Sixty Names That Can’t Be Named

(May 6) “I, [name withheld], a Bnei Menashe widow from Mizoram (India), humbly present before you a petition of grave importance,” began the email that Degel Menashe received this week with the request that it be forwarded to Isaac Herzog, Chairman of The Jewish Agency. The petition was signed by sixty members of Mizoram’s B’nei Menashe community. Along with it came the following additional request from its sender:

“Please do not hesitate to upload our petition onto your Website. However, I ask you not to include the names of the people who signed it. I realize this is a strange request to make for a public petition. As you may be aware, though, the signatories of our petition have already been subject to threats and intimidation for expressing their opinions. Although they were aware that their action would incur the wrath of Shavei Israel, they are determined to stand by this petition come what may. Still, I fear for their well-being if the publication of their names were to cause Shavei Israel to retaliate.”

She herself, the petition’s sender wrote, was not afraid to make her name known. “My family,” she declared,” has faithfully practiced Judaism in Mizoram for several decades. We were adherents of Judaism before Shavei Israel began overseeing the Aliyah of the Bnei Menashe. Now, we have lost all trust in it. Although I don’t want needlessly to put anyone beside me in a tight spot, I personally am ready to expose myself and my family to Shavei’s censure and opprobrium. I take courage from the example of our female forbearers, Miriam, Deborah, Esther, and Judith, who stood up for their people when all others had lost heart. If my family and I are to be made scapegoats and denied Aliyah for fighting for our fellow Bnei Menashe, we gladly welcome the privilege.”

Nevertheless, Degel Menashe has decided not to leave the petition’s sender exposed and has chosen to conceal her identity along with that of the other signatories, whose names will remain, for the time being, with us and The Jewish Agency. The statement they are affixed to accuses Shavei Israel of responsibility for the slow pace of B’nei Menashe Aliyah and for its underrepresentation in the Mizoram community. (See our Editorial, “Be Quiet and Obey,” on this page.) The members of this community, it states, “have been dismayed to discover that their path to Aliyah is being hindered by the very same Shavei Israel representatives who are supposed to lead them on it” and “have been driven to the brink of despair.”

“In light of the steep rise in those infected with a more communicable and deadlier strain of Covid-19,” the petition goes on, “the outlook for our brethren from the Bnei Menashe community in Mizoram is growing ever bleaker. Here in Mizoram we are three weeks into a strict lockdown that sees no signs of being lifted any time soon. The incidence of the virus has been much higher than it was a year ago and has more severely affected our community, several members of which are now in quarantine. Already hard-pressed to find gainful employment in a Christian country, we are now in dire straits and closer to the edge of disaster.”

The petition concludes with an appeal to Isaac Herzog:

“According to a recent community-wide census, there are currently about 1,000 Bnei Menashe in Mizoram. However, due to the unrelenting stance taken by Shavei Israel toward any dissent or criticism of the organization, most of us have been brow-beaten into compliance with it. Although we may have privately expressed our bitterness and disillusionment with Shavei, we have feared to give this public expression lest we jeopardize our chances for Aliyah. Now, however, I fervently beseech you to rise up and champion the cause of our vulnerable brethren in Mizoram who daily await with impatience the fulfillment of the biblical promise that they will return to the blessed and beautiful land of their forefathers Joseph and Menashe.”

Yours sincerely,

[Name withheld],

on behalf of the Bnei Menashe Community,

Aizawl, Mizoram,

India.”

Degel Menashe has forwarded this petition to The Jewish Agency.

“Be Quiet and Obey!” An Editorial

Shavei Israel’s once iron grip on the B’nei Menashe community of northeast India, already under serious challenge in Manipur, is now slipping in Mizoram, too. Two new developments point to this. The first is a petition sent to the Jewish Agency by sixty members of the Mizoram community who have been, so they declare, “driven to their wits’ end by the recklessness of the Shavei Israel organization.” (See our article “Sixty Names That Can’t Be Named” on this page.) The other is a WhatsApp message to the B’nei Menashe of Mizoram posted by Azriel Pachuau, Shavei administrator in Aizawl.

Azriel Pachuau

Pachuau’s message was written in Mizo. Translated into English, it begins:

“By the grace of G-d and the Shavei Israel Organization, another round of Aliyah is finally on the horizon. It appears that about 600 people from the Manipur community will be making Aliyah in this round….Let us be reminded that this current round of Aliyah of some 600 people from Manipur is only for those who have already been selected and approved for Aliyah following an interview with the dayyanim [rabbinical judges].”

Pachuau was referring to a list drawn up by Shavei and Israel’s Rabbinate in 2016. Some 250 individuals on this list, three-fifths from Manipur and the remainder from Mizoram, arrived in Israel last December. The remainder, slated to arrive sometime later this year, are all from Manipur. Addressing the disgruntlement this has led to in Mizoram, one of the subjects of the 60-signature petition, Pachuau’s WhatsAp post continued:

“All of us here in the B’nei Menashe community of Mizoram are undoubtedly highly motivated and eager to make Aliyah. However, let us learn to respect the plans and endeavors of our Shavei authorities. It is of vital importance that we obediently follow their word. Instead, let us devote all our energy to religious observance.”

In other words: Be quiet and obey! Go to synagogue, keep the commandments of Judaism, and don’t think for yourselves, because thinking is Shavei’s job, not yours. And alluding to the many B’nei Manashe who have nevertheless begun to think for themselves, both about Aliyah and other things, Pachuau went on:

“There may be other groups or organizations that seek to interfere in the Aliyah process. Let us be especially wary of them. Let us be reminded once again that Shavei Israel is the sole and only organization which labors for us and our Aliyah. Therefore, let us obediently await its instructions and guidelines for us.”

What “groups or organizations” can Pachuau have had in mind? Was it by any chance Degel Menashe? Certainly, we can claim part of the credit for the B’nei Menashe in Mizoram having begun to ask hard questions about Shavei. “Indeed,” Pachuau wrote, “there is an unhealthy amount of gossip and hearsay that is making inroads into our community. Which is why we must learn to shut our ears to all loose talk and anything that does not come from authorized spokespersons of the Shavei organization.”

Unhealthy? I can’t imagine a healthier development than the B’nei Menashe of Mizoram waking up to the fact that, for long years now, Shavei Israel has been lying to them, deceiving them, and manipulating them. At long last, this is beginning to be talked about.

The petition of the sixty is a sign of this. Sending it to The Jewish Agency while preferring to remain anonymous reveals both courage and fear: the courage to speak out against Shavei’s abuses and the fear of the retaliation this may bring down. But as courage grows, fear decreases. It has happened in Manipur. It’s happening now in Mizoram.

Yitzhak Thangjom

Regev Calls on Government to Fund Emergency B’nei Menashe Aliyah

(April 28) At a cabinet meeting in Jerusalem this week, our Newsletter has learned, Transportation Minister Miri Regev called on the government of Israel to make funds immediately available for the Aliyah of the 5,000 B’nei Menashe still in India. “The B”nei Menashe are our brothers and sisters,” she said in speaking of the need to bring them home to Israel as quickly as possible at a time when the Covid19 pandemic is raging in India.

Immigration Minister Pnina Tamano-Shata

According to our sources, Regev’s proposal was seconded at the cabinet meeting by Immigration Minister Penina Tamano-Shata. “This is a life-and death matter,” Tamano-Shata reportedly told the cabinet members, expressing the fear that the pandemic may soon spiral out of control in the remote northeast Indian states of Mizoram and Manipur where the country’s B’nei Menashe live.

So far, none of either state’s B’nei Menashe are known to have come down with the illness. Yet infection rates have been rising in both and there is concern that they may rocket as they have done all over the Indian subcontinent. “We don’t know what is going to happen,” our Newsletter was told by Lalam Hangshing, Chairman of Manipur’s B’nei Menashe Council. “But a total lockdown seems inevitable. It’s a question of when, not if.”

Regev has long been known for her support of the B’nei Menashe community, which she has expressed on many occasions. “For this, Degel Menashe is responsible,” says her secretary Avi Ovadia. “It was through your organization that she first got to know the community. Since then, she has come to care deeply about it.”

Regev did not, Ovadia said, present an actual plan for a large B’nei Menashe Aliyah. “Her purpose,” he stated, “was to bring the B’nei Menashe’s situation to the attention of the government. She did not go into numbers or timetables.”

Although Minister of Finance Yisrael Katz was present at the cabinet meeting, he did not take a stand on the possibility of an emergency allotment. Nor did the cabinet take any concrete decisions. “We do think, though,” Ovadia said, “that Minister Regev’s initiative has brought about a willingness to look more seriously into the matter on a cabinet level.”

Asked by our Newsletter how Regev, a high Likud figure and outspoken Netanyahu loyalist, planned to pursue her initiative if current coalition talks ended with her party no longer in power, Ovadia declined to reply. “Right now there’s no time to think about such things,” he said. “We’re still racing against the clock to form a right-wing government and it’s too early to say that we’ve failed. We’ll have to take it one step at a time.”