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.”

No Longer A Dream: Construction Starts at Songpi

(July 27, 2023) Three years ago, in September 2020, our Newsletter ran an article entitled “200 Acres and A Dream.” Its subject was a tract of rural land in the hills on the outskirts of Churachandpur, or Lamka as the city is increasingly called by its Kuki inhabitants who have reverted to its old native name in the wake of the Meitei-Kuki violence of recent months. The land belonged to Lalam Hangshing, today chairman of Manipur’s B’nei Menashe Council, and Lalam hoped, our Newsletter said, to put it at the disposal of members of the B’nei Menashe community to live on and farm. “It could be a kind of B”nei Menashe kibbutz,” he told us at the time.

This month, Lalam’s dream has begun to take shape. True, it hasn’t done so under the happiest of circumstances: Manipur’s B’nei Menashe continue to live in the shadow of the ongoing Meitei-Kuki conflict, which left 650 persons, nearly a fifth of the state’s B’nei Menashe population, without a home.

Jesse Gangte.

Yet these very circumstances have moved the Songpi project from dream to reality, since the urgent need to house the homeless has intensified interest in it and enabled the Bnei Menashe Council, with the assistance of Degel Menashe, to raise the initial funds necessary to get things rolling. Already, a first three-family unit is going up at Songpi. “The land has been cleared and work has begun on the structure,” we were told this week by BMC finance secretary Jesse Gangte, who is overseeing the project. “By the end of August or the beginning of September, the families should be able to move in.”

How can a three-family unit can be built in a month? It’s possible, Gangte says, because the traditional-style construction makes use of simple methods and materials: a light, foundationless wooden frame anchored by two-by-fours and finished with bamboo canes for the walls; packed, dried mud for the floors; and corrugated tin sheets in place of the thatch once commonly used for a roof. Much of the labor is being provided by the families themselves.

The wooden frame of a wall.

Each unit, Gangte told us, will be 100 x 25 feet and divided into four spaces, three for the resident families and a common area for cooking, eating, and socializing. Water will be pumped to a tank from a nearby stream and there will be a separate outhouse and bathhouse. In the first stages, Gangte says there will be no electricity, since municipal power lines are far away and generators are too expensive, but in the future he hopes a solution will be found.

“Songpi will not be just a place to live in,” adds Yitzhak Thangjom, Degel Menashe’s managing director. “It will also be a place to make a living from. Each resident family will be given a plot of land on which it can grow food, both for its own consumption and for sale. The produce will be marketed collectively, and any profits will be plowed back into Songpi. Land for farming will also be allotted to B’nei Menashe families in the Lamka area who have homes but are in economic straits. We only need to buy them tools and provide daily transportation to Songpi and back. B’nei Menashe don’t need to be taught to farm. Nearly all have farmed at some point in their lives and it’s in their blood. Give them the land and they’ll know what to do with it.”

Shem Haokip cutting posts.

One of the three families that will move into the first structure is that of Benjamin Thangneo Haokip, his wife Iska Hoineo, and their four children, aged one to ten. The Haokips, who have been staying on the premises of Lamka’s Rabbi Eliyahu Avichail School, come from the village of Sajal, which was burned to the ground by Meitei assailants in early May. “The past months have been very difficult for us,” Benjamin says. “We barely escaped from Sajal with our lives, after which we had to trek for days through jungle, keeping off the roads where Meitei might spot us until we reached the safety of an army camp. From there we moved the shelter of the school, but we’ve barely managed to scrape by and each day has been a struggle to survive. Songpi means new hope for us. It’s a chance to start our lives afresh.”

News of the Songpi project has spread quickly among Manipur’s B’nei Menashe and aroused much interest. “Besides the first three homeless families,” says Jesse Gangte, “we’ve had applications from five others and many more are considering it. All that’s holding us back from building more units is money.” A 100 x 25 foot structure, Gangte told us, costs $5,000. “That’s less than $2,000 per family. We have all the land we need. Future units will go up with the help of those already living on the site. Everyone will pitch in. We could house many more homeless families if we had the funds, and we could do it in a hurry.”

A sketch and floor plan of the three-family unit.

But does it make sense, we asked, to invest such sums in construction, however simple and cheap, when the entire B’nei Menashe community of Manipur and Mizoram is awaiting Aliyah and hoping to relocate to Israel as soon as possible? “Look,” says Yitzhak Thangjom. “As soon as possible’ is a big question mark. It all depends on the government of Israel, which has been slow in granting B’nei Menashe immigration permits over the years. The Ministry of Aliyah and Absorptions is sympathetic and has been trying to get

Benjamin Haokip and Seth Haokip’s families surveying the land for their home.

government approval for all the B’nei Menashe still in India to come to Israel within several years, but there’s been little tangible progress so far despite the emergency situation in Manipur. ‘We could be talking about another three years or five years or ten years before every last B’nei Menashe is in Israel. Do we want families to go on living in shelters until then? The dignity of leading a normal life should not have to depend on Aliyah.”

Moreover, Thangjom points out, as quickly as families living at Songpi make Aliyah, others still awaiting it will take their place. ”Not all B’nei Menashe in Manipur own their own homes,” he observes. “Many are renting and it’s hard for them to meet the rent. They would welcome the chance to live rent-free at Songpi and grow and sell their own food while waiting for Aliyah. And the buildings we put up will only increase the value of the land. There’s no danger of any investment in them going to waste.”

Lalam Hangshing’s dream is off to its start. From here on it’s a largely a question of raising additional funds.

Legal Reform Issue Not Divisive For Israel’s B’nei Menashe

(July 20, 2023) As Israel is torn apart by the battle over the government’s proposals for reforming the legal system, the country’s small B’nei Menashe community has been largely unaffected by the conflict.

This is not just because nearly all B’nei Menashe share a religious life-style and right-wing voting preferences that might be expected to put them squarely in the pro-government camp, which some of them indeed strongly identify with. Thirty-eight-year old Aharon Chongloi from Tiberias, for example, who came to Israel in 2015, told our Newsletter:

Yeshiva student Aharon Chongloi.

“I’ve discussed the matter with our rabbis and we are all in agreement that the reforms should go ahead. When we have a democracy in which the leader is elected by popular vote, why is there a need for another body like the courts to interfere in administrative matters? The people have chosen the leadership and kind of government they want. Those who voted otherwise have to wait for the next election and hope to change things then. They have the right to demonstrate and air their views, but not to disturb the normal functioning of the country.”

Natan Mangsat Kipgen, 81, of Kiryat Arba, in Israel since 2002, took issue with Chongloi. “I’m a simple man with a simple understanding of the world around me,” he said to us..” I do try to keep abreast, though, of what’s happening. And while I’m religiously observant and might be expected to support the reforms like everyone around me, I have my doubts about them. As I understand it, if all of them are approved, the government will be able to overrule a High Court decision that it is acting illegally. This would let the government carry on dictatorially, which would not be good for anyone. It’s bad for normal life to be disrupted, but sometimes demonstrations are needed to call attention to a problem that will affect us all in the future.”

Some B’nei Menashe we spoke tried taking a middle position. “Both sides have valid arguments,” said 48-year-old Esther Schomberg from Efrat, who came to Israel from Manipur in 1997. “It's difficult to judge. On one hand, it’s dangerous to upset a status quo that has given us stability. There needs to be a balance between executive and judicial power. But on the other hand, the government is chosen by a democratic process of elections, whereas much quasi-nepotism and many interest groups affect the choice of judges. The crisis will end when it ends. I think the pro-reform will eventually win.”

But Chongloi, Kipgen, and Schomberg, so our Newsletter’s impression is, are atypical in having clearly articulated opinions on the legal reform issue. Most of the B’nei Menashe we spoke to felt that they had neither the leisure, the knowledge, or the ability to judge the matter. Typical in this respect was K.T. Amos, 41, of Ma’alot, who arrived in Israel in 2015 and told us, “I have a full-time job and a family and children to take care of, which leaves me with very little time to worry about how the country should be run. I don’t know anything about the details of the proposed reforms and have only a general sense of them. There are enough competent people in Israel to take care of things without me. It’s not a subject I discuss with friends and family. I’m too busy making ends meet. I can’t begin to worry about things I have no control over. I trust in God to take care of them.”

Migdal HaEmek resident, Aviela Singsit.

Despite their own more clearly formed opinions, both Chongloi and Kipgen concurred with this assessment. “Some of us B’nei Menashe in Tiberias study in Yeshivas and some of us work,” Chongloi said. “We don’t have much time to socialize. Our main concern is to follow Judaism, which is something we all agree on, and we prefer to concentrate on that rather than on politics.” To which Kipgen added: “In my social group of senior citizens, I haven’t encountered any heated discussions of the reforms. We have a club that attends Torah lessons and conducts various activities, but no one has much interest in the judicial reform issue.”

Is this just true of older B’nei Menashe in Israel? Apparently not. Aviela Singsit, 52, from Migdal ha-Emek, in Israel since 2014, was speaking for others our Newsletter talked to when she said, “I have to admit that I’m quite ignorant about the judicial reforms and their implications. It’s an area that’s beyond me and that I don’t feel qualified to comment on.” And many even younger and more Israelified B’nei Menashe seem to share her feelings, such as Osnat Lotzem, 22, whose family came to Kiryat Arba came Manipur when she was a small girl. “To be honest,” she told us, “I’m not really interested in these things, and I don’t have the time for them. I’m both studying and working, and I have to help my mother run the household. I can only hope everything will all turn out all right.”

Although some commentators have compared the situation in Israel to that in other countries where democracy is imperiled by as drift toward authoritarianism, such as the Law and Justice Party’s Poland, Viktor Orban’s Hungary, and Narendra Modi’s India, none of our interlocutors saw an Israel-India analogy. “Both Israel and India are democracies,” says Aharon Chongloi, “but you can’t compare the two. India is so much bigger so that issues that affect one part of the population may mean nothing to another. Take the current situation in Manipur: to the average Indian it’s of no importance. Maybe that’s why Modi has not even found it worth mentioning. [This was said before the Indian prime minister Modi finally spoke out about anti-Kuki atrocities in Manipur this week.] In Israel, every issue affects everyone.”

Mangsat Kipgen thought, too, as did others we spoke to, that “India and Israel are two very different countries. They’re similar in some ways and in others not. India has so many more races, religions, and communities. The prime minister of India isn’t bothered by the conflict in Manipur, but no Israeli prime minister could overlook something like that here. In India, the conflict will only grow worse. In Israel, we’ll be able to look back on all this one day and say to ourselves that we got through it. There will always be new problems, but we’ll weather this one. K. T. Amos also thought that “India is so big and diverse compared to Israel, in which we all speak one language compared to the dozens spoken in India. That makes it easier for us here to stand as one in the end . I wouldn't worry too much about Israel because our economy and military are so strong. The only similarity with India is that both governments have chosen to be silent about Manipur.”

The situation in Manipur was on the minds of nearly everyone our Newsletter spoke to, more indeed than were the legal reforms in Israel. In a way, this is natural. Many B’nei Menashe in Israel have close relatives in Manipur for whom their concern is great and identify with the Kukis of that state in their struggle to defend themselves against Meitei violence. Yet at the same time, one cannot but be struck by how many of Israel’s B’nei Menashe do not yet seem to feel sufficiently at home in it to trust their own judgments about its politics, or even to have such judgments at all. Hopefully, the current crisis will make many of them react as did Levana Chongloi, 29, who has been in Israel since 2012. “It’s a good thing you brought this subject up with me,” she told us. “It makes me want to learn more.”