Some Show Bravery, Others Don’t, As Jankholun Kipgen Is Buried and Mourned

(July 29) Jangkholun Kipgen, the B’nei Menashe’s first Covid-19 fatality, was laid to rest and mourned this past week in his native village of Gamgiphai in central Manipur. Kipgen was buried in a grave dug on his family property after the B’nei Menashe community of Gamgiphai, under apparent orders from Shavei Israel, denied him a place in its cemetery. It did so in retribution for Jangkholun’s son Michael, currently hospitalized for Covid-19 too, having volunteered to take part in Degel Menashe’s Summer 2020 emergency food campaign that Shavei fought against tooth-and-nail. Ever since then, the Kipgens have been ostracized by the Gamgiphai community and barred from participating in its Jewish life.

Not only was Jangkholun denied burial with his fellow B”nei Menashe but the Gamgiphai community refused to let his family say Kaddish for him in its Beit Shalom synagogue during the Shiva week. “The irony and hypocrisy of it is staggering,” Ohaliav Haokip, general secretary of Manipur’s B’nei Menashe Council, commented to our Newsletter. “The same people who kicked Michael, and his wife, children, brothers, sisters, and parents out of their community had previously filled their bellies with the rice that he helped to distribute! What sin did Michael Kipgen commit by volunteering to feed his own people?”

Jangkholun Kipgen passed away early on the morning of July 23 at the Regional Institute of Medical Sciences hospital in Imphal. “I rushed there as soon as I heard the news,” relates Ohaliav Haokip. “We had to act quickly. It was Friday and Shabbat was just hours away. When an ambulance came to transfer the body from the hospital to the mortuary, there was no one to help. Not a soul from Gamgiphai was there. After a while, some B’nei Menashe from the Beit-El synagogue in Imphal arrived. Even then, it wasn’t easy to get the bureaucratic paperwork done and it was even harder to find a coffin, because shops were closed due to the Covid lockdown. We ran from place to place until we finally found a plain black box and headed back with it to the morgue. Oved Kipgen, Jangkholun’s son-in-law, and I put on protective Covid suits, placed the body in the coffin, and nailed it shut. It was afternoon by the time we got to Gamgiphai for the funeral.”

Ngamsei Haokip, chairman of the Beit-El synagogue, was not with the group from Imphal because he was indisposed that day. Still, he encouraged whoever could to join it. “It’s our duty to help every B”nei Menashe however we can,” he told our correspondent. “We worship the same God, so why should some of us be treated differently from others? If one of us thinks someone else has done wrong, it’s up to God, not us, to be the judge.”

The group from Imphal was joined at the funeral by a second contingent from the nearby village of Phalbung, one of the few in Manipur whose B’nei Menashe have refused to submit to Shavei Israel’s authority. Together, the two groups were enough for the minyan needed for the Kaddish to be said. “We did what was the least we could do,“ said the Phalbung’s leader, Yechiel Haokip. “I was very disturbed to hear of the way the Kipgens were treated. Helping to distribute rice last year was a mitzvah. Whoever was involved in it should be praised, not punished.”

Since Michael Kipgen was not permitted by the hospital to attend the funeral and say the Kaddish for his father, it was recited by Jangkholun’s son-in-law Oved Lun Kipgen, also a resident of Gamgiphai. In talking to us, Oved tried not to be too hard on his fellow villagers. “As the funeral was underway,” he said, “I could see people from Gamgiphai watching from a distance. I’m sure they must have shared our grief and wanted to join us, but they were afraid to bring down the wrath of Shavei by showing sympathy. Some approached us secretly afterwards and advised us to ask Shavei for forgiveness so that things could be patched up. But what is it we need to be forgiven for for? Feeding hungry people?"

The B’nei Menashe community of Phalbung also invited the mourning family to pray in Phalbung’s synagogue during the days of the Shiva. “It was kind of it,” says Oved. “But even though Phalbung is just four or five kilometers away, we couldn’t go there on a daily basis because of the lockdown.”

The Kipgen family rose from its Shiva at the week’s end, with Michael still recovering in the hospital. “I don’t know which hurt more,” he told us, “the behavior of the Gamgiphai community or missing my own father’s funeral. My only hope now is that I’ll be able to take my mother and the rest of my family to Israel one day. Is that too much to ask?”

If Shavei Israel has its way, it may be.

Shutting Jangkholun’s coffin.

The coffin sets out for Gamgiphai.

Leaving the mortuary in the rain for Gamgiphai.

Digging the grave in Covid suits.

The coffin is about to be lowered.

Jangkholun Kipgen at rest.

After the funeral.

Kipgen family sitting Shiva.

Sitting Shiva. Foreground (with glasses): Jangkholun’s wife Sarah Hatlam Kipgen. Left rear: Oved Lun Kipgen. At right (wearing turban): Oved’s wife, Jangkholun’s daughter Khanna Hoineo Kipgen.

First B’nei Menashe Dies of Covid-19

(July 23) The Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in its first B’nei Menashe fatality with the death Thursday night of Jangkholun Zvulun Kipgen, 69, of the Manipuri village of Gamgiphai between Imphal and Kangpokpi. Kipgen was the father of Michael Kipgen, who has also fallen ill with the Corona virus. [See “Letter from Manipur” in today’s Newsletter.) Jangkholun passed away in the Regional Institute of Medical Science hospital in Imphal, to which he was taken a few days earlier after suffering from shortness of breath.

Jangkholun Kipgen was born in Leikot, a village not far from Gamgiphai, whose Jewish community he joined in 2015. A practitioner of Ayurvedic medicine, he also farmed and owned rice fields. He is survived by his wife, Sarah Hatlam Kipgen, and three children, Khanna Hoineo, Mercy, and Michael.

No announcement of Jangkholun’s death was made by Gamgiphai’s B’nei Menashe community and only a few of its members, our Newsletter has learned, have expressed their condolences. The Kipgen family was expelled from the Shavei Israel-controlled B’nei Menashe community of Gamgiphai a little less than a year ago in retaliation by Shavei for Michael’s participation in Degel Menashe’s emergency food distribution campaign last summer. Arriving at the local Beit Shalom synagogue for services on the holiday of Simchat Torah, the Kipgens were told, scant weeks after the synagogue’s officials and congregation had taken the food that Michael helped distribute, that they were no longer welcome. Since then they were barred from participating in the village’s Jewish life.

“The B’nei Menashe of Manipur have lost one of their heroes,” declared Ohaliav Haokip, general secretary of the B’nei Menashe Council, upon hearing of Jangkholun’s death. “He was steadfast in fighting alongside the BMC against the hypocrites who abuse us all.”

Denied access to the Jewish cemetery of Gamgiphai, Jangkholun Kipgen was buried on his property in a private ceremony.

Jangkholun Kipgen is laid to rest.

Yehi Zikhro Barukh. May his memory be a blessing.

A Letter From Manipur

(July 21) Our Newsletter has received the following letter to our readers from Ohaliav Haokip, General Secretary of Manipur’s B’nei Menashe Council:

Ohaliav Haokip.

“The second wave of Covid 19 has struck India with a ferocity not seen the first time around. This time, it has also hit the two states of Manipur and Mizoram, home to the B’nei Menashe community of India’s northeast, with a devastating effect. There is now a complete lockdown in all of Manipur, with only essential services like ambulances, fire trucks, and the like allowed to travel. Although the lockdown is officially in force until July 31, there is no doubt that it will be extended. The streets and roads are deserted. Curfews have been imposed. Yet this does not even seem necessary, since the fear of infection and death is so great that most people have simply shut themselves up in their homes.

“Practically all economic activity has been halted and few people have work. Everyone has been affected financially, and things only seem about to get worse. Even those with money have trouble obtaining food, because the market places and groceries have been shut down, and food can only be bought at shops that are operating clandestinely and charging higher prices.

"Things are much worse than they were a year ago, during the first wave of the pandemic, when part of the economy remained open. At the present moment, I would estimate that some 180 B’nei Menashe households out of close to a thousand in Manipur are in an emergency situation.

“The rate of illness is climbing and is currently averaging close to 20 percent of those tested in Manipur, one of the highest figures in the world. On July 21, 1,327 positive tests were reported in a state of 3.1 million people. Moreover, the real rate is undoubtedly much higher, since many people with symptoms not requiring hospitalization prefer not to be tested at all, and no testing is available in most rural and outlying areas. For the most part, reliable tests can be conducted only in hospitals. Even in Churachandpur, Manipur’s second largest city, testing stations can be found only in the center of town. In the suburb of Songgel in which I live, a testing unit has arrived only once since mid-May, when the epidemic’s second wave began – and response to it was minimal.

A shuttered street in Churachandpur.

“Daily news of new cases and fatalities circulate daily through every neighborhood. People are scared to report symptoms because they do not want to stigmatized or ostracized. Although vaccinations are obtainable, many people have refused to get them because of rumors of health complications caused by them. An atmosphere of uncertainty and distrust hangs over all of us: in Churachandpur, Imphal, Kangpokpi, Moreh, and all over Manipur and the Indian northeast. For the B’nei Menashe, the problem is even more acute because there is talk of new Aliyah groups and people are afraid to be excluded from them or left behind. Everyone knows about the high incidence of Corona in the last batch of olim that left for Israel in May, and all are aware that the next time there will be much more stringent examinations. Although there have most certainly been quite a few cases of illness in the B’nei Menashe community, almost none are being talked about.

“One of the few incidences of Covid among the B’nei Menashe that I know of is that of Michael Kipgen from Gamgiphai, a small village of 50 families some 25 kilometers west of the state capital of Imphal.

Michael Kipgen on a hospital cot.

"Michael, 32-years-old, married, and the father of two small children, spoke with me over the phone this week from his hospital bed in Kangpokpi, where he is recovering from a serious case of the disease and is still on oxygen. His medical bill is being paid for with the help of an appeal put out by our B’nei Menashe Council, which has raised over 30,000 rupees for the purpose. “I have no idea where I caught the virus from,” he told me. “Gamgiphai is a small, isolated village. If I can get it, anyone can. No one is safe anywhere.”

Ohaliav Haokip Speaks with Michael Kipgen

Question: How and when did you come down with the corona virus? Michael Kipgen: It happened about two weeks ago. One day I ran a fever. My back ached, I had no sense of smell, and I felt weak, tired, and short of breath. On July 11, my family took me to Kuki Christian Church Hospital in Imphal, where I was tested. The results came back positive the next day. . To this day, I have no idea who I caught the virus from. Our village has little contact with the outside world. Maybe it was from someone in the local marketplace. Judging from my case, the virus is everywhere. . Q: Have other members of your family been affected? MK: My 69-year-old father is also seriously sick with Covid and undergoing treatment at the Regional Institute of Medical Sciences in Imphal. My younger brother, who was to have taken his high-school matriculations exams this year, is in isolation at home. Q: When were you moved to where you are now? MK: On July 14. That’s when I was taken to the Leikop Covid Care Centre in Kangkokpi, where I’m now being treated. Q:What has it been like? MK: As I told you, I was very weak and found it hard to breathe, so I had to be put on oxygen. My oxygen level was very low. If I’m off the oxygen for even five minutes, I can't breathe. I’m very lucky to have received financial assistance, because there is an oxygen shortage not only in Manipur but in all of India. If I hadn’t been able to pay for it privately, I surely would have died. Now I’m recovering, slowly but surely. The fever has gone down and I’m not so fatigued any more. I’m very grateful to the BMC for the aid that it gave me and for its support and prayers.

Editorial note: In light of the situation, Degel Menashe has decided to send emergency funds to Manipur for the purchase of 5. 5 tons of rice for needy B’nei Menashe families.