Sderot: The Town the B’nei Menashe Chose For Themselves

(August 24, 2023) On the whole, Israel’s B’nei Menashe have not, when arriving in the country as new immigrants, been given any choice about where to live. No one has asked them what their preferences might be. Nearly all have been sent, after consultation between government offices and Shavei Israel, the Jerusalem-based NGO that has been in charge of their Aliyah, to one of many towns that have been picked out for them. In the last two decades, these have been in the country’s north, to such Upper and Lower Galilee locations as Ma’alot, Karmiel, Migdal ha-Emek, Tzfat [Safed], Kiryat Shmona, Afula, and especially in the last several years, Nof ha-Galil, the former Upper Nazareth. The decision has been made on the basis of the availability of housing, the willingness of local municipalities to absorb B’nei Menashe immigrants, and various other factors, none of which has been the desires of the immigrants themselves. Presumably, they have not known enough to make their own decisions – and whatever they did know, others knew better.

A view of Sderot. Photo courtesy: Wikipedia.

One town is an exception to this. Although it is not in the north and not a single B’nei Menashe has been told to live in it by either the government or Shavei, it is today home to one of the largest, and and arguably the most satisfied, B’nei Menashe communities in Israel. It is the town of Sderot in the northwest Negev, some 50 kilometers south of Tel Aviv and barely five kilometers from the Gaza Strip, which has put it within easy range of the rockets fired at it in every exchange between Israel and Hamas. And yet just as this not stopped Sderot’s population from increasing by a third in the last ten years to its present size of 30,000, so it has not stopped B’nei Menashe from moving to it.

“I’d be lying if I told you that the rockets don’t cause some fear and tension,” says 42-year-old Rabbi David Lhungdim, the local B’nei Menashe community’s rabbi and acknowledged leader. “But as one of our members who served in the Indian army once said to me, ‘It’s hard enough to hit a target you’re aiming at with a rifle – what are the chances of being hit by a wildly fired rocket?’ We take the precautions we’re told to take by the authorities and leave the rest up to God.”

Rabbi David Lhungdim, Bnei Menashe community leader in Sderot.

When Rabbi Lhungdim, who came to Israel in 2007, settled in Sderot in 2009, there were just three B’nei Menashe families there, all who had moved to it from the north. “I was living in Karmiel at the time,” he told us, “along with 20 other B’nei Menashe families who were sent there after completing their Jewish conversion at an absorption center. Things didn’t go well in Karmiel. We had trouble finding jobs and the people responsible for us – I don’t want to mention names – were not doing their work properly. We heard that life was better in Sderot, where no one was responsible for the three B’nei Menashe families living there but themselves, and that plenty of jobs were available there, and some of us visited the town. We liked what we saw, and about 15 families from Karmiel moved to Sderot as a group.”

Lhungdim, who received his rabbinical training at the Yeshiva of Sderot, continues:

“Life in Sderot went by pleasantly and uneventfully until 2014, when I was asked by Shavei Israel to oversee a group of new B’nei Menashe immigrants who were staying at an absorption center in Kfar Hasidim, near Haifa. My main responsibility was to give them daily lesson in Judaism and Jewish law in preparation for their conversion. When I went back to live in Sderot after that was over, it was with new ideas and a sense of mission. I wanted to start something different. Nowhere in Israel, I realized, did the B’nei Menashe have a synagogue of their own. Why not in Sderot?”

A local rabbi, Menachem Gamliel, offered to help. “He was a wonderful man,” Lhungdim says. “He found us a town-owned building that was standing unused and convinced the municipality to give it to us. Volunteers from our community pitched in to renovate it and our Alfei Menashe prayer house was born. Sderot was a small town. Everyone in the community lived within walking of the synagogue and every Shabbat we had a full house. One day Rabbi Gamliel dropped by for prayers and was so impressed that that he arranged for us to get our own Torah scroll, whose arrival we celebrated a few days later. Now we had a real B’nei Menashe house of worship! This was in 2015. Early in 2016, we were joined by a new contingent, a group of families from Tzfat that almost doubled our numbers. You could say they were fugitives from there.”

Yaacov Tuboi, a pioneer Sderot resident.

And let us now interrupt Rabbi Lhungdim’s story to hear from one of the Tzfat “fugitives,” 71-year-old Yaacov Tuboi. He had this to say:

“When my family and I landed in Israel in December, 2014, it was dream come true. After three months in Kfar Chasidim, where we studied with Rabbi Lhungdim and underwent out conversions, we and 30 other families were given apartments in Tzfat. The mayor had come to an agreement with Shavei Israel whereby he promised to do all he could to make us feel welcome.

“We moved to Tzfat full of hope and optimism. We didn’t have jobs yet, and apart from taking Hebrew lessons and continuing our religious studies we spent many days discussing how to administer our community. A va’ad [Hebrew for “committee] was formed for that purpose and I was chosen to be ‘vice-chairman’ despite my protests that I didn’t know Hebrew and wasn’t fit for the role. I was told not to argue, because someone ‘higher up’ had made the decision and I shouldn’t make a fuss about it.”

The “higher-up” was from Shavei Israel. “I fully realized the situation,” Tuboi relates, “when one day our va’ad was summoned for a meeting with the mayor. We all came to it – the chairman, the secretary, the finance secretary, the local Shavei coordinator, and myself, all of us appointed by Shavei. A few days later, Tsvi Khaute [Shavei’s national director] turned up and scolded us for daring to meet with the mayor without asking Shavei for permission. Everyone but me was too frightened of him to speak up. As the months went by, it became clearer and cleare that our va’ad was just a rubber stamp. All the decisions were being made by the ‘higher ups.” I didn’t like that one bit.”

This article, the first of a two-part series, will be continued next week.

Operation Mattresses and Mosquito Nets: Report From Asaf Renthlei

(Asaf Renthlei is a B’nei Menashe educator and activist living in Aizawl.)

Pastor Abe Thomas Oomen visiting the B'nei Menashe in early June. File photo.

(August 10, 2023) In the city of Kochi on the Indian Ocean, in the southwestern state of Kerala, is a Christian charitable organization called Operation Exodus that believes that the Jews remain God’s chosen people, so that, as a spokeswoman says, “We see God’s hand at work as He performs countless miracles to bring His people home to their land.” Reaching out across the breadth of the Indian subcontinent, it has helped the B’nei Menashe of northeast India in the past. Recently, too, with the outbreak of violence in Manipur, it came to their assistance with an aid package brought this past June 1 to Aizawl, the capital of the state of Mizoram, by a delegation headed by the organization’s co-founder, Pastor Abe Oommen.

Following this visit, which was hosted by Shavei Israel, I reached out to Operation Exodus and informed it of the presence of several groups of displaced Bnei Menashe that were not served by Shavei Israel. The organization expressed its interest in helping them as well, and in the wake of last month’s Degel Menashe fact-finding mission to Mizoram and Manipur led by Jessica Thangjom, Operation Exodus offered to send additional aid based on the mission’s findings.

We called Operation Exodus’ attention to Thingdawl, a government-run relief camp in northern Mizoram where 25 B”nei Menashe families from Manipur are now staying. Thingdawl’s residents are provided with floors to sleep on and a meal of rice and lentils twice a day. (Two sit-down meals a day are the custom in Mizoram) However, since most of them fled Manipur for their lives in the early stages of the conflict, jostling for space in cramped vehicles, they traveled only with their clothes and most essential belongings. Mattresses, blankets, and mosquito nets, all crucial items in the Mizoram hills, with their cold nights and malarial mosquitos, were an urgent need. So were disposable diapers for children and sanitary pads for women, for although Thingdawl’s 200 residents have access to piped water, there is not enough of it to do frequent washes .In addition, hygienic essentials like soap, toothbrushes, and toothpaste were a necessity.

Material assistance sent by Operation Exodus to the B'nei Menashe at Thingdawl, Mizoram.

Operation Exodus graciously agreed to supply all these items. Getting them to Thingdawl, however, was not easy. The initial plan was to deliver the entire package of aid via a road running from Silchar, a transportation hub on the Assam-Mizoram state border. Yet the heavy monsoon rains of July and early August had turned this road into a morass. Mudslides had blocked parts of it, forcing vehicles to take rural detours unable to cater to large trucks. As a result, the aid had to be divided into two shipments that could be transported on smaller pickup trucks. The first shipment to arrive in Mizoram was delivered to an Aizawl warehouse by an Operation Exodus team on the Sabbath eve of August 4. In it were 28 mattresses, plus mosquito nets, blankets, buckets, laundry powder, toothbrushes, toothpastes, diapers, sanitary pads, and soap.

Ariella Haokip hands over aid items.

From here, the local Bnei Menashe community assumed responsibility for the shipment. On Monday, August 7, a day of heavy rains, the shipment left Aizawl for Thingdawl, A trip that usually takes two hours ended up taking five, as the weather impeded progress and mudslides along the way diverted traffic onto side roads. Yet by afternoon all the relief items were in Thingdawl, in the hands of their grateful recipients.

“We’ve been anxiously awaiting these things,” said Ariella Haokip, a Thingdawl resident who helped distribute the materials. “I’m overjoyed that they’ve arrived.” To which another camp inhabitant, Nadav Lhoujiem [see last week’s article, “A Hebrew Teacher in a DP Camp”], added with emotion, “Thank you so so much, Operation Exodus! I look forward to finally sleeping on a comfortable mattress for the first time in two months.”

A Hebrew Teacher In a DP Camp

(August 3, 2023) A government-run displaced persons camp at Thingdawl in northern Mizoram, in the far northeast corner of India. The camp is for ethnic Kukis who have fled the Meitei-Kuki violence in Manipur. A room full of children, some of them practically doubled over, squat on the floor with their notebooks. A barefoot teacher stands in front of them. He, too, has found refuge at Thingdawl. His name is Khaiminlal Nadav Lhoujem. The children are learning to read and write Hebrew.

Our Newsletter first met Nadav when it visited the Thingdawl camp at the end of June. (See our June 30 article, “Degel Menashe Visits Displaced In Mizoram.”) Here, now told to us in full, is his story:

”I was born Khaiminlal Lhoujiem in 1991 in a little village whose name I don’t remember near Mahur, a town with a small Kuki population in the Karbi Anglong district of eastern Assam on the border with Manipur. My parents moved to the area when I was an infant and it was still known as the Mikir Hills. I was the next-to-youngest child, with a younger brother, in a family of of six boys and two girls. One of my other brothers died of an unknown illness in 2012, and another in 2023, from heat exhaustion while working. All of the others except me are married.

“My parents were quite devout and jointed a group of ‘Sabbathers,’ Christians who observed the biblical Sabbath and other Old Testament customs. This led them to an interest in Judaism. When I was three, they joined the B’nei Menashe community, of which there were half-a-dozen families at the time in Mahur. I was circumcised and given the Hebrew name of Nadav.

“Because we were so many children at home, I was sent when I was five or six I to live with an uncle and his family in Hyderabad. My uncle was the headmaster of a primary school at which I began my education, but for the most part I was home-schooled by my aunt, the daughter of an English missionary on her father’s side. The local language was Telugu, which I learned to read speak and have command of to this day. I also picked up some Hindi and can speak all our tribal languages – Kuki, Mizo, Paite, and Hmar. Perhaps that’s why Hebrew seems to come to me naturally, too.

Nadav Lhoujem.

“My uncle was well-versed in the Bible. He and his family were Sabbathers and lit candles in Friday evenings, although they never joined the B’nei Menashe community, which had no congregation in Hyderabad. When I was eleven or twelve, he passed away. After that, the family fell apart and I was sent to Bangalore, where a job was found for me with Wipro, a big Indian hi-tech company. I worked at a corporate guest house as an errand and delivery boy with other boys my age, whom I was eventually put in charge of. I stayed with Wipro there until 2007, when my father died of a stroke and it was decided to bring me home again.

“One of my brothers had moved to northern Mizoram, to Rengtekawn in the Kolasib district, and had established himself and his family there, and so we moved there to join him. There was a B’nei Menashe community in Kolasib that was in close touch with the large community in Lamka [Churachandpur], and this gave us an opportunity to learn more about Judaism. The more we learned, the more we wanted to learn – it was an exciting period. And the excitement grew when we heard that there was a chance to apply for Aliyah to Israel. In 2015 we were invited by Shavei Israel to an interview with a board of rabbis, We were told we had passed, but after a week we were informed that we hadn’t and that we had to move to Lamka if we hoped to pass the next time. Despite failing, we felt encouraged and we went back to Rengtekawn in January 2016 to fetch our belongings and move to Lamka. That’s where we were until May of this year, when the violence made us come back to Mizoram. Unfortunately, the promises made to us were never kept. Although there have been quite a few Aliyahs since, we were never again considered for any of them. I’ve been close to despair more than once and envious of those who were chosen. It’s been quite frustrating.

“I began studying Hebrew seriously as soon as we came to Lamka in 2016, picking up whatever I could from whoever was willing to share it with me while working at odd jobs to pay for food and rent Before long I could read the prayers in the Siddur and even understand parts of them. After a while I began to teach what I knew to small children who wanted to learn, and when the Eliyahu Avichayil School opened right before the Covid pandemic, I tutored some of its pupils who needed help. By now I was also learning some spoken Hebrew from Israeli visitors who came to the area. In the beginning, they were rare, but once the pandemic ended, we had Israeli visitors almost every month. Most were young backpackers just out of the army and I tried to take as much advantage of their stay as I could.

Camp building in Thingdawl.

“The violence broke out in early May this year. My mother and I decided to head back with my brother’s two-year-old son to Mizoram, since we had lived there before. We headed for Aizawl and were put up there at a Bnei Menashe member's home while I looked for a job and an apartment to rent, but work was unavailable and rents were sky-high, so that when we heard of the government run camp in Thingdawl, we decided to relocate to it.

“We were already living in the camp when a Degel Menashe mission to Manipur and Mizoram visited Thingdawl with humanitarian aid late last June. I spoke with Jessica Thangjom, the mission’s head, and we decided that, besides material needs, it was important provide some Jewish education for the camp’s B’nei Menashe children. I volunteered to teach and was promised learning materials – notebooks, pencils, whiteboards and markers, things like that. As soon as they arrived, I arranged to be given a room in the camp for classes. It serves as a classroom by day and a sleeping space at night.

Nadav’s pupils.

“The children go to a government public school and I teach them in the after-school hours. Right now, we have classes that last for an hour or more on Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday evenings. There are 15 children between the ages of 8 to 15 who are studying with me. Most of the older children are able to read the Siddur by now. Apart from Hebrew, I give them lessons in Jewish law and in the weekly Bible portion. Now I’ve heard that Degel Menashe has approved a small stipend for me. That’s good news.

“My goal is still to reach Israel. I obviously can’t be a teacher there, but I’ll work at any job I can find. If I can manage to care for my mother, raise my nephew, and study Torah, so that I can fulfill as many of its commandments as I can, I’ll want for nothing. Yesterday, a group of B’nei Menashe from Lamka arrived in Thingdawl, because they want to obtain passports so as to be ready for Aliyah. Normally, a resident of Manipur would apply for a passport in Imphal, but it’s too dangerous for a Kuki to be there these days and they’re applying at an office in Aizawl, which demands that they live for several months in Mizoram to establish residency. More of them are expected at Thingdawl. I’m sorry for them that they’ll have to spend the months in a DP camp while they wait, but I’m happy for myself, because we’ll now finally have a minyan for prayer at Thingdawl! I take my Judaism very seriously.”