We’re Renovating!

It’s been nearly a year since we started posting this Website and its Newsletter. Recently, our readers may have noticed that we’re in the process of redesigning this page. There are now three columns of articles instead of two, and to the right of the right-hand column is a list of months. By clicking on any of these months, it is possible to retrieve the major articles that appeared in it and that have been deleted from this page to make space.

We have done this because many readers have asked us where they can find old articles that continue to be of interest. Our aim in the days ahead is to create an archives in which such items are listed according to subject matter and date of appearance, so that they can be easily found. Since our staff is small, this will take a while and we ask you to bear with us until the process is completed.

In addition, we are modifying our schedule. Until now we have posted each week’s new articles together, on Thursday nights. From now on, they will be also be appearing during the week. This will enable us to bring you news of B’nei Menashe and Degel Menashe events and developments with less delay.

Some places close for renovations. We’re staying open.

BMC Wins Court Stay Order Against Rump Elections

(January 27) The B’nei Menashe Council of Manipur won a legal victory this week when it obtained a temporary court injunction forbidding the Shavei Israel-supported opposition to the Council to hold unauthorized new elections. The opposition, led by former BMC Chairman Yitzhak Seimang Haokip and Sehjalal Kipgen, the defeated candidate for the Chairmanship in the BMC elections held on November 5, had called for a revote on January 27.

The hearing took place on January 22 in the Chief Magistrate’s Court of Churachandpur. Representing the B’nei Menashe Council, the petitioner in the case, were its lawyer and its General Secretary Ohaliav Haokip. The request for an injunction was filed against Yitzhak Seimang Haokip, who had sent out a letter on January 5 that called for the convening of a rump “Election Committee” meeting on January 10. Attended by a number of breakaway B’nei Menashe congregations, this meeting in turn set the January 27 th date for new elections.

In its decision, the Court ruled that Seimang Haokip and “his men, agents and privies” are “hereby restrained from conducting the proposed election.” Seimang Haokip was summoned to appear with a lawyer before the Court on February 5, in the presence of the petitioners, to show cause why the temporary injunction should not be made permanent.

The BMC’s lawyer and his assistant awaiting the judge in the courtroom

Such an appearance would be unlikely to overturn the injunction, since the Court’s 9- page decision stated that it found the B’nei Menashe Council’s case persuasive. “Upon perusal of the documents and materials [brought before the court by the BMC],” the Court said, “there is a clear prima facie case in favour of the petitioners,” since the records containing the minutes of the November 5 election “clearly establish that the new Executive Body was legitimately constituted.” Unless Seimang can prove the Court wrong and show that the November 5

elections were not free and fair, the elected B’nei Menashe Council will gain official state recognition as the representative body of the B’nei Menashe of Manipur.

Heads of Degel Menashe, Jewish Agency, Meet to Discuss Changes in B’nei Menashe Aliyah

(January 14) In a meeting held on January 11, senior figures in the Jewish Agency and Degel Menashe discussed the issue of B’nei Menashe Aliyah. Both sides agreed on the need to quicken its pace and to transfer responsibility for it from the private organization that is now in charge of it to a public body. Agency Chairman Isaac Herzog, who presided over the meeting, expressed his interest in the Agency’s assuming such a role.

Taking part in the meeting on behalf of the Agency, besides Herzog, were Shay Felber, Director of the Agency’s Immigration and Absorption Unit; Benny Lidsky of its Conversion Department; and Arielle de Porto, head of the Aliyah Division for Special Operations. Representing Degel Menashe were its Executive Director Isaac Thangjom, its Chairman of the Board Hillel Halkin, and Board member Reuven Gal. Originally planned for the Jewish Agency’s offices in Jerusalem, the meeting was rescheduled as a Zoom session due to the Covid-19 lockdown.

The Zoom meeting from Isaac Thangjom’s computer. From left to right, top row: Hillel Halkin, Isaac Thangjom, recording secretary Tal Gelbart. Middle row: Reuven Gal, Benny Lidsky, Isaac Herzog. Bottom row: Arielle de Porto, Shay Felber

The session culminated months of contacts between Degel Menashe and two high Jewish Agency officials, Aliyah Director Felber and recently retired Deputy Chairman David Breakstone. On the day preceding it, January 10, Halkin, Thangjom, Felber, Lidsky, and de Porto participated in a preparatory conference call in which Halkin reviewed the main points of a Degel Menashe position paper that had been previously submitted to the Agency. These called for:

1. The abolition of the administrative monopoly on the B’nei Menashe ‘s Aliyah that has, for the past two decades, been granted to a Jerusalem-based NGO.

2. The full delegation to either the Jewish Agency, the Ministry of Immigration and Integration, or a joint body composed of both of the task of bringing the approximately 6,000 remaining B’nei Menashe in India to Israel and arranging for their initial absorption.

3. The speeding up of this process so that it can be brought to completion within a period of three to five years. It is time, the Degel Menashe paper argued, to end the system in place for the past 30 years whereby small groups of B’nei Menashe have come to Israel in dribs and drabs with long intervals between one group and the next.

4. The creation of an alternate channel for B’nei Menashe Aliyah that would allow individuals and families in the community to immigrate to Israel on their own if they had the wherewithal to do so.

In the discussion that followed, Aliyah Director Felber endorsed the position paper’s first three points while being skeptical about the feasibility of Point 4. It was therefore agreed not to raise it in the meeting with Herzog the next day. Felber concurred with the view that it was undesirable to drag out an Aliyah process whose prolongation only caused continued uncertainty and distress to B’nei Menashe families in both India and Israel. He attached great importance to the fact, brought to his attention by Degel Menashe, that the B’nei Menashe community in Israel possessed three fully ordained rabbis who have not until now been involved in its Aliyah. The three, he felt, could play a key role in the future.

At the Zoom session the next day, Halkin and Felber were again the main speakers. After listening to both, and asking the other participants for their opinions, Jewish Agency Chairman Herzog stated his agreement that the privatization of an entire community’s Aliyah was highly irregular and should not be allowed to continue. He expressed his belief that the Jewish Agency was best equipped to take over the administration of the B’nei Menashe’s Aliyah and his intention of taking up the matter with Immigration Minister Pnina Tamano-Shata in the days ahead.

David Breakstone

Asked to comment on the meeting, former Deputy Chairman David Breakstone , who was instrumental in putting the B’nei Menashe on the Jewish Agency’s agenda, spoke of his satisfaction with what took place. Breakstone agreed with Shay Felber that the three B’nei Menashe rabbis could be an important part of the process. “The real stumbling block here,” he told our Newsletter, “is Israel’s Ministry of the Interior. The Jewish Agency can only help bring B’nei Menashe to Israel if the Government makes a decision to allow their entry, and this calls for the Interior Ministry’s agreement. The ministry, in turn, has been controlled by the [Sephardic religious] Shas Party, which has been antipathetic to unconventional cases of Jewish identity like the B’nei Menashe’s. If the B’nei Menashe’s own rabbis can be mobilized for the cause, and if their standing is recognized by Shas rabbis, they have a key role to play.”

Reuven Gal

Degel Menashe board member Re’uven Gal was also happy with the meeting. “I think,” he said, “that all of us Degel Menashe participants felt that we were given a sympathetic hearing and good reason to hope that a new chapter in the B’nei Menashe ‘s Aliyah is about to be opened.” Gal was impressed by how much the Jewish Agency’s Chairman knew about the B’nei Menashe community and added: “You could see by the questions he asked that he was really curious about it.”

At the Ministry of Aliyah and Integration, Almog Moskowitz, Senior Advisor to the Minister, assured our Website that he was being kept fully abreast of the developments. “I’m in close contact with the Jewish Agency in everything regarding the B’nei Menashe,” he said, “and I was informed immediately of the content of your January 11 meeting.”