence, our Newsletter has learned, the non- and anti-Shavei forces in Manipur and Mizoram were disappointed with its performance. Rather than function as an objective commission of inquiry, they say, it behaved throughout its visit as a guest of Shavei Israel that was mainly intent on pleasing its host. Shavei’s representatives and supporters never left its side and its schedule was closely coordinated with Shavei while all others were kept in the dark until the last minute.

Delegation at Shavei reception. Left to right: Tzvi Khaute, Shavei coordinator, Ephraim Negosse, Ilai Oz, Almog Moscowitz, an undentified man, Yair Kannai, Edith Blaustein, Shavei vice-chairman and Boinu Haokip, head of Vengnuom Village Authority.

The team’s pro-Shavei bias, reports our Manipur correspondent Rivka Dimngel, was evident even before it arrived in Manipur, on its way to which it was accompanied by Edith Blaustein, Shavei Israel’s deputy director-general. (No one in the non- or anti-Shavei camp was even informed of the team’s departure until shortly beforehand, let alone asked to travel with it.) And as soon as the team touched down at Manipur’s Imphal Airport, Dimngel writes, “it was whisked away by Shavei representatives and ushered straight to a grand reception at Churachandpur’s Beit Shalom synagogue that was organized by Shavei in its honor and to which non-Shavei members were not invited.”

The reception ceremony, Dimngnel continued, lasted three-and-a-half hours, after which a single hour and a half was allotted to a meeting with a mixed group of non- and anti-Shavei plaintiffs. These included three officials of the independent B’nei Menashe Council and spokesmen for four communities that had been barred from Shavei Israel’s Aliyah lists because of their adherence, against Shavei’s dictates, to the Ashkenazi rite of prayer.

This meeting, according to Dimngel, “did not go as well as was hoped for. It was all very rushed and most of those present were given no time to air their grievances. This was a huge disappointment, because they had been waiting for this moment ever since Passover.” (The fact-finding team’s trip had originally been scheduled for right after the Passover holiday and had been postponed.) One of the few who got to speak briefly was Sarah Baite, Shavei’s attempt to hush up the 2016 rape of whose daughter has been widely debated in the B’nei Menashe community in recent months. Baite’s account, Dimgnel reports, stirred “a lively discussion” among the team’s members, who responded, however, not by condemning Shavei but by stressing the importance of “peace and harmony” in the B’nei Menashe community.

Prayer at Pejang (photo taken last April).

On the evening of June 11, after Shabbat, the fact-finding team also traveled to the Churachandpur suburb of Pejang for a group session, to which it was escorted by Shavei Israel’s second-in-command Tsvi Khaute, with yet another congregation denied Aliyah by Shavei. (No one from the B’nei Menashe Council, or any other non-Shavei faction, was allowed to guide the team at any point, much less sit in on its meetings with Shavei supporters and activists.) The team members listened to addresses by the Pejang congregation’s chairman, Ya’akov Chungkhohao Haokip, and by executive board member Hosea Kipgen, both of whom expressed their gratitude for having been taken notice of after long years of Shavei neglect. Turning to Khaute, Haokip said, “In all your many trips to Manipur, you never bothered to visit us even once until now.” .

Reactions to the fact-finding team’s visit among non- and anti-Shavei forces, Dimngel writes, were mixed. On the one hand, it raised their morale by making them feel that that they were no longer “invisible.” Yet on the other hand, almost all of the team’s time was put at Shavei’s disposal and there was a sense that the delegates from Israel were merely going through the motions of hearing the case against Shavei when they had already decided in the latter’s favor. Tellingly, they let themselves be freely photographed at Shavei-sponsored events, while asking to have no pictures taken when meeting with the other side.

From Manipur, the team moved on to Mizoram, where on Monday, June 13 it met with a group of “refuseniks” who had been denied Aliyah by Shavei. This group, too, was given barely an hour of the delegation’s time. The meeting took place at Aizawl’s Shalom Tzion synagogue, the oldest Jewish house of worship in Aizawl, which remained in B’nei Menashe Council hands even after Shavei, whose own synagogue is called Khovevei Tzion, took control of the community.

The team was greeted by the BMC’s Mizoram chairman, Gamliel Thomte, who related the synagogue’s history. BMC treasurer Nadav Hauhnar then spoke about the rift between the BMC and Shavei Israel, which has resulted in no BMC members from Mizoram making Aliyah since the early 2000s. Only those who deserted the BMC and Shalom Tzion for Shavei and Khovevei Tzion, the treasurer said, were eligible for Shavei’s Aliyah lists.

Leah Renthlei.

This point was driven home when BMC member Ben Tzion Hauhnar told the visitors that, though he was one of the pioneers of the Judaism movement in northeast India, in which he was active starting in the mid-1970s, his support for the BMC has kept him from reaching Israel for the past near-50 years. Another woman, Elisheva Khiangte, described having been turned away by Shavei from all its Aliyah interviews despite her documented seniority in the community. Aliyah refusenik Leah Renthlei, whose two sisters live in Israel, told of being punished by Shavei for the “crime” of having extended hospitality to Israeli tourists without first having received the organization’s permission.

The delegation, having been told by Shavei that the anti-Shavei plaintiffs were not sincere about their Judaism and were simply using it to get to Israel, asked them whether this was in fact true. All vehemently denied it. BMC chairman Thomte pointed out that, on the contrary, any B’nei Menashe whose sole motive was Aliyah would have left the BMC camp for Shavei long ago, as indeed many did. BMC treasurer Hauhnar stated emotionally that he was comfortably-off in Mizoram and had no economic motive for making Aliyah at all. “If it’s God’s will,” he told the delegates from Israel, “I’ll move to Israel tomorrow, even though I’ll have to begin everything from scratch there. If it isn’t, I’ll remain faithful to Judaism here in Mizoram to the end of my life.”

Asaf Renthlei, an educator and leader in the Aizawl community who is not affiliated with Shavei, summed up the team’s visit as follows:

“The visit was positive in the sense that, until now, people like Leah and myself had been told over and over by Shavei functionaries and proxies that we had no chance of making Aliyah unless we cut off our relations with Shavei rivals like Degel Menashe. Following the visit, they’ve changed their tune and are now telling us that there’s no problem with our Aliyah, which Shavei Israel will see to along with the Aliyah of others.

“Clearly, this change of tone was due to the delegation from Israel’s stressing that it would not allow discrimination in the Aliyah process. Nevertheless, it was disappointing that the delegation refused to say whether it would recommend reconsidering Shavei Israel’s role in this process . If anything, its use of Shavei staff to shepherd it around reinforced much of the B’nei Menashe public’s perception of Shavei’s strength and legitimacy. It can only be hoped that its profession of neutrality will be reflected in its report.”

The delegation set out on its return trip to Israel the following day.

B’nei Menashe Flock To Synagogue Inauguration

(June 23) The village of Phalbung nestles in the hills of Kangpokpi District, a three-hour drive into the mountains north of Churachandpur. It’s little more than a hamlet and is the home, with some 15 families and 60 members, of one of Manipur’s smallest B’nei Menashe congregations, one that was ignored by the others over the years. This was not only due to its remoteness. It was also the result of the B’nei Menashe of Phalbung having doggedly clung to the Ashkenazi prayer book long after Shavei Israel, in an assertion of power, decreed a boycott of all B’nei Menashe communities that did not observe the Sephardi rite. Ostracized by Shavei, whose domination of B’nei Menashe life went unchallenged until recently, the B’nei Menashe of Phalbung were all but forgotten.

And yet on June 19, when they celebrated the inauguration of a new synagogue whose construction was recently finished with the help of a grant from Degel Menashe, busload after busload of B’nei Menashe from elsewhere arrived to join the festivities. Still more came by car and public transportation. By the time the proceedings began at 11 a.m., close to 500 B’nei Menashe had massed in the village despite the rain that had fallen that morning and was expected to continue throughout the day.

Lalam Hangshing addressing crowd.

Even quite a few Shavei Israel supporters, it was reported, turned out for the event, the official part of which was held inside a large tent in a field that the Phalbung community had erected. There was an opening prayer, welcoming speeches, and communal singing, followed by an address by B’nei Menashe Council chairman Lalam Hangshing ”Phalbung’s story is a remarkable one of resilience in the face of adversity,” Hangshing said. “Shavei Israel has been a parasite feeding off the miseries of its own people. It needs to be relieved of all further responsibility for the B’nei Menashe.”

Several more short talks were concluded with a resounding chorus of Ka Thange, Ka Thange, the B’nei Menashe anthem. The crowd then made its way to the synagogue, which had been largely built by the congregation’s own labor, for the traditional ceremony of affixing a mezuzah to the doorpost of the entrance. It being well past noon, the guests, or as many of them could fit into it, then entered the building for mincha, the afternoon service, which marked the end of the formal proceedings.

It was now time for the feast all looked forward to. Two cows were slaughtered and butchered adhering to the laws of kashrut, and the meat, having been salted to drain it of its blood, was cooked in huge pots hung over log fires and tended and stirred by a team of men and women. Half of it was cooked in the traditional Kuki style called mepoh, boiled with rice and fresh spices like ginger and garlic, while the other half was fried in oil and prepared as an Indian curry. Everyone was given a plate and took all they wanted.

Feasting at Phalbung.

The rain had providentially stopped, and for hours the guests ate, and helped themselves to more, and mixed and talked and met old friends. Then as the sun began to drop in the sky, they said their farewells and set out for home with, as one of the participants put it to our Newsletter, “warm feelings and a renewed sense of brotherhood.”

These were words that all present would have agreed with. There was at the event a palpable sense of joy and relief, and of a corner having been turned in the struggle of Manipur’s B’nei Menashe to get out from under the thumb of Shavei Israel’s domination and replace the internal strife it had instigated and thrived on with a recovered sense of common purpose. As Ya’akov Haokip, a member of the Phalbung congregation put it: “Today marks the beginning of a new chapter for us, one of inclusivity in which no one is left out any longer. It’s Phalbung’s reward for not having lost or abandoned its Jewish faith in all the years that it had to cope by itself. May the God of Israel bless us all!”

Asked whether she hadn’t felt uncomfortable with the Ashkenazi prayer of Phalbung, Ariella Haokip of Churichandpur’s Beit Shalom synagogue, which has followed the Sephardi rite for long years, replied: “Not at all. We all call out to the one true God who hears prayer. He makes no distinction between Ashkenazi and Sephardi.”

And Khana Dimngel, also of Beit Shalom, echoed the sentiment when she said: “This event should be the first of many like it. We need to bring B’nei Menashe community together again, the way it once was. The commandments of Judaism are also about fellowship and harmony. It’s high time we all stood together. After all, we’re all the children of Menashe.”