New, Expanded Avichail School Opens in Churachandpur

(July 14) After a tentative start repeatedly interrupted by Covid closures, problems of location, and the disruptive efforts of Shavei Israel, Churachandpur’s Rabbi Eliyahu Avichail Memorial Hebrew School reopened at a new site this week with an enlarged staff and a greatly increased enrollment. One-hundred-and-twelve children, adolescents, and adults have registered for classes, several times the size of the previous student body.

The new school building being inaugurated

The school’s premises are in a newly constructed and still unfinished building in the Phaijang neighborhood. This is a brisk ten-minute walk from the school’s previous location in Beit Shalom Synagogue, the city’s largest place of Jewish worship, near which much of the local B’nei Menashe community lives.

Each of the structure’s three 15-by-15-foot classrooms is equipped with ten long wooden desks, each seating four students. Roofed and walled with corrugated tin sheets, the rooms still lack ceilings, flooring, and electricity, but so great was the enthusiasm generated by news of the school’s reopening that it was decided not to wait for their completion.

Funded by the B’nei Menashe Council with the help of a grant from Degel Menashe, the Avichail School hopes to develop a full-scale program offering all-day education to the young, and night-school classes for adults, in a wide range of subjects. In its present running-in stage, explains its principal, Rivka Chongboi Dimngel, its curriculum will consist mainly of religious studies in Bible and Jewish observance, supplemented by courses in spoken English and mathematics. The Jewish side of the curriculum will be taught by two knowledgeable members of the community, Shimon Thomsong and Gideon Lhouvum, while Dimngel herself, who holds a B.A. degree in Sociology, will be the English instructor and math will be the province of Ohaliav Haokip, who is currently completing his requirements for MCA, Masters of Computer Applications.

Rivka Dimngel.

The students, Dimngel says, will be divided into three age groups, children, adolescents, and adults each of which will meet separately and sometimes together .

The aim, Dimgnel told our Newsletter, is to build a curriculum that will, on its non-Jewish side, conform to that of the Manipur school system. “Many of our younger students,” she points out, “have dropped out of this system due to economic or other difficulties, and we hope to provide them, free of cost, with the education they have been missing. We’ll go through a trial-and-error period. We’ll keep trying to improve and adjust to challenges as they arise, improvising as we go along. We’re still in need of equipment, such as computers, projectors, and a power back-up system, because electric failures are common in Manipur. And we hope to reach out in the future to B’nei Menashe communities elsewhere in Manipur, too. We intend to serve the community to the best of our ability with the tools we have at our disposal.''

Affixing the mezuzah.

The Avichail School’s formal inauguration took place on July 4, when a crowd of close to 100 people gathered to witness Shimon Thomsong affix a mezuzah to the new building’s doorpost. Donated by Machir Sitlhou in the name of the B’nei Menashe Youth Organization, it was crafted by Yonah Mangboi Lhouvum. Other community members chipped in with benches, walls fans, whiteboards, and a cash contribution raised by the newly formed B’nei Menashe Mothers’ Association.

Hand-crafted by Yonah Lhouvum.

The two-hour ceremony was launched with an opening prayer by the former vice-chairman of Beit Shalom, Rafael Hangshing. “We are blessed,” he said, “to be present at such a landmark event for our community. Let us thank God for this initiative and for the children it will serve, who are our future.” The B’nei Menashe Council was represented by its own vice-chairman, Nechemiah Haokip, who expressed his joy and excitement. “This is the first school of its kind ever to be established in our community,” he told the audience. “Let us hope it will provide us with the Jewish education we have been woefully lacking until now. Something like this should have happened long ago.”

Classroom scenes.

Degel Menashe Scholarship Winners Look Back on Academic year

(June 8) June marks the end of the academic year, and with it our Newsletter asked Degel Menashe’s 2021-22 scholarship winners to write a few words about their studies and how they were affected by the aid they received.

All, as might be expected, spoke of a lightening of the economic burden borne by them. Interestingly, though, none said that without their scholarships, which averaged forty percent of their tuition, they would not have continued their education. All were determined to have done so in any case, even though it would have meant taking part-time jobs, or working more hours at jobs they already had, at the expense of their studies. Twenty-one-year-old Osnath Lotzem from Kiryat Araba, for example, now in her third and last year of a Medical Instrument Technician’s course at Jerusalem’s College of Management, wrote:

“All along I’ve been working part-time to pay for my college tuition. If not for Degel Menashe, I would have had to work even more and would have had less time available for my schoolwork. No words can describe how much I thank you.”

Yossi Kipgen.

Yossi Kipgen from Nitzan, 29, who has just finished his second year of a three-year program in Medical Lab Science as Hadassah College in Jerusalem, expressed himself similarly:

“The scholarship helped by enabling me to cut down on outside work and invest more of my time in my studies and preparing for exams. I saw the results in the good grades I received this year as compared to the previous one, when I failed a course. With less financial worries on my mind, I felt less stressed and more able to concentrate.”

Some of the scholarship winners said that without their awards they would have been forced to take less courses and spread their studies over more time. Nitzana Lhungdim-Barsheshet, who received her B.A. degree in Special Education this year from Herzog College wrote:

“Because of the scholarship, I was able to finish my studies sooner than planned and to graduate in January rather than in June. Now, I’m already working as a fifth-grade teacher with children with communications problems.”

Yitzhak Lhungdim.

Yitzhak Lhungdim, 28, from Kiryat Arba, received his degree in social work this June from Hadassah College. Although, he said, he also had a job at a tourist center in Hebron, “it was the scholarship from Degel Menashe that made it possible to keep my head economically above water.” The scholarship gave him more time for the field work assigned him with a population he had had no previous experience with – the elderly. “In the past,” he wrote, “I had always worked with young people. At first, I was worried about working with older ones. I had a fear of old age – call it ageism, if you will. Now, though, I understand how much this age group has been left without a voice and is overlooked by the rest of society, and how much it needs younger people like myself.” Yitzhak is now thinking of making a career of working with senior citizens.

Ya’el Lunkhel.

For some, the Degel Menashe scholarship had a motivational as well as an economic value. “I’m 25 years old and a first-year student in industrial design at the Shenkar College of Engineering, Design, and Art in Ramat-Gan.” wrote Ya’el Lunkhel.“Ever since I was a girl, I dreamed of getting a higher education after my army service. But no one in my surroundings had ever gone to college before. It seemed too much to hope for.

“I felt that my feet were stuck to the ground when I wanted to fly. When I heard that an NGO was helping people from our community to study, it gave me a big push psychologically. I began to believe that it was possible, that I had someone behind me. I thought, ‘Whatever else happens this year, it’s the year I’m going to fly!’”

Ya’el, who spent three hours every day traveling from her home town of Kiryat Arba to Ramat-Gan and back, thinks Degel Menashe’s scholarship program is impacting the entire B’nei Menashe community. “We’ve always had the intelligence and an ethic of hard work,” she says. “Now that Degel Menashe has come on the scene, I’ve noticed a significant rise in the number of young B’nei Menashe enrolling in colleges and universities. For the first time, they believe they can do it, because they look around them and see others doing it, too, They’re sprouting wings and learning to fly just like I did.”

Going To Court: A Degel Menashe Editorial

Taking legal action against a government ministry is not something to be done lightly. It’s a last recourse when all else has failed. But in Degel Menashe’s long battle with Israel’s Ministry of Aliyah and Integration to have the Aliyah of the B’nei Menashe taken out of the corrupt and abusive hands of Shavei Israel and transferred to The Jewish Agency, the time has come to admit it: all else has failed.

The last straw – the last failed hope – was the so-called “fact-finding mission” sent by the Ministry and the Agency to Manipur and Mizoram in early June. Such a mission had long been a goal of ours. As far back as November 24, 2020, Degel Menashe wrote to Minister Pnina Tamano-Shata: “You should consider sending a Ministry/Jewish Agency delegation to Manipur and Mizoram in order to investigate the situation there and write a report that can serve as the basis for future decisions.” We thought that an on-site commission of inquiry might convince both bodies, as countless written testimonies had been unable to, of the need for a thorough reform of the B’nei Menashe Aliyah process. We welcomed the news last April that such a mission was about to depart for India, and we welcomed it again when, after a two-month delay, it set out in June.

We were naïve. After all our bitter experience with the Ministry of Immigration and Integration, we should have known better. The “fact-finding mission” was a farce. It had no interest in the facts and did not bother to look for them. In its week in northeast India, it spent no more than four hours on hearing from Shavei Israel’s many victims and critics. Few of those wishing to relate their grievances were given a chance to. Those allowed to speak were permitted five or ten minutes each. The delegation from Israel had no time for them. It was too busy being hosted by Shavei, shepherded around by it, and attending its receptions, to which Shavei’s opponents were not invited.

In short, the Ministry/Agency mission visited Mizoram and Manipur as the guest of the organization it was supposed to investigate. Although it went through the motions of listening to both sides so that could it pretend to be fair-minded, its mind was made up in advance. If it ever files an official report, the findings are predictable. “Yes, we found a few people who claimed to have been treated badly by Shavei Israel,“ these will state. “Perhaps some were. But no organization is perfect, not even Shavei, which has promised not to let such slips recur. We fully recommend leaving the B’nei Menashe’s Aliyah in its hands.”

For words such as these, there will have been no need to have traveled to India. They could be written without leaving Jerusalem.

And all this comes on the heels of the Ministry’s refusal to answer repeated queries about what it intends to do regarding Judge Naftali Shiloh’s April 15th ruling that Shavei Israel and its chairman Michael Freund have been guilty of repeated acts of criminal fraud! No answer is an answer, too. What the ministry intends to do is obvious:

Nothing.

That is, it intends to carry on with business as usual. Yes, its business partner is a private NGO that behaves like a mafia, but clearly this doesn’t bother it.

And so, all else having failed, Degel Menashe has decided, along with fourteen senior members of the B’nei Menashe community in Israel, to go to court. If the Ministry will not change course of its own volition, it will have to be made to. The Tel Aviv law firm representing us is a leader in the field of public litigation. It has agreed to take the case on a pro bono basis as a public service. We thank it for doing so and agree with its judgment. This is indeed a public issue. It concerns not just the B’nei Menashe but all Israelis who care about clean and fair government and want their country’s ministries to care, too.