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.”

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.