Hanna and Dina Singson Reunite in Israel

(September 1, 2022) Two weeks ago, our Newsletter posted a story about 74-year-old Hanna Singson and her daughter Dina. Hanna had been hospitalized in Israel for a blood disease after months of neglect by Shavei Israel staff in the Galilee city of Nof Ha-Galil to which she immigrated from Manipur last October, while Dina was still in India, separated from her mother by Shavei’s cruelly discriminatory and punitive Aliyah policies. Now, the two women are together again. Arriving on a flight from New Delhi on Thursday evening, Dina was met at the airport by Degel Menashe managing director Yitzhak Thangjom and his wife Jessica and taken directly to

Dina and Jessica Thangjom at Ben-Gurion Airport.

the Sderot home of Rivka and Zvulun Guite, the B’nei Menashe couple with whom Hanna has been staying since fleeing Nof Ha-Galil and to whose care she returned when released from the hospital.

Dina traveled to Israel with a special entry permit issued by the Ministry of the Interior and arranged for by Milka Zeiler, an Israeli businesswoman and long-time friend of the B’nei Menashe who intervened on her behalf after reading and her mother’s story. Within a matter of days, a ticket was booked and paid for by Degel Menashe, which saw to it that Dina was escorted to Imphal and New Delhi airports. Everything went smoothly, she told our Newsletter, until she landed in Israel, where border control officials were bewildered by the unfamiliar document she handed them

“When my turn in line came,” Dina related, “I presented my passport with the permit. The woman at the booth looked at it and said, ‘This isn’t a visa.’ I said, “Read what’s written there.’ She did and said she’d never seen anything like it, and she passed me on to the next booth. The woman there told me to wait while she made some phone calls. She must have made about four of them, which took some twenty minutes, after which she asked me a few questions and stamped my passport. I can’t say I wasn’t anxious, but it wasn’t really a bad experience.”

On the hour-long drive to Sderot with the Thangjoms, Dina says, she was flooded with phone calls from well-wishers who had already heard of her arrival through the social media. “I can’t tell you how wonderful I felt,” she went on. “When we got there, my mother was waiting. For a moment, we just stood there looking at each other. It was all so unbelievable. But then we gave each other a big hug and I knew it was real. We chatted and then sat down to dinner with the Guites and the Thangjoms. We were all hungry and the food was delicious, but my mother didn’t eat a thing. She was too happy and excited to have an appetite.”

Dina’s last evening in Churachandpur on Monday, August 30 was marred by by an unpleasant incident with Shavei’s Manipur Administrator Sehjalal Shlomo Kipgen.

Sehjalal Shlomo Haokip.

As she tells it, "My family, friends and some friend of the Menashe Council, of which I’m a staunch supporter, had gathered at my home in the community of Buoljol, the area of Churichandpur in which I live, for a farewell party.. There were about forty of us, and each of the guests said a few words to wish me well. When that ended about 8:30, we lit a bonfire and grilled some chicken over it for those who wanted to remain.

At about 9:30 or 10, Dina says, Sehjalal, Shavei Administrator, who is also Buolojol’s recognized chief or administrative authority, appeared on the scene. “He was reeking of alcohol,” Dina relates, “and obviously drunk. He started shouting and demanding to know how we could have a get-together in his community without his permission. Although we tried calming him down, he grew more and more agitated and went from ranting to weeping and back again. Then he started to threaten Ohaliav Haokip, the BMC’s general secretary, who was recording him on his cell phone, and when he saw that no one was taking his side, he went off to bring reinforcements.”

Sehjalal: Ohaliav what are you doing in my community?
Ohaliav: Brother, have a seat.
Sehjalal: This is my community. I should punch you in the nose. What could you do to me if I slapped you around a little?
Ohaliav: Have a seat, have a seat.. 
Sehjalal: Or maybe I should smash your cell phone. Are you recording me?
Ohaliav: What are you so angry about?
Sehjalal: Where is Samson? [Samson Singson, a relative of Dina’s who was present.] Samson, come over here. You dumb yokel, you! What are you doing? Why didn't you invite me if you were having a party? To hell with you and all your kin! What do you say to that, eh? [To everyone] No one leave, everyone stay where you are! Where are my men”?

Taped conversation between Sehjalal and Ohaliav at Boljol.

At that point, Dina says, Ohaliav and the other BMC members left and went to the home of Menashe Kipgen, who lives in the nearby community of Petach Tikva, where Sehjalal has no jurisdiction. After a while, she relates “Sehjalal came back with a few of his henchmen and resumed his drunken ranting.. He shouted at me that he had authority over all the B’nei Menashe and could have my visa cancelled if he wanted to, and he had one of his people pour water on the fire and put it out. He was clearly not in his right mind. At that point, I decided to leave and go to Menashe’s home, too. I spent the night there with the others, because I was afraid my home might be attacked by Sehjalal if I stayed in it. Even then I was afraid he might ambush me on my way to the airport in the morning, but fortunately, he was still sleeping off all that liquor.

“When I landed in New Delhi on Tuesday, I was picked up at the airport by Tongkhohao Khongsai and his wife Hoinu [B’nei Menashe who live in Delhi], who welcomed me warmly to their home.

Dina and Hoinu Khongsai in New Delhi.

I was supposed to fly to Israel on Thursday, but that evening I received a phone call from Yitzhak Thangjom, who told me that my reservation had been changed to Wednesday afternoon. I was glad of that because it meant I would be seeing my mother a day earlier.”

And what did Dina have to say the morning after, her first morning of waking in Israel? “Honestly,” she responded to our question, “I never thought I’d get a visa to Israel. I thought only Shavei had the power to grant one. Now I see that’s not so and that the decisions are God’s. I’m grateful to all those who did His work, especially to Milka Zeiler and the Thangjoms.”

And Hanna? “I always knew Dina would come one day,” she says. “Now that she’s here, I feel much better and more alive. I won’t have to feel lonely anymore.”

A Brave Woman Stands Tall

(August 25, 2022) Sarah Lamsi Baite continues to fight for her dignity and for justice for herself and her daughter. This week, summoned to a hearing by the Teising Area Chiefs Union, an association of neighborhood authorities in west Churachandpur where she and many of the city’s B’nei Menashe live, she stood tall and refused to back down.

Baite has been harassed and threatened ever since, in January of this year, she filed a police complaint against Kailam Singson, accused by her of raping her ten-year-old daughter in 2016. Singson is today a resident of Israel, to which he came with a group of B’nei Menashe immigrants, organized by Shavei Israel, in 2018. Before this, shortly after the rape, in June 2016, he admitted his guilt by taking part in an out-of-court settlement arranged according to so-called “Kuki Customary Law” by the Village Authority or VA of the neighborhood of Headquarters, Tuibong in which he and Baite lived. In this settlement, Baite received from Singson a sum of 150,000 rupees (a little over $2,000) in return for a pledge to drop the case. She did so after being warned not to go to the police by the Shavei Israel-controlled Beit Shalom synagogue, to which both she and Singson belonged, and with the

Sarah’s interrogators.

understanding that she and her daughter would then be able to resume a normal life.

This was not, however, what happened. A month after the settlement, in July 2016, the Beit Shalom executive expelled Sarah Baite from its congregation for having shamed it by reporting her daughter’s rape to the Tuibong VA rather than remaining silent. Most of the congregation cut all ties with her, and she and her traumatized daughter were cast into social isolation. A gross violation of the settlement she had agreed to, this was one reason, she stated, why she was acting not only within her legal rights when she finally mustered the resolve to go to the police (“Kuki Customary Law” has no legal standing in Manipur), but with full moral justification.

Yet Shavei thought otherwise. Following Baite’s police complaint, its Manipur operatives launched a concerted campaign of harassment and intimidation, thoroughly documented by our Newsletter, aimed at getting her to retract her complaint. In effect, Shavei played a double game. While its leadership in Israel professed shock at Baite’s story, pretended to have been unaware of it prior to her complaint, and made vague promises of offering her assistance, its Manipur staff went on threatening her and getting others to do so.

The latest chapter in Baite’s long ordeal began last July 22, when she was summoned, at the request of the Churachandpur branch of the Kuki Lawyer’s Association, to appear before the Tuibong VA, which then directed her to refund the settlement money received from Kailam Singson and pay an additional 50,000 rupee fine for breaking her 2016 pledge. Her answer was that – her pledge having indeed been broken, though with ample justification -- she was willing to return the money but only to the person she received it from, namely, Kailam Singson himself. Knowing there was no chance of Kailam’s coming to Manipur, where he was sure to face trial and possibly a stiff jail sentence, the Headquarters, Tuibong VA passed the case on to the Teising Area Chiefs Union or TACU, which asked Baite to appear before it.

This she did on August 19, bringing with her six people for support: a couple of friends, a relative, and B’nei Menashe Council general secretary Ohaliav Haokip along with the two advisors, Nechemiah Lhouvum and Ovadia Touthang. Arraigned against her were the TACU neighborhood authorities and representatives of the Kuki Lawyer’s Association. (Speaking to our Newsletter later, the association’s president Daniel Haokip denied prior knowledge of the incident and declared, “The case of Sarah Lamsi Baite was taken up on a personal basis…The matter does not merit coming under the association’s purview.”) Despite her request to be accompanied by her supporters, Sarah Baite was told that she would have to face her interrogators by herself. In the accompanying box, as told to our Newsletter, is her account of the confrontation.

I was told to present myself before a court of seven or eight men while my companions waited outside. They told me they were there to solve a problem for me, since I had accepted compensation for the rape of my daughter. If I did what they were asking, they said, I wouldn’t have to return the 150,000 rupees I received in 2016 according to Kuki Customary Law, even
though I had broken my pledge by filing a police complaint. They said they had spoken to B’nei Menashe religious leaders in [the Churachandpur neighborhood of] Buoljol with the aim of bringing about an amicable solution. All I had to do was withdraw my complaint and sign a statement they had drafted for me. If I did that, they promised I would be put at the top of the list for the next Aliyah group to leave for Israel.
I answered that I didn’t know what religious leaders they were talking about. And how could I sign a statement without knowing what was in it or consulting those close to me and those who have stood by me? Besides, I said, I had no intention of withdrawing my complaint, which I had made after years of humiliation heaped on me. My answer was not well-received. I was told that I was a very obstinate and foolish woman, that I was being manipulated by others, and that I was in contempt of Kuki Customary Law. I said: “Which of us is in contempt of it? When I was expelled from my synagogue for agreeing to a settlement according to Customary Law and complained to the Village Authority, I was told it didn’t interfere in internal B’nei Menashe affairs. But those who expelled me were Kukis, too.
Why was my daughter’s rape by another Kuki a matter for Kuki Customary Law and not my expulsion from where I prayed by other Kukis?”

They simply ignored what I said. They warned me that if I didn’t withdraw my complaint and sign the statement, they would let the whole Kuki people know that I was an evil woman with no respect for Kuki laws and customs. They said I would be marked for life as a social outcast and that no village or neighborhood would ever have me. I said, “You can kill me if you want, but I’m not giving in.” So they said that in that case, they would see to it that no B’nei Menashe, including me, ever got to Israel. They said, “It’s a simple thing for us to write to the Israeli government and have Aliyah shut down forever, and you’ll be blamed for it,” I told them I didn’t believe them and that my answer was still no. When they realized that they were not going to get what they wanted, they told me to come back in two days and let me go.

Sarah Baite’s account.

Sarah Baite behaved courageously, as she has done throughout. Yet it is unlikely that she could withdraw her complaint even if she wanted to, since the case is a criminal one in which the plaintiff in court would be the state, not Baite. And that the state of Manipur takes the case seriously was evidenced this week when Baite received a copy of an order handed down by Lamkhanpau Tonsing, Special Judge for the Protection of Children from Sexual Offenses (POCSO), directing the relevant authorities to inquire into her daughter’s status and to submit a report by September 5 on her eligibility for government “victim compensation.”

Judge Lamkhanpau Tonsing’s court order.

BMC Chairman, ORT officials, Conclude Agreement

(August 25, 2022) At an August 23 meeting in Mumbai, B’nei Menashe Council Chairman Lalam Hangshing and officials of ORT India, the Indian chapter of the international Jewish educational and vocational training organization, formally decided to transfer ORT’s current computer skills program from Imphal, Manipur’s capital, to the new Rabbi Eliyahu Avichail Memorial School in Churichandpur, Manipur’s center of B’nei Menashe life.

ORT originally opened a computer training program on the premises of Churachandpur’s Beit Shalom synagogue in the late 1990s, but moved it to Imphal a decade later after friction with Shavei Israel led to its being asked to leave Beit Shalom. In Imphal too, however, Shavei’s opposition to ORT’s involvement in B’nei Menashe life led to the program’s dwindling over time.

A classroom in Churachandpur’s Eliyahu Avichail School.

Now, with the launching in Churachandpur of the BMC-sponsored Avichail School, ORT has agreed to move its computer program back to that city while assuming partial responsibility for the school’s funding.

Hangshing met in Mumbai with four ORT officials: Dean Johnny Jhirad; Project Manager Elkan Palkar; CEO Shivani Astamkar; and board member Benjamin Isaacs. “It’s our hope,” he told our Newsletter, “that this agreement will give a big push to both Avichail Schools, in Churachandpur and in Aizawl. There is a lot of enthusiasm for it on both our part and ORT’s. B’nei Menashe education in Manipur and Mizoram has been woefully neglected in recent decades. The whole emphasis has been on Aliyah – and while this remains a primary objective, we can’t go on letting the B’nei Menashe youth that is waiting for Aliyah be deprived of an education, both Jewish and general. Computers should be just a start. With ORT’s help, we can think of vocational training in other areas as well, which would complement the Avichail Schools’ Jewish and Hebrew curriculum. We need young B’nei Menashe to arrive in Israel equipped with at least some of the skills and knowledge that they will need to succeed there. The future of the B’nei Menashe community depends on the future of each one of its young people.”