Shavei Strong Arm Tactics Continue In Manipur With Synagogue Putsch

(March 31) Shavei Israel’s open flouting of both the law and elementary rules of democracy continued last week with an attempted putsch at Churachandpur’s Beth Shalom synagogue, the largest B’nei Menashe religious center in North East India.

The illegal election notification.

The putsch took place on March 24, when Shavei operatives, having illegally announced a snap by-election for Beth Shalom’s Executive two days earlier seized the synagogue’s premises, packing the building with Shavei’s supporters while denying access to its opponents, and “voted” into office an unopposed list of Shavei candidates.

Shavei’s motives were clear. In recent years, the Beth Shalom Executive has angered Shavei by asserting its independence and refusing to submit to the Jerusalem-based organization’s dictates as it had done in the past. Evenly split between pro-and anti-Shavei members, the Executive sought to follow a policy of neutrality. It made the synagogue available as a center for the emergency distribution of food to Covid-stricken B’nei Menashe families in the autumn of 2020, and again in the spring and summer of 2021, in defiance of Shavei’s opposition to the aid campaign. It hosted 2020 elections for a new B’nei Menashe Council – the first democratically chosen BMC in years, whose emergence Shavei sought to prevent. It refused to take sides in the ensuing battle between Shavei and the BMC, which saw Shavei fraudulently attempt to create a rump council of its own. And most recently, it has offered its premises to the newly opened Rabbi Eliyahu Avichail School, a BMC-sponsored educational initiative.

Last December, Beth Shalom Chairman L. Zevulin Haokip, passed away. As mandated by the synagogue’s by-laws, its Vice-Chairman, Rafael Hangshing, who belongs to the anti-Shavei faction, assumed the post of Acting Chairman and the Executive scheduled an election for November of this year in which a new Chairman and Executive would be chosen. This would provide sufficient time, it was argued, for prospective candidates to declare themselves and campaign for support.

Tarfon Baite.

Yet Shavei Israel was not interested in democratic elections. It feared they might not go its way and it did not want to wait for its opponents to organize. On Monday, March 22, Tarfon Baite, the pro-Shavei chairman of Beth Shalom’s BSY youth group, posted a social media notice that the vote for a new Executive would take place two days later, on March 24. And on the evening of Tuesday, March 23, after the Executive’s General Secretary, Avichiel Manchong, had proclaimed the call for a snap election illegal, Shavei Israel activists, led by Shavei’s Manipur Co-ordinator Benjamin Nehmang Haokip, invaded and violently broke up a class at the Rabbi Eliyahu Avichail School [see last week’s Website article “Shavei Hooligans Storm Churachandpur Classroom”] in a pointed demonstration of what they would do to anyone seeking to thwart the illegal vote.

Benjamin Haokip.

At 11 a.m. the next morning, the same activists forcibly took over Beth Shalom, drove opponents of Shavei Israel from the building, set up a ballot box in one of its rooms, and posted guards at the synagogue’s entrance to monitor those coming to participate in the vote. All identified as Shavei backers were admitted, while all who were not were turned away.

The results of the vote were announced by Shavei days two later, on Saturday, March 26, in the course of Shabbat services in the synagogue. Shavei’s list of candidates, headed by Seithang Haokip, chairman of the pre-2020 B’nei Menashe Council in its days as a Shavei puppet body, was declared victorious by a vote of 99 to 0. Since Beth Shalom’s membership numbers approximately 500, this meant that the turnout was only twenty percent and that many pro-Shavei B’nei Menashe stayed away, too, despite Tarfon Baite’s call for “every household to turn up at the election.”

Seithang Haokip.

What will happen next at Beth Shalom is unclear. The synagogue now has two Executives, two Chairmen, and two sets of officials, one in the pro- and one in the anti-Shavei camp. The latter, our Manipur source told us, is now contemplating legal action to obtain a court order nullifying Shavei’s putsch. “This all could have been avoided,” our source said, “if Shavei had been willing to wait until November and hold an honest election then. Perhaps it might even have won. But trusting in the democratic process has never been Shavei’s way. It would rather split the B’nei Menashe community in two than let it settle matters peacefully by a fair vote.”

Shavei Hooligans Storm Churachandpur Classroom

(March 24) Seven Shavei Israel activists broke into a class of the Rabbi Eliyahu Avichail Memorial School in Churachandpur on March 22, shouting obscenities and threatening to use violence to shut the school down. They were ejected only when the police were called.

The school has been anathema to Shavei Israel since it was started over a year ago. (Shut down soon after its founding by a prolonged Covid lockdown, it opened its doors again for the current school year.) A project of Manipur’s B’nei Menashe Council named for the Jerusalem rabbi who taught the B’nei Menashe traditional Judaism and initiated their Aliyah to Israel, the school has been bitterly opposed by Shavei Israel for supposedly infringing on its territory – and this despite the fact that Shavei has, in recent years, run no significant educational programs of its own in Manipur or Mizoram.

The Shavei operatives arrived at the school, which uses the premises of Churachandpur’s Beit Shalom synagogue, Manipur’s largest, at 8 p.m. on Tuesday evening while a Torah class was being held. The class, which was studying the book of Sh’mot or Exodus, was viewing a film about Moses and the Israelites in Egypt when the intruders barged in. Led by Shavei Israel’s Manipur coordinator Benjamin Nehkhomang Haokip and Shavei supporter Ronel Letkholen Haokip, they cursed, shouted, spat on the students, and warned them not to continue their studies at the school. “Some of them appeared to be drunk,” our Newsletter was told by Avichayil Mate, the B’nei Menashe Council’s Information Secretary who was present at the incident. “Ronel Haokip was the loudest of them. He openly threatened to ‘kick and kill’ anyone attending the school’s classes in the future.”

Avichail Manchong (in red shirt) debates with Shavei coordinator Benjamin Haokip (circled in blue) while Ronel Haokip (in white shirt) looks on.

Ronel was asked to show restraint by Beit Shalom general secretary Avichayil Manchong, who sought to reason with him and pleaded with him to engage in peaceful dialogue. While Benjamin Haokip sought to shout him down, and Ronel looked menacingly on, Manchong appealed to the disrupted class not to respond with counter-violence of its own.

A Churachandpur policeman, masked against Corona, stands beside BMC general secretary Ohaliav Haokip before evicting the Shavei intruders.

When a physical brawl seemed imminent, Mate related, the police were asked to intervene. Although there were no arrests, the invaders were made to leave the premises. “Without the police, it would have ended badly,” said B”nei Menashe Council general secretary Ohaliav Haokip, who was alerted and arrived on the scene. “I myself was told by the Shavei goons that they would kill me and throw my corpse in a dump heap.”

By chance, the incident took place just 48 hours after the same class had celebrated its completion of studying the weekly Torah portions in the book of B’reshit or Genesis with a prize-giving ceremony for the winners of a quiz contest regarding what had been learned. Eight of the class’s 40 students were singled out for honors by their teacher, Shimon Thomsong . Although it was a happy milestone in the Rabbi Eliyahu Avichayil Memorial School’s brief history, the celebratory mood did not last long.

A prize is awarded to student Rivka Lhouvum by Avichail Manchong. Teacher Shimon Thomsong (in black hat) stands in the background.

B’nei Menashe Celebrate Purim Amid Hope for Aliyah Reform

(March 18) Purim was celebrated by B’nei Menashe in Israel and India this week much as elsewhere in the Jewish world: with the reading of the Megillah, the Book of Esther, in the synagogue; with Mishloach Manot, the mutual sending of gift parcels of food; with the masquerading of children and the festive dressing up of adults, and with partying and communal get-togethers. At the largest of these gatherings, held in Churachandpur’s Beit Shalom synagogue, over 300 B’nei Menashe gathered.

Here are some photographs.

Purim gathering in Churachandpur and Mishloach Manot.

Dressing up for Purim in Manipur and Mizoram.

B’nei Menashe children masquerading as soldiers, policemen, robots, paramedics, chefs, chief rabbis (that’s the late Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef in the dark blue turban), Mordecais, and lots of Queen Esthers.”