Shavei Has Its Day in Court

Yitzhak Seimang Haokip

(February 11), Yitzhak Seimang Haokip, Shavei Israel’s Manipur Coordinator , appeared in Churachandpur magistrate’s court on February 10 to answer charges of criminal impersonation by pretending to be the General Secretary of the B’nei Menashe Council. Seimang, the Council’s former General Secretary, ceased to occupy that position when new BMC officials were chosen in elections held last November 5. Seimang was represented by his lawyer Ginsuanmong Naulot. In a 14-page brief, Naulot asked the court to rule that Seimang is still the BMC’s legitimate General Secretary because the November 5 elections, participated in by all 24 of Manipur’s B’nei Menashe communities, were illegal.

The case made by Naulot for the elections’ illegality, repeated several times in the course of the brief, rested on the contention that they violated an alleged “compromise” reached at a pre-election meeting attended by representatives of 17 of the 24 communities on October 25. This compromise, the brief claimed, consisted of an agreement to bar the four contested congregations of Petach Tikva, Pejang, Phalbung, and Saikul from participating in the elections, only after which would they be allowed to take part in B’nei Menashe affairs. The first three of them, Naulot explained, had been ousted from the BMC’s structure for continuing to observe the Ashkenazi rites of prayer despite the insistence of the then Shavei-controlled BMC that all B’nei Menashe congregations pray according to the Sephardic custom; since they were nevertheless allowed to participate in the November 5 vote, the latter should be declared null and void. “In the said [October 25] meeting,” the brief stated, citing as proof an October 29 news report from this Newsletter, “a floor fight ended with a compromise that the aforesaid 4 (four) communities/ congregations would not vote in the election to be held this time but would be full participants in all B’nei Menashe Council affairs in the future.”

The caption for Visual 3 is: "The misrepresentation of the October 25 meeting in Seimang's legal brief

Was this actually what was decided at the October 25 meeting? “Not at all,” says Ohaliav Haokip, the BMC’s newly elected General Secretary, who was present at it. “No such resolution regarding the November 5 elections was ever passed.”

A quick look at this Newsletter’s report, dated October 25, bears out Ohaliav’s denial.

Here is its exact language:

(October 26) In a sometimes tumultuous session of the heads of the B’nei Menashe congregations of Manipur at Beit Shalom synagogue in Churachandpur on Sunday, October 25, it was decided by a large majority to hold elections for a new B’nei Menashe Council in early November. The vote was a major defeat for Shavei Israel, the organization that has controlled B’nei Menashe affairs in Manipur and Israel for the past 15 years and that opposed the holding of the elections as a challenge to its power.

The 34 ballots were cast by 17 of Manipur’s 24 B’nei Menashe congregations, each represented by its chairman and secretary. Seven congregations did not take part in the vote. Three from the Churachandpur district, New Bazaar, Mualkoi, and Phalien, failed to attend the session for unclear reasons. Four others – Petach Tikva, Peijang, Phalbung, and Saikul – sent delegations whose right to vote was challenged by Shavei Israel on the grounds that they had been excluded by it from the communal structure that it has administered for the past 15 years. A floor fight ended with a compromise: the four congregations would not vote this time [emphasis added] but would be full participants in all B’nei Menashe Council affairs in the future.”

There was nothing in the news report about the four contested congregations being barred from voting in the November 5 election. On the contrary: the words “would not vote this time” clearly referred to the October 25 decision to hold the November 5 elections, not to the elections themselves, which were included in the reference to “all B’nei Menashe Council affairs in the future.” The “compromise,” in other words, was that the four contested congregations could not vote on October 25 but could vote on November 5.

“The truth is the exact opposite of what Seimang Haokip claimed in court,” says Yitzhak Thangjom, Degel Menashe’s Executive Director. “Anyone reading the Newsletter article, let alone anyone who was at the October 25 meeting, would know that Seimang was deliberately misrepresenting the facts.”

“The extraordinary thing,” Thangjom remarked, “is that the brief cites Shavei’s long-standing policy of religious discrimination against Petach Tikva, Peijang, and Phalbung as justification for Shavei’s claim that the elections were illegal. It’s no secret that Shavei, over the years, systematically boycotted every individual and community that went on using the Ashkenazi liturgy that the B’nei Menashe learned from Rabbi Eliyahu Avichayil. But to claim in court that ending this boycott made the election illegal? Seimang and his lawyer appear not to have known that religious discrimination of this sort is prohibited by Indian law. It’s astonishing that they would actually base their defense on Shavei’s having practiced it They’re like the man in the joke who told the judge that he couldn’t possibly have broken his neighbor’s window because he was busy at that exact moment stealing his neighbor’s cow!”

Shavei Israel Circulates Bogus Census Form, Faces Contempt of Court Charge

(February 4) As the war being waged by Shavei Israel against the elected B’nei Menashe Council of Manipur continues, Shavei operatives face a double charge of criminal impersonation and contempt of court. The Churachandpur court that issued a January 22 injunction forbidding these operatives from using BMC stationary and titles to call for new BMC elections will convene on Friday, February 5 to consider these accusations and hear a Shavei appeal. The injunction was specifically directed against Shavei’s current Manipur coordinator Yitzhak Seimang Haokip, the BMC’s outgoing General Secretary, who fraudulently pretended to be still holding that position when signing the call for new elections meant to overturn those held on November 5 with the participation of all 24 of Manipur’s B’nei Menashe congregations.

The latest round in the assault on the democratically elected BMC was launched a week ago in the guise of a bogus “B’nei Menashe Council India Census” form personally distributed by Sehjalal Kipgen, Shavei Israel’s Manipur Administrator, to all 24 congregations. Families receiving the form, printed without the authorization or knowledge of the elected BMC, were told by Sehjalal that filling it out was a requirement for being considered for Aliyah to Israel. On it, the head of each family was instructed to list the members of his or her household and sign at the bottom. Beside this signature were spaces for the stamp and signature of the chairmen of the congregation and of the BMC.

A Filled Out Census Form from Mualkoi. Note missing signature of BMC chairman at bottom

The ruse was transparent. Once the forms were filled out and signed by a congregational chairman, they would be returned to Shavei for signing by Seimang Haokip, who could then claim the support and recognition of all the signatories. Local chairmen who refused to sign were threatened with being ousted, as can be seen in the photograph below of a letter sent to the resistant chairman of Mualkoi by 23 members of his congregation. The first of the 23 signees was Bentzion Suantak, currently under investigation by the Manipur police, together with Shavei’s international coordinator Tsvi Khaute and former Shavei coordinator for Manipur Meital Singson, for bank fraud and embezzlement from the B’nei Menashe Council’s Churachandpur bank account. (It has been speculated that Shavei’s illegal attempts to regain control of the BMC stem from its hope that, if it succeeds, it can manage to have the case dismissed.)

Letter sent to Mualkoi chairman

Yehoshua Haokip

The bogus census form has torn the B’nei Menashe communities of Manipur apart. Many families have signed it, whether in the belief that they were filling out a genuine BMC document or in the conviction that their Aliyah depended on it, while others, determined to stand by the representative body elected by them, have refused. More acts of fraud were perpetrated in the process. In one instance, in the community of Tuilaphai, Chairman Yehoshua Haokip would not sign because, as he told our Newsletter, “We were aware of the proceedings in court, and laws are to be obeyed.” Tuilaphai’s finance secretary, Amos Doumang Mate, then took matters into his own hands and filled out and returned the census forms himself. “It’s sad,” Haokip stated, “when coercion and thuggery rule the day and our own officials demonstrate values that are as far from Judaism as it is possible to get.”

Amos Doumang Mate

The elected B’nei Menashe Council’s lawyer Albert Nungate, who represented it before the court in January, will do so again in the February 5 hearing. “Impersonation is a crime,” he told our Newsletter, “and this is a clear case of contempt of court. I don’t have an iota of doubt that the court will rule in our favor.

“A Pretty Average Place:” Afula and Its B’nei Menashe

(February 4) “The fact of the matter is that we’re a pretty average place,” says Elkhanan Fanai, the municipal coordinator for the B’nei Menashe community of Afula, a city of 55,000 inhabitants in Israel’s Jezreel Valley. Fanai was responding to a question asked him during an interview with our Newsletter about how the city’s B’nei Menashe compared with their counterparts elsewhere. “I was talking the other day to the B’nei Menashe community coordinator of Nof Ha-Galil [formerly Upper Nazareth],” he related. “We were discussing our work and we discovered that we were dealing with the exact same situations and problems. There’s nothing very special about Afula.”

Apart from the fact that it’s one of the most spread-out cities in Israel with a low population density, sprawling over the eastern edge of the Valley of Jezreel and up the 500- meter-high hill of Givat Ha-Moreh that overlooks it, Afula is indeed a fairly ordinary place -- a cross-section of Israel that is slightly poorer and slightly older than the statistical mean but not by much Although its 320 B’nei Menashe inhabitants, Fanai told our Newsletter, are economically toward the bottom of the wage-earning scale, few are below the poverty line or suffer from economic distress. Even now that many have been laid off as a consequence of Covid-19, the fact that most are salaried employees in factories and retail businesses like shops and supermarkets (many of the men also work as security guards) has insured their getting regular unemployment benefits that keep them afloat.

“On the whole,” Fanai says, “I would say that the B’nei Menashe in Afula are happy with their economic situation. Most enjoy a higher standard of living in Israel than they did in India. This isn’t true of everyone – those who had white-collar or government jobs in Mizoram and Manipur may now be slightly worse off – but it’s generally the case. In most families, both parents are employed and many have cars and own their own apartments, mostly on Givat Ha-Moreh, where these are subsidized by the government housing corporation Amidar. There’s an overall sense of satisfaction.”

Elkhanan Fanai

The B’nei Menashe population of Afula is almost totally a Mizo one, and Fanai himself was born and grew up in Aizawl, the capital of Mizoram, and came to Israel as a young man with his mother and a sister in 2007. “In my mother’s generation,” he says, “the Mizo speaking B’nei Menashe of Mizoram and the Kuki speaking B’nei Menashe of Manipur tended to gravitate to different places in Israel and form separate communities. They don’t know enough Hebrew to communicate well in it and have trouble understanding each other’s language” (Mizo and Kuki, though closely related, are not mutually intelligible.) “With their Israeli-born children, of course, it’s a different story, but having largely grown up in different places, there’s not that much socialization between them, either.”

Is there any difference between the two groups’ adjustment to Israeli life? “Not a great deal,” Fanai says. “Perhaps at first there’s a bit more homesickness among the Mizo. The Kukis of Manipur live in a society in which they’re a minority and that they don’t identify with. We Mizos feel that Mizoram is our country. That makes it more difficult for us to take up a new life elsewhere. Whereas practically every B’nei Menashe in Manipur wants to come to Israel, there are quite a few in Mizoram who say they intend to remain there. But in Afula, I know of only one case of someone who has actually returned to Mizoram and the Mizo community has done well here.”

Fanai lived for several years in the northern town of Ma’alot when he first came to Israel, spent a while in Jerusalem, where he worked as a security guard in the Knesset, and settled in Afula in 2019, joining his mother and sister, who already lived there. He found a part-time job in the Youth Division of the municipality working with B’nei Menashe youngsters and in 2020 was appointed to the newly vacated post of community coordinator – a kind of para-social worker that is part of the Israeli welfare system. “I function alone,” he told us. “That’s different from those working with other immigrant communities in Afula, like the Russians or the Ethiopians, who work in teams. But they’re dealing with much larger populations. The 320 B’nei Menashe of Afula don’t justify more than one position.”

Although he has an office in the Afula municipality, visitors are discouraged from entering it because of the epidemic and Fanai generally meets with those seeking his help in the street outside the building. “They’re mostly elderly members of the community who need assistance in getting things done in government offices, medical situations, and similar things,” he says. “Today, for example, I had someone come to me who wanted to apply for a reduction on his municipal real estate tax. To get it he was told that he had to obtain a statement from National Insurance regarding his income and employment status, and he couldn’t understand the Hebrew instructions. I went with him to the National Insurance bureau and we solved the problem.”

Younger B’nei Menashe can deal with such situations themselves and don’t need Fanai’s help for that. What he can do for them, he believes. are two things. One is to convince them that they need to study and have careers. “Quite a few young B’nei Menashe are already doing this,” he says, “but others say, ‘What’s the point?’ They need to be shown that there is one.”

The second thing, Fanai thinks, is to be a sympathetic listener. As is so often the case with immigrant populations, especially with one coming from a region of the world so different from Israel, young B’nei Menashe often feel that their parents cannot understand them or their dreams and ambitions. Although most continue their parent’s religious observance, it plays less of a role in their lives, in which Israeli secular culture is a major force. For their parents, Fanai says, for whom Judaism was everything, this can be difficult to comprehend. “The young people need someone they can talk to,” Fanai says. “For many, I’m the only adult they know with whom they can do that.”

He is optimistic about the younger B’nei Menashe. “When I look at the closest parallel to our community,” he says, “which is the Ethiopians, I think our young people are doing better. They’re advancing more quickly and - here in Afula, at least – they’ve stayed clear of juvenile delinquency. And they all serve in the army, the girls too. In this respect, Afula is different from some B’nei Menashe communities. The environment here is more secular than in places like Kiryat Arba and Bet-El, where religious pressures are greater.”

Nor, Fanai believes, do young B’nei Menashe feel affected by racism, as do so many young Ethiopians. “I would say,” he says, “that they feel accepted by Israelis and Israeli society. The complaints about racism that I sometimes hear come from the generation of their parents, and I think they’re usually the result of misunderstanding Israeli behavior. In Mizoram and Manipur, there is great stress on norms of politeness. In Israel it’s the opposite – and when Israelis behave toward members of my mother’s generation with what they take to be rudeness, they may think it’s because they look different. The young know better. They realize it’s just

Israeli manners.” In fact, Fanai says, there have already been several “intermarriages” in Afula between young B’nei Menashe and ordinary Israelis, and this is a growing trend. “The parents aren’t happy about it,” he says. “They would rather that their children marry other B’nei Menashe and have grandchildren who look like themselves. But they know that it’s not up to them. They understand that this is the consequence of having chosen to live in Israel.”

Asked whether he thinks Israel’s tiny B’nei Menashe community will eventually disappear or lose all distinctiveness, Fanai answers, “That’s hard to say. Maybe it will. I hope not. But from what I see, there’s no strong sense of B’nei Menashe identity in the younger generation that might keep a collective sense of ourselves going.”

Can such a sense of identity be fostered while encouraging the full integration of the B’nei Menashe into Israeli society? That’s a question our Newsletter forgot to ask.