Two Wars and the B’nei Menashe: A Degel Menashe Editorial

B'nei Menashe residents of Sajal being evacuated by the Indian Army, early May 2023. File photo.

(November 16, 2023) Although 2023 still has a month-and-a-half to run its course, it’s not too early to say that, for the B’nei Menashe, it will have been a pivotal year, defined by two wars -- one the ethnic conflict between Kukis and Meiteis in Manipur, the other Israel’s war against Hamas. Seen from an Israeli and a global perspective, the two can hardly be compared. The conflict in Manipur is a small-scale local one that had aroused little interest elsewhere, while the Gaza war has riveted the world’s attention. Yet for the B’nei Menashe both have been equally momentous.

Seen in retrospect, the war against Hamas will be seen as the turning point at which Israel’s 5,000 B’nei Menashe made the transition from becoming Israeli to being Israeli. Until now, Israel’s B’nei Menashe community has been, understandably, concerned mostly with itself. A small immigrant group that arrived in Israel without many of the means to deal successfully with the demands of the dynamic, competitive, technologically oriented society that it suddenly found itself in, it has had to learn to adjust and transform basic patterns of thinking and behavior. This process has taken place, naturally, at a faster pace among young, Israeli-born-or-raised B’nei Menashe than among their elders who reached adulthood in India, but it has been shared by all. Not that Israel’s national problems haven’t mattered to its them, but these have seemed distant, almost abstract, next to their own struggle to cope and get ahead.

B'nei Menashe IDF soldiers on duty, serving with pride and distinction.

The current war has changed all this. With many hundreds of B’nei Menashe serving in the army and many hundreds more volunteering on the home front, and with the entire B’nei Menashe community of Sderot evacuated from its homes after living through a Hamas attack in the first days of the war, the B’nei Menashe are now fully part of Israeli reality as they have not been before. For the first time, they can feel that they are standing shoulder-to-shoulder with their fellow Israelis and giving to their country instead of just fretting about what services they can get from it. They have become participants and not just lookers-on. And although all this is a result of the war, it will not end with it. The change will be permanent. If Israel, as one often hears said these days, will emerge from the war a different country, its B’nei Menashe are already a different community.

B'nei Menashe women help with the shortfall in labor, southern Israel.

But so, as a result of their own war, are the 5,000 B’nei Menashe still in India, three-quarters of them in Manipur. Although they have dreamed day and night of joining their brothers and sisters in Israel, life in India, while waiting for the dream to be fulfilled, has been supportable until now. It no longer is.

While India’s B’nei Menashe have thus far not had to confront anti-Semitism, they now realize that they are sitting on an ethnic powder keg. This exploded last spring and early summer, leaving many of them homeless and destitute, and it can explode again, and even more violently, at any moment. Their Aliyah to Israel, until now a desirability, has become an urgent necessity. For the moment, the other war, the war in Israel, has put this Aliyah on hold. It cannot be allowed to remain there, however. The long period between 1990 and 2023 in which India’s B’nei Menashe acquiesced in immigrating to Israel in dribs and drabs is over for them. As soon as the war against Hamas is won, they must insist on being admitted to Israel immediately, all 5,000 of them. The war in Manipur has changed everything for them, too.

And one more thought. Readers of this Newsletter know about Ma’oz Tsur, the 200 acres of land outside of Lamka (the former Churachandpur) on which B’nei Menashe families in Manipur that have lost their homes to ethnic cleansing are now re-establishing themselves as a jointly run farming community – “a kind of B’nei Menashe kibbutz,” as B’nei Menashe Council chairman Lalam Hangshing has put it. But this undertaking, as promising and exciting as it is, will not outlast the B’nei Menashe’s hopefully short remaining stay in India. Why then, it might be asked, go to such effort to build it?

A farm at Ma'oz Tsur, a possible solution for the future.

Recently, Degel Menashe has been in contact with Israel’s Ministry of Aliyah and Absorption about the possibility of turning Ma’oz Tsur into the nucleus of a B’nei Menashe farming community in Israel. The ministry is interested. “The B’nei Menashe have always been farmers,” a senior ministry official said to us. “It’s been sad that in Israel this aspect of them hasn’t so far been given expression. Suppose we could put the two things together: the B”nei Menashe’s love of the soil and the need that there will be after the war to resettle the agricultural kibbutzim and moshavim near Gaza. It may sound right now like a fantasy, but we need to think about how Ma’oz Tsur could contribute to this.”

We really do!

Sderot’s Displaced B’nei Menashe “Eat and Sleep,” Weed and Pray

The entry to Kibbutz Zrachia.

(November 9, 2023) “I must say I enjoyed working like this,” said Rivka Chong Guite to our Newsletter after weeding cabbage fields this week in the farming village of Zrachia in southwest Israel. “It’s been a long time since I did anything like it. All we’ve been doing in our hotel room these past weeks is eat and sleep. All our chores are performed by the hotel staff. When the time comes to go back to Sderot, we won't need a bus, because we'll all have gotten so fat that we’ll just roll all the way there! Seriously, though, the day at Zrachia made me feel nostalgic. We B’nei Menashe grew up doing farm work. We’ve always been close to the soil. It's in our blood.”

Rivka was one of twenty of Sderot’s displaced B’nei Menashe now staying at government expense in hotels in Jerusalem who traveled to Zrachia this week to help the village’s farmers. “Actually,” we were told by

Volunteers working at a greenhouse, Zrachia .

Yitzhak Thangjom, the managing director of Degel Menashe, which provided the group with transportation, “we would have had many more volunteers if we could have afforded more than the single minibus we were able to rent. Sderot’s B’nei Menashe are now without work or a meaningful daily routine and are thirsting for something to do, especially if it aids the war effort.

Doron Rafaeli gives a ride to the volunteers. Yosef Demsat Haokip is at the back, with a 'thumbs-up'.

“These are people who have worked hard all their lives and aren’t used to just sitting around,” said Thangjom, who joined the group. “And though they haven’t practiced it in Israel, farming comes naturally to them. Almost every one of their families had its own plot of land or rice field back in Manipur. I’m one of the exceptions, because I’m a city boy from Imphal, grew up in New Delhi, and at first I was indignant when I saw two older Bnei Menashe women laughing at how I was weeding the cabbages. ‘What’s so funny?’ I asked. “‘You look like you're plucking a chicken,’ they said and showed me how to do it.”

Zrachia’s Rafaeli family, in whose fields the volunteers worked, was appreciative. “These people really knew how to work. We’re grateful for their skill and dedication,,” said Doron Refaeli, who like many Israeli farmers has been hard hit by a war that has left him without hired labor. For their part, the volunteers felt they had gotten as

Rivka Guite (left) and Dvora Tuboi (right) at the Old City Jerusalem.

much as they had given. “Working the land,” said Yosef Demsat Haokip, “especially the land of Israel, is an honor. I haven’t done any farm work since my Aliyah from Manipur two years ago. It’s something we’re cut out for. We sweated a lot, but when we were done my body felt lighter and healthier.”

Another group of Sderot’s displaced B’nei Menashe left their Jerusalem hotel rooms this week for the Western Wall, where they recited Psalms and prayed for Israel’s victory over Hamas. “By now we’re all homesick and tired of being looked after by the government all the time,” said one of them, Dvora Tuboi. “We want to get back to a normal life. But then again, if it weren’t for this war, we wouldn’t have had the chance to spend so much time in Jerusalem, walking its streets and praying in its holy places. We’ve seen and done things we would otherwise never have had a chance to, like getting up in the morning, sending our children to the makeshift school they’re attending, and going to the Wall to pray for our country. We’ll do it again and again until the war is won.”

Some members of the prayer group at the Western Wall.

At the time of this article being published, it has been reliably learnt that another group of B'nei Menashe are planning to volunteer at a farm next week.

“Womanning” the Home Front: Five B’nei Menashe Mothers Tell Their Stories

(November 2, 2023) While their sons and husbands have gone off to war, the women of Israel’s B’nei Menashe community have been active on the home front. Here are five of their stories as told to our Newsletter.

Elisheva Polin, 47, from the town of Beit El in Samaria, north of Jerusalem:

Elisheva Polin.

“The Hamas attack of October 7 caught us by surprise. Only that evening, when Shabbat and Simchat Torah were over and we could check our cell phones and take calls, did we realize we were at war. Now, each of us has to do what she can to help our soldiers and our country.

“Many of us have husbands and children in the army. My son is serving in the army, and my daughter, who will soon be turning 18, plans to join too, even though as a girl from a religious home she’s not obliged to. My sister's older son returned home from abroad to join his unit. Her younger son is also in the army. In my immediate family, there are five men now in uniform. I’m proud of them all. But we women can’t just stay home and pray for them. We have to contribute, too.

“I’ve lived in Beit El since my family came to Israel when I was a teenager in the early 1990s.The first week of the fighting, all the women of Beit El, we Bnei Menashe too, got together to see what we could do. Reservists from the town and area were being called up and our community center served as their assembly point. We cooked food for them and served it while they waited to be sent to their bases. There must have been over a hundred of them. A few were subsequently stationed in Beit El to guard the settlement, and my sister and I bring them hot meals every Shabbat. There’s been a women’s drive to collect funds for the IDF, too. Although we B’nei Menashe aren’t as well-off as some others, we’ve given what we could.

Elisheva and her friends preparing food for the soldiers.

Alona Haokip, 28, from the village of Nokdim in Judea, southeast of Bethlehem.

Alona Haokip.

“I came with my family to Israel in 2012 and married my husband Sagi, a B’nei Menashe like myself, two years later. We lived in Ma'alot in the Upper Galilee until three years ago, when we moved to Nokdim to be close to Jerusalem. After all, Jerusalem is the pride and joy of a Jew, and though we couldn’t afford a home there, we wanted to be as near to it as possible.

“Sagi and I have two sons, Idan, who is eight, and Omer, who is six. Now I’m alone with them, because Sagi has been called up. This isn’t the first time. In the confrontation with Hamas two years ago, he was mobilized, too. Although I thought it would be the same this time, it hasn’t been, because we’re now in a full-scale war and Jerusalem has been rocketed, too. My parents live there, and for the first few days of the fighting we stayed with them, but when we saw they were coping well, we went back to Nokdim.

“I work at a local kindergarten. Idan studies in Jerusalem and has transportation there and back, but I have to drop Omer off at school in Nokdim before I report for work. They’re both independent and I should be all right until Sagi returns, though I know that could take a long time. Last time he was called up, he kept receiving his monthly pay check, and I hope it will be the same this time. I have two brothers in the army, too, one doing his regular service and one called up for reserve duty. I worry about all three but I try not to let my sons see it, because I don’t want to seem weak. I tell my boys that their father is a hero defending Israel. I want them to feel proud of him.

“After work I take Idan and Omer with me to our community center, where we prepare and pack food for our soldiers on the frontline. There are also many B’nei Menashe refugees from Sderot in Jerusalem, some of them friends and family, and I visit them quite often. Most are homesick and want to to home. I try to provide comfort and a sympathetic ear.”

Alona's husband, Sagi, called up for duty.

Moi Sarah Wolf, 53, from Beit El:

Moi Sara Wolf.

“I’ve always had a soft spot for soldiers. My father was one in Manipur, in the professional Indian army. Indian soldiers don’t have it easy; it's a thankless job that no outsider understands. It’s different, though, in Israel where everyone serves. I myself have two sons in the IDF.

“When the war broke out,. I was itching to do something, to contribute. I spoke to my friend Esther Schomberg in Efrat, a B’nei Menashe like myself. We' had already joined forces several months before to send food and medicine to our people in Manipur who were the victims of ethnic cleansing. Now, Esther told me about an organization called Unity Warriors that concentrates on aiding the IDF. We went back to our B”nei Menashe donors and friends of a few months ago and they gave whatever they could, even though most were still supporting families in Manipur. The funds we raised helped to buy extra provisions for our soldiers. I’m also volunteering with the rest of the women of Beit El, arranging for food to be delivered to soldiers wherever it’s needed. I’m doing all I can.

IDF soldiers called up for duty; David Vaiphei (extreme right), a Bnei Menashe resident of Beit El.

Aviela Singsit, 52, from the city of Migdal ha-Emek in the Lower Galilee:

Aviela Singsit.

“Though I live in Migdal ha-Emek I run a business managing guest houses in in the old neighborhood of Tzfat [Safed]. Together with a partner, I rent five such houses to tourists. I divide my time between the two places and sometimes spend Shabbat in Tiberias where my son lives with his wife and small children, so I’m on the move a lot.

“When the war started, my son was called up at once for reserve duty. I wasn’t worried about my grandchildren and daughter-in-law because they had moved in with her parents, and so when I heard that there were soldiers in the north who needed lodging and meals, I offered them one of my guest houses. There are six or seven of them staying in it now. I’m glad to contribute what I can. I know many B’nei Menashe in Migdal HaEmek, Tiberias, and Tzfat who are donating small sums to the war effort even though they are hard-pressed for money. When I’m approached, I’m happy to give.

Bnei Menashe boys supporting the IDF, somewhere in the north.

Rivka Lunkhel, 51, from Kiryat Arba, outside Hebron:

Rivka Lunkhel.

“Ever since the war began, the women in our B’nei Menashe community been trying to give all the help we can to our sons, brothers, and husbands who have been called up. Things haven’t been as well-organized as they might have been, but we’ve managed to contribute, mostly sending personal items like soap, shampoo, toothbrushes, tooth paste, toilet papers, and so on that aren’t issued by the army. Some of us contributed the actual items and some gave money.

“That’s been one part. But we women have another weapon of our own: our prayers. I’ve been involved in two WhatsApp groups, one consisting of 400 B’nei Menashe and the other of Israeli women in general. We coordinate things so that from the time we wake in the morning until we go to bed at night, there isn’t a moment when one us isn’t praying for our soldiers or reciting Psalms. Everyone takes her turn for five or ten minutes, and when it’s ended, she sends out a message and someone else takes over. There have been days on which we were able to recite all 150 psalms from beginning to end – and on top of that, we have to work, cook, and look after our families. We’ll keep it up as long as necessary.

“I should also say that I’m one of the few B’nei Menashe mothers to have a daughter in the army, in fact, two. The older one Yael has been called up for reserve and our second youngest, Shirel, is serving. She’s always been doted on by us, and on that fateful Sabbath she was patrolling the perimeter of Gaza with her platoon. When they were attacked by Hamas, they took cover in their personnel carriers and called for reinforcements. There was a firefight in which three of Shirel’s fellow soldiers were injured, two boys and a girl, and a vehicle was destroyed.

“The fighting lasted 12 hours, but they stood their ground heroically and in the end the attackers were driven off and a helicopter evacuated the wounded. When things like that happen, there’s nothing you can do but pray and and leave the rest to God. I have faith He’ll look after Shirel.”.

Some of the material support collected for the soldiers.