B’nei Menashe Man, Denied Aliyah with family, found dead on street

(November 12) Lunsat Shmida Chongloi, 30, a member of Churachandpur’s B’nei Menashe community, was found dead on a street of the city on Friday, November 5. The cause of death was unclear. Whereas B’nei Menashe social media in Manipur speculated that it might have been a drug overdose, Lunsat’s father, Na’aman Chongloi, a resident of the northern Israeli city of Safed, told our newspaper that it was a stroke due to high blood pressure.

“Lunsat was a substance abuser in the past,” we were told by Na’aman, who immigrated to Israel with his wife and two younger children in 2014. “He had been in a chronic state of depression ever since having been parted from his family by Shavei Israel when it refused to let him join our Aliyah. The reason for the refusal was petty and mean. When Shavei announced that it was holding interviews for the 2014 group of olim, Lunsat, who had been working far away in Bangalore, gave up his job and hurried home to Churachandput to sit for them.

“Unfortunately,” Na’aman continued,” when Lunsat reached Assam, from which he planned to continue to Manipur, ethnic riots broke out and paralyzed transportation. He was delayed, and by the time he reached Churachandpur, the interviews, which the rest of our family passed successfully, were over. We begged Tsvi Khaute, Shavei Israel’s coordinator, to make an exception for Lunsat, since he missed his interview through no fault of his own, but Khaute refused. He was adamant. The one ray of home he could offer us, he said, was to include Lunsat in the next round of interviews, which would take place as soon as a new Aliyah group was formed. We left for Israel without him, trusting that he soon would follow us.”

And yet when such a group was formed a year later, in 2015, Lunsat was not invited to be interviewed for it as promised. “That broke his spirits,” Na’aman said. “We’re a close family and he missed us terribly. On top of that, he couldn’t find a decent job in Churachandpur, where employment opportunities are limited. He was out of work, and I had to send him hard-earned money from Israel to support him. To escape his depression, he turned to drink, and from there he went on to drugs.”

According to Na’aman, however, the immediate cause of his son’s death was neither alcohol nor drugs. “Lunsat had a change of heart half a year ago,” Na’man said. “He told us then that he had had enough. He was turning 30, he said, and wanted to mend his ways and find a B’nei Menashe wife to start a family with. We were very happy to hear that, and we managed to find him a suitable match with a B’nei Menashe girl whose family originally came from Nagaland, as did ours. They were married three months ago.”

Lunsat found dead.

Since his marriage, Na’aman said, Lunsat was a changed person. “He stopped the drugs and alcohol and was clean. He also returned to a full observance of Judaism, donning tefillin every morning and never missing a single one of the three daily prayer services. But by then his health had been ruined by his years of unhealthy living and he was suffering from high blood pressure.

“It was the blood pressure that led to the stroke. But that was only what killed him medically speaking. If this would have happened. He would have been alive and healthy instead of dead on a Churachandpur street. For that, we have Shavei Israel to thank.”

The family rises from its shiva in Safed today, November 12.

Shavei Moves To Again Assert Control Of B’nei Menashe Aliyah

(October 28) As attention shifted from the 250 B’nei Menashe who arrived in Israel earlier this month, the last of 722 cleared for Aliyah in 2015, to future groups yet to come, the private Jerusalem-based organization Shavei Israel has acted quickly to assert its continued control over these groups’ composition. Despite past assurances from officials in the Jewish Agency and the Ministry of Immigration and Absorption that they would from now on curb Shavei’s unlimited freedom to choose or reject whatever Aliyah candidates it pleased, there was no sign of these promises being kept.

Shavei’s attempt to create incontrovertible facts on the ground started with its B’nei Menashe Coordinator Tsvi Khaute’s visit to Manipur in late September, when the group of 250 was organizing to leave for Israel.

Tsvi Khaute in Mizoram in 2020.

While there, Khaute distributed a “Benei [sic!] Menashe Shavei Israel Aliyah Interview Candidates Form for the year 5782/2021” to most of Manipur’s B’nei Menashe congregations. This form had a line for each candidate with space for his or her name, sex, date of birth, marital status, Indian ID card number, and date of embracing Judaism. At its bottom was space for the signature and seal of the congregation’s Chairman and Secretary.

Notably, Khaute did not distribute the forms to the four congregations of Petach Tikva, Pejang, Saikul, and Phalbung, all of which have been at odds with Shavei Israel for years and are on its “Aliyah blacklist.” The main reason for Shavei’s boycott of them has been their refusal to adopt the Sefardic rite of prayer in place of the Ashkenazi one now practiced by Manipur’s other B’nei Menashe communities. (Originally introduced in the 1980s by Rabbi Eliyahu Avichayi, the original bringer of Orthodox Judaism to Manipur, the Ashkenazi rite was banned by Shavei as a demonstration of its power after it won an organizational battle for control of the B’nei Menashe community in 2003-4.)

“Khaute’s flagrant discrimination against these four communities, which continues long-standing Shavei policy, is appalling,” said Yitzhak Thangjom, Executive Director, Degel Menashe, in speaking to our Newsletter.

Isaac Thangjom.

“Yet it’s not half as appalling as is the fact of these forms being handed out in the first place. By what right does Shavei take the matter of B’nei Menashe Aliyah in the years ahead entirely into its own hands and again make itself the sole arbiter of who in the community will make Aliyah and who won’t? Who gave it such authority? Where is the Israeli government? Where is the Jewish Agency? How can they let Shavei get away with this?”

On the heels of Khaute’s visit, Shavei sent an emissary, Yehuda Singson, from Israel to Manipur in order to give lessons in Judaism that will prepare the next batch of Aliyah candidates chosen by Shavei Israel for interviews with Israeli rabbis. These interviews, traditionally held to certify the candidates’ eligibility, have long been considered farcical, since the rabbis and the interviewees speak no common language and communicate via a Shavei translator who can put whatever words he wishes in their mouths. “They’re a joke,” says Rivka Chong Lhungdim of the Israeli town of Sderot, who has been through one of them herself. “There are those who deserve to pass but do not make it to Israel, those who deserve to fail but do, and those who do even though they were never interviewed at all. In the end, Shavei takes who its wants.”

An unpleasant incident took place shortly after Singson’s arrival in Manipur on October 22. The day was a Friday, and B’nei Menashe Council general secretary Ohaliav Haokip and Council advisor Nehemia Lhouvum paid a call on Singson at Churachandpur’s Beit Shalom synagogue before Shabbat. Singson received them cordially, and asked by them if it was true, as rumored, that only supporters of Shavei Israel would be admitted to his lessons, he answered that, on the contrary, everyone would be welcome, whether pro--Shavei or not. (Since then, however, no one not in Shavei’s good graces has received an invitation to these lessons.)

Yehuda Singson (right) with Ohaliav Haokip (left) and Nehemia Lhouvum.

The two B’nei Menashe Council officials were leaving the synagogue when they were approached by Sehjalal Shlomo Kipgen, Shavei Israel’s chief Manipur administrator. Having heard that the two B’nei Menashe Council officials had paid a call on Singson, he was furious that this had taken place without his permission, and after a heated exchange he charged at Nehemia Lhouvum and tried to assault him.

“He had to be restrained physically,” relates Ohaliav Haokip. “It was quite clear that he was agitated. It’s common knowledge that he's edgy.”

Sehjalal Shlomo Kipgen.

Meanwhile, a second Shavei Israel emissary, Itzhak Colney, has arrived in Mizoram with a mission similar to Singson’s and has begun to give pre-Aliyah lessons at Aizawl’s Khovevei Tzion synagogue, a Shavei stronghold. As in Manipur, non- or anti-Shavei B’nei Menashe were not invited to participate. Ironically, one of the non-invitees was Asaf Renthlei, a 28-year-old Aizawl resident and doctoral student in anthropology who has taught himself Hebrew, of which he now commands a good reading and writing knowledge – the only member of the B’nei Menashe community in all of northeast India of which this can be said.

Asaf Renthlei.

Asaf, indeed, has served as the Jewish pedagogue of Aizawl’s B’nei Menashe, giving bar-mitzvah lessons and teaching groups of adults, all on a voluntary basis.

Asaf’s crime in Shavei’s eyes? Participating in a Degel Menashe-organized Covid-19 food relief campaign last summer despite Shavei’s threats to punish whoever took part in it, and subsequently, after he was declared unwelcome at Khovevei Tzion services, taking part in an anti-Shavei demonstration. “Shavei has tried to kick me out of the B’nei Menashe community,” Asaf told our Newsletter. “I’ve been removed from its social networks and have stopped receiving invitations for its events.

“The odd thing,” Asaf revealed, “is that all the time that Shavei was attacking me in public, it was sending me messengers in private with the offer that, if I agreed to behave myself and return to the Shavei fold, I would be put at the head of the next Aliyah list – and this despite the fact that I only joined the community three years ago and lack all seniority. I told them to take their offer and clear out. I’m not for sale. I have my principles and I’ll stand by them.”

Shavei Israel Embezzlement Hearing Put Off

(October 25) Scheduled for October 17, a pretrial hearing of Sarah Freund vs. Shavei Israel, a case in which the former wife of Michael Freund is accusing her ex-husband of embezzling IS50,053,751 (close to $15,000,000) of the family’s money and transferring it to Shavei Israel, the organization he founded and heads, has been put off with no new date so far set by the court. No reason for the postponement was given by Tel Aviv District Court judge Naftali Shilo, the justice presiding over the case.

Sarah Freund’s suit to recover funds said by her to have been fraudulently taken from money belonging to her family has yet to reach the evidentiary stage. Thus far, court sessions have been procedural, starting with the plaintiff’s motion to transfer the case to a civil court from the family court in which it was initially argued after the couple’s separation in 2016.

Judge Eitan Orenstein

In rejecting this motion, in a ruling given on June 21, 2020, Tel Aviv District Court Judge Etan Orenstein summarized Sarah’s claims.

“The plaintiff,” Judge Orenstein wrote, “contends that she received from her father, Pinchas Green, millions of dollars that were intended for the needs of her and Michael’s family. However, she says, Michael took possession of these funds and transferred them to an amuta [a non-profit organization. i.e., Shavei Israel] and to individuals connected to it, thereby violating an understanding between them that was based on mutual trust and fidelity. The plaintiff states that Michael, who founded the organization and was its chairman, devoted most of his time and energy to it, whereas she had no involvement with it and no intention of giving large sums to it or to persons associated with it. According to her, the defendants illicitly enriched themselves at her expense and stole money that belonged to her and that must now be returned.”

Judge Orenstein’s summary were based on Sarah’s statements to the family court, whose proceedings took place behind closed doors, in keeping with the such courts’ policy of protecting the privacy of family members. One of her motives in requesting the transfer to a civil court, apparently, was to permit her accusations to be made public. To this end, her lawyers dropped Michael Freund from the list of defendants, reducing it to Shavei Israel, Shavei’s lawyer Eitan Tsafrir, and former Shavei employee Rabbi Eliyahu Birnbaum. These two persons, according to the Israeli investigative website News 1, were said by Sarah Freund to have received, respectively, IS1.6m and IS1.7m of the embezzled funds.

In rejecting the plaintiff’s motion, which was opposed by Michael Freund’s lawyers, Judge Orenstein ruled that the case belonged in family court after all, saying:

“Given the plaintiff’s claim that she was duped by her husband, who acted fraudulently and in violation of the fidelity owed her, investigating the circumstances of the matter clearly calls for examining the conduct of the couple [the Freunds] in the course of their married life and the relationship between them as life rather than business partners, including their joint bank accounts.”

Rather than send the case back to family court in its present form, however, the judge wrote that he was dismissing it entirely in the expectation that Sarah Freund would file a new family court suit reinstating her ex-husband as a defendant.

Yet Shavei Israel’s victory, which would have succeeded in keeping Michael Freund’s alleged misdeeds out of the public eye, was short-lived. Judge Orenstein’s decision was appealed to the High Court of Justice by Sarah’s lawyers, Zohar Lande, Gal Lifschitz, and Zohar Haim-Levinger of the Tel Aviv firm of Barnea. On the 6th of December, 2020, High Court justice Anat Baron upheld the dismissed motion in a succinct verdict that stated that“Given that the main parties to the case [i.e., Sarah Freund and Shavei Israel] are not related, the jurisdiction over it belongs to the district and not the family court.” Overruling Judge Orenstein’s decision, she ordered the case returned to the Tel Aviv District Court, where it was reassigned to Judge Naftali Shilo.

Judge Anat Baron

Still seeking to keep the case under a mantle of secrecy, Michael Freund’s lawyers, led by Tal Shapira of the firm of Tel Tzur & Partners, now petitioned Judge Shilo to hold the District Court’s hearing, too, behind closed doors. This request was based on two arguments: 1) That inasmuch as the District Court would be required to examine testimony given before the family court, this testimony would become public knowledge despite the family court’s ban on its disclosure; and 2) That such a disclosure might cause “irreparable harm” to Michael and Sarah Freund’s children.

The second of these arguments was dismissed by Judge Shilo out of hand: the Freunds’ children, he observed in a decision handed down on January 22 of this year, were no longer minors and did not need such protection. Nevertheless, the judge promised, addressing the first argument, if “intimate matters” came up at the District Court trial, he would consider striking them from the protocol.

Judge Shilo’s ruling was, he wrote,based on “the principle of the public nature of trials,” which is “one of the foundations of our system of law” and is stronger than Michael Freund’s right to privacy.

Judge Naftali Shilo

Moreover, the judge stated, Shavei Israel, which has no such right, was not merely a passive recipient of the funds said to have been stolen. This was because it was also charged by Sarah Freund in family court that “the non-profit organization was falsely registered with the Registrar of Amutot”on documents “in which her signature had been forged. In addition, she claimed that there were ‘grave and substantial’ defects in the organization’s administration and pointed to the many flaws and failures that, so she said, took place in it.

The alleged forging of Sarah’s signature on Shavei Israel’s registration papers and reports to the Registrar of Amutot would presumably have been meant to facilitate the counter-claim that the transfer of money to Shavei could not have occurred without her knowledge and consent.

The way was now cleared for the trial to begin. On April 20, 2021, the litigants met in Judge Shilo’s courtroom and set last week’s date of October 17 for a preliminary session, the reason for whose last-minute cancelation has not been given. Asked by our Newsletter to comment, Sarah Freund’s lawyer Zohar Lande did not reply.

In a related development, the Israeli daily business newspaper Calcalist reported earlier this year that, in a separate suit filed against Michael Freund by Sarah Freund’s father Pinchas Green, a Tel Aviv family court presided over by Judge Shmuel Bar-Yosef ordered Freund to return to Green the IS50,000,000 shekels determined by it to have been illegally taken from money given by Green to his daughter, plus an additional IS2m. in court costs. The decision is currently being appealed by Freund’s lawyers. What would be the fate of Sarah Freund vs. Shavei Israel should Judge Bar-Yosef’s decision be upheld is not clear.