Massive Turnout Greets BMC Chairman On Return to Manipur

(May 12) A large crowd, estimated at 400 to 500 people, turned out in Churachandpur this week to welcome B’nei Menashe Council chairman Lalam Hangshing on his return from a three-week trip to Israel and to hear him report on it.

The size of the audience surprised the event’s organizers, “We were prepared for one hundred people,” our Newsletter was told by Jesse Gangte, the BMC’s secretary of finance, “and we ordered refreshments accordingly. As people began pouring in, we had to send out for more refreshments, and before we knew it, we were ordering still more and still more. We hadn’t appreciated how much curiosity there was regarding the Chairman’s visit to Israel and how many people would want to hear about it from him personally.”

The event was held at Churachandpur’s YMA Hall, since the ordinary venue for B’nei Menashe occasions in the city, Beit Shalom Synagogue, would have refused to host it. The synagogue’s chairmanship, as reported on this Website, was recently seized in an electoral putsch by pro-Shavei Israel activist Seithang Haokip, two of whose operatives, Ronel Letkholien Haokip and Binyamin Nehmang Haokip, according to Finance Secretary Gangte, came to his home the night before the reception and threatened him with “something bad” if he did not call the event off. Gangte ordered them to leave with no further ado.

Despite Shavei Israel’s boycott of the reception, it was attended by official delegations from 14 of Manipur’s 25 congregations, as well as by individuals from many of the other eleven “The attendance would have been even greater,” Finance Secretary Gangte stated, “if we hadn’t held the event on a Sunday, when public transportation in Manipur operates on a very limited basis. Numerous people who would have liked to attend were unable to come or found it too difficult.”

Lemuel Haokip introducing Lalam Hangshing (seated on stage, second from right).

Lalam Hangshing was introduced to the crowd by BMC Advisor Lemuel Haokip. Taking the floor, Hangshing told the audience of his two meetings in Israel with Almog Moscowitz, a senior advisor to Minister of Immigration and Absorption Pnina Tamano-Shata, and of a third meeting with Ya’akov Hagoel, Acting Chairman of the Jewish Agency, at which Knesset Member Miri Regev, a strong supporter of the B’nei Menashe, was present too. “On all three occasions,” said Hangshing, “we spoke in detail about ways of improving and accelerating the B’nei Menashe’s Aliyah. I stressed that no private organization, be it Shavei Israel or any other, should be allowed to be in charge of this Aliyah, which should be the sole responsibility of The Jewish Agency.”

Hangshing reported that he submitted to both the Ministry of Immigration and The Jewish Agency a 9-point BMC plan for B’nei Menashe Aliyah reform. This plan, he said, called for both Shavei Israel and the BMC to participate in the Aliyah process. “However,” he went on, “just before I left Israel, the news broke of Shavei and its chairman Michael Freund having been found guilty by a Tel Aviv court of forging documents and fraudulent activity. As a result, the BMC no longer believes that there is any room for Shavei’s inclusion in the process, and we have revised our plan accordingly and resubmitted it. There is nothing that Shavei has done for Aliyah in the past that the BMC can’t do just as well or better.” Hangshing expects that the revised plan will be a main subject of discussion when a joint Ministry of Immigration/ Jewish Agency fact-find mission visits Manipur and Mizoram next month.

Another of the points in the BMC plan, Hangshing stated, was a call for a timetable for bringing all of northeast India’s B’nei Menashe to Israel. There was no reason, he said, why their Aliyah should drag on for so long and leave so many of them in a permanent state of uncertainty. “There are at most 5,000 or 6,000 of us still in India,” he declared. “Surely it should be possible for us all to make Aliyah within a few years.”

Musical ensemble led by Sarah Baite (first row center, holding page).

Apart from Hangshing’s remarks, the highlight of the evening was the appearance of a newly formed ensemble, dedicated to the performance of traditional B’nei Menashe and Kuki music, under the direction of its organizer and director Sarah Lamsi Baite. The group, which is being supported by Degel Menashe’s musicology program, plans soon to issue its first CD.

The unexpectedly large turnout, says Degel Menashe’s executive director Yitzhak Thangjom, is a sign of the B’nei Menashe Council’s growing strength in Manipur. Despite Shavei Israel’s many efforts to discredit the BMC, Thangjom believes, “there is more and more of an awareness that it is the one organization capable of uniting all the B’nei Menashe of northeast India. Shavei Israel is increasingly perceived as a divisive force that has its own interests at heart rather than the community’s, and people have had enough of this.”

Many of the reception’s attendees agreed. “Under Shavei Israel I’ve been waiting for Aliyah for over twenty years,” said Ardon Kipgen, who traveled to the event from the village of Gamgiphai. “Now, after listening to the BMC chairman, I feel hope for the first time. It’s a joy to hear that The Jewish Agency will be finally coming in.”

And Ariella Haokip of Churachandpur, a member of the Beit Shalom congregation who was not deterred by its new executive’s boycott of the BMC, was speaking for much of the audience when she said:

“Hearing Pu Lalam Hangshing’s report has made me and my family very happy. We feel reassured that things are now heading in the right direction. Still, I can’t help worrying that Shavei Israel will try to cause problems. As long as it’s around, there will be neither peace nor unity in our community. An end must be put to it. Whoever stands for justice must stand with the BMC.”

Degel Menashe Board Weighs Options After Freund Forgery Ruling

(May 5) At a hastily convened meeting two days before Israel’s Independence Day, Degel Menashe’s board of directors heard a report on Tel Aviv district court judge Naftali Shilo’s ruling that Shavei Israel founder and chairman Michael Freund is guilty of forging his ex-wife's signature on numerous official documents. This was done, Judge Shilo implied, in an attempt to conceal the alleged embezzlement and transfer to Shavei of IS50 million ($15 million) of family money. [See our April 28 article, “Court Finds Freund, Shavei, Guilty of Forgery, Fraud.”] The money, for the return of which Freund and Shavei are currently being sued by Freund’s divorced wife Sarah Green, was given to the family by her father Pinchas Green, a wealthy American businessman.

Hillel Halkin.

Although the board reached no decisions, it unanimously agreed that strong action was called for. “We are still waiting to see the reaction to the court’s ruling of the government, and specifically, of the Ministry of Immigration and Absorption,” our Newsletter was told by Degel Menashe chairman Hillel Halkin, who presided over the meeting. “So far, I’m sorry to say, there’s been no reaction at all. I hope this is merely due to the fact that the recent days have not been full working ones. Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, Memorial Day, and Independence Day may have slowed the Ministry’s ability to digest and process the case.”

Halkin believes the picture will soon become clearer. “I expect,” he said, “that we’ll know by the end of next week whether the Ministry intends to cut its ties with Shavei Israel or thinks it can go on with business as usual. If this is what it does think, it’s mistaken. Frankly, I find it hard to believe that a government body should even consider continuing to work with an organization and its leader that have been found guilty of criminal fraud. And this is especially so since the court’s findings comes on top of many previous disclosures of gross abuses and malfeasance on Shavei’s part.”

At its meeting, Halkin said, Degel Menashe’s board considered possible courses of public and legal action should the Ministry refuse to sever relations with Shavei. “There are various options,” he stated. “There was a consensus on the board that we need to examine each of them carefully. We’ll do that as quickly as we can. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Immigration can rest assured that, whatever we course we decide on, it won’t be able to get away with pretending that nothing has happened.”

Shavei Bans Torah School, Beats Up Its Own Head Goon

(May 5) It could only happen with Shavei Israel. First it sends its goons to violently disrupt classes of the B’nei Menashe Council-run Rabbi Eliyahu Avichail School at Beit Shalom synagogue in Churachandpur. Then it seizes control of the synagogue, northeast India’s largest, by staging a phony election for its chairmanship. Then it has the synagogue’s new chairman formally expel the school from its premises. Then said chairman appoints the head of the goons to be the synagogue’s chazzan or prayer leader. And finally, when the new chazzan angers pro-Shavei members of the synagogue by his behavior, he gets beaten up by them in turn. One couldn’t wish for a more perfect record.

Much of all this has already been reported by this Newsletter. The first Shavei attack on the school, which had been operating on the synagogue’s premises with full permission, was related in our March 24 article, “Shavei Hooligans Storm Churachandpur Classroom.” The fake election was described in our March 31 piece, “Shavei Strong Arm Tactics Continue in Manipur With Synagogue Putsch.” A second Shavei assault on the school, which led to police intervention, was the subject of our April 7 “Shavei Invaders, Avichail School Students, Brawl At Beit Shalom.” You can read about it all on this page.

As for the latest developments, they began when Beit Shalom’s new chairman, Shavei Israel activist Seithang Haokip, announced after Passover that Beit Shalom would no longer host the Avichail School and was expelling it. This was accompanied by another announcement that Ronel Letkholien Haokip, who had led both of the two thuggish attacks on the school, would be Beit Shalom’s new chazzan, replacing the former prayer leader Avichayil Manchong. This was an unusual move even by Shavei’s standards, since Avichail Manchong was known as one of the most Jewishly educated B’nei Menashe in Manipur while Ronel Haokip was reputed to have difficulty with the Hebrew alphabet.

Ronel’s comeuppance was not long in coming. Stumbling through the prayers that he led, he began issuing arbitrary orders, the most recent of which, issued at last week’s Friday night services, was that all children under bar-mitzvah age must leave the synagogue at once. An argument followed in which the infuriated congregants demanded to know the reason for this unprecedented fiat. Before Ronel, hardly an expert on Jewish precedents, could finish explaining his action, the crowd set on him and gave him a thrashing and a bloody nose. This time, too, the police had to be called to restore order.

The situation among Manipur’s B’nei Menashe is tense. “There is a pervasive fear that violence can break out again at any moment.” says Ohaliav Haokip, General Secretary of the B’nei Menashe Council. “Pro-BMC B’nei Menashe fear even to attend services at Beit Shalom. If Shavei militants can physically attack one of their own trusted members, it goes without saying that no one is safe.”

“For they have sown the wind and they have harvested the storm,” said the prophet Hosea of the godless of his day. The storm that Shavei is now harvesting would appear to have only begun.