Anger Grows As Shavei Israel Seeks To Destroy Newly Elected B’nei Menashe Council

(December 4) A turbulent week went by for the B’nei Menashe community of Manipur as Shavei Israel stepped up efforts to wreck the newly elected B’nei Menashe Council. After first opposing the November 5 elections with threats and intimidation and then, at the last minute, deciding to take part in them, Shavei, its candidates having lost, reversed course again. Its campaign against the new BMC culminated this week with a letter of resignation from the Council sent from the chairmen of 15 of its member congregations -- 12 of which freely took part in the elections just a month ago.

The letter was brief. It said only, “We would like to inform you that we, the signatories of the following communities listed below, have decided to leave the BMC on this day, 1st December 2020.” Beneath this notice appeared the names and signatures of the chairmen of the synagogues of Gamgiphai, Leimatak, New Bazaar, Kankpokpi, Zohar, Patten, Monglienphai, Moreh Beit Shalom, Charongching, Moreshet Moreh, Tupul, Lungaijing, Boljol, Phailen, and Keithelmanbi. Together, they can claim close to 1,500 people, slightly less than half of the B’nei Menashe community of Manipur.

There were some reported irregularities in the list of resignees. Number 4 on it, for example, Khanan Singit, was listed as chairman of the congregation of Kangpokpi, though this office is in fact held by Haolal David Chongloi. Similarly, though listed as chairman of the congregation of Phailen, Signatory 14, who wrote his name simply as “Yoel,” does not occupy that position, which belongs to Yitzhak Lhangal. The BMC is currently checking the list for other possible misrepresentations

Alon Lunjang Haokip

Although the letter gave no reason for the resignations, they were clearly the result of Shavei Israel pressure. “Our chairman,” our Manipur correspondent was told by a B’nei Menashe from Patlien who asked to remain anonymous for fear of Shavei retaliation, “was informed by Shavei that resigning would ensure our congregation’s Aliyah in the next group of immigrants that will leave for Israel at Passover time.” (There has been no announcement of any such group on the part of Israel’s government.) Others who agreed to speak to our Newsletter also asked to conceal their identities. “I know that our chairman was forced to sign the letter by threats of our removal from Shavei’s Aliyah list,” said one such person, a 45-year-old man from New Bazaar. B’nei Menashe congregants from Leimatak and Phailen reported that the chairmen of their congregations had signed the letter after receiving threatening phone calls from Shavei Israel activist Alon Lunjang Haokip. Newly appointed Manipur Shavei Adminstrator Shlomo Kipgen was said to have made such calls, too.

Jessica Simte

Kipgen and Alon Haokip did not limit their phone activity to Manipur. Degel Menashe volunteer worker Jessica Simte, who lives in Israel and has made pro-BMC statements on her widely read Facebook page, received threatening calls from the two men, too. “You’re just a woman,” Haokip told Simte. “You’d better not go on writing such things. Go back to the kitchen and know your place.”

At least one person has already been the victim of anti-BMC Shavei retaliation. Long- time Shavei activist Aharon Vaiphei, a member of the executive of Beit Shalom Synagogue of Churachandpur and the official Convener of November’s elections, had been promised a place by Shavei in the group of 140 B’nei Menashe from Manipur set to make Aliyah later this month.

Aharon Vaiphei

Now, he told our Newsletter, he has been ejected from the group for his failure to prevent the elections from taking place. “I feel betrayed,” he said. “This isn’t what I deserved for my more than seven years of loyalty to Shavei.”

There has been anger at such actions in the B’nei Menashe community. “If anyone should be denied Aliyah,” said B’nei Menashe congregant and Indian civil servant Hegin Lemuel Haokip of Imphal, “it is those who refuse to belong to the B’nei Menashe Council, not those who leave it. What they have done saddens me.” BMC Vice-Chairman Nechemiah Haokip stated, “Why was Shavei so opposed to the BMC elections? They tried to disrupt and boycott all our meetings – and now that they have lost the elections, they are running away. They’re telling every community that it will lose its chance for Aliyah if it doesn’t leave the BMC. Clearly, they’re determined to split the B’nei Menashe.” Reactions in Israel were strong, too. “Whoever turns his back on the BMC,” typically declared Makhir Lotzem of Kiryat Arba, “is turning his back on his own heritage and identity.”

No less angry was the reaction to the inclusion in the list of resignees of three congregations that are not even part of the B’nei Menashe community. These are the Judaizing congregations of Charongching, Tupul, and Lungaijing, none of which have taken part in B’nei Menashe life or participated in the B’nei Menashe Council, in the past. “What makes this particularly outrageous,” Degel Menashe Projects Manager Thangjom said to our Newsletter, “is that it comes on the heels of a Shavei attempt to bar from the November elections the four congregations of Boljol, Petach Tikvah, Phalbung, and Saikul, which had been part of the B’nei Menashe community until they were booted out for defying Shavei’s dictates. It’s total hypocrisy!”

Exacerbating feelings further was the fact that the three non-B’nei Menashe congregations were ethnically Naga. Ever since the Naga-Kuki armed conflict of the 1990s, in which many Kuki villagers lost their homes, there has been bad blood between the two populations. Shavei’s turning to the three Naga congregations to help tip the scales against the BMC was thus particularly infuriating.

Whether or not the new BMC has been a struck a mortal blow scant days after its birth, in what seemed a moment of hope and excitement, remains to be seen. For the moment, Shavei Israel has scored a victory. It has succeeded in blocking the move toward democratization in B’nei Menashe life. As victories go, however, it may yet prove to be a Pyrrhic one.

2020-21 Scholarship Winners Receive Awards

(November 23) At a modest ceremony in Kiryat Arba this week, Degel Menashe’s 2020-21 scholarship recipients met to receive their awards and chat. Twelve of the 14 award winners, some of whom came from as far away as Afula and Bet She’an, were present at the event, at which IS50,000 of scholarship money was disbursed.

The awards were presented by Jessica Thangjom, wife of Degel Menashe Projects Manager Yitzkhak Thangjom, and Degel Menashe volunteer worker Runia Lunkhel, whose parents, local residents Rivka and Yehoshua Lunkhel, hosted the event. Congratulations were sent by the director of the scholarship program, Degel Menashe board member Bat El Rently, who was feeling unwell and could not attend.

The award winners, all young B’nei Menashe in their twenties and all but two Israeli- born, will be using their scholarships to study such diverse subjects as social work, special education, nursing, architecture, law, computer and medical engineering, administration, and English-language instruction. Nearly all are currently enrolled in B.A. programs in one of Israel’s many regional and community colleges.

In the conversation that followed a light dinner and the award presentations, several of the award winners spoke of their feeling that, as the children of an immigrant generation whose limited schooling and imperfect Hebrew relegated it to low-paying jobs, they had a special awareness of the importance of education for getting ahead in Israeli life. It was often their parents who first inculcated it in them. “We were told by them that we must study to become something here in Israel,” said Dina Kipgen Rachamin, who aspires to be a teacher of English. “They told us that they had had to take whatever jobs they could find, but that we must do better.”

Alon Haokip, who will be studying architecture, agreed. “My mother always said to me that I had to find a better job than the one she had,” he said. “Her encouragement helped carry me through school.” Social work student Yitzhak Lhungdim mentioned his father’s insistence on speaking Hebrew at home, even though it was not the language he was most fluent in, because he was determined to give his children a good start in Israeli society.

In growing up in that society, none of the award winners felt that they had ever encountered significant racial prejudice or been discriminated against . “Like most of my B’nei Menashe friends who were born here or came when young and have no memories of India, I feel as Israeli as can be,” said Alon Haokip. “I don’t remember anyone ever making me feel that I was different – not in school, not during my army service, and not in college.”

Yitzhak Lunghdim, on the other hand, thought that “Sure, we look different, but so what? Many Israelis don’t know how to place us. I’ve sometimes even been mistaken for a Yemenite. It’s more funny than anything else. Israel has immigrants from all over the world. We’re just another group of them.” Dvora Rently commented that “there are times when people look at you but don’t say anything. You can feel that they are doing that because you look different. But eventually, it goes away with time.”

Toward the end of the discussion, its moderator Yitzhak Thangjom told the award winners how important it was that they serve as role models for other B’nei Menashe and asked them what advice they would give to the young people their age who will be among the 253 B’nei Menashe to arrive in Israel from India next month. “I would tell them,” said Dina Kipgen Rachamim, “the same thing that we’ve told ourselves. Their future lies in education. They have to study and take courses that will help join them the work force at the highest possible level. The job market is very competitive here in Israel. Whatever Degel Menashe can do, I’ll be happy to contribute my bit.”

Most of the award winners felt similarly. Happy to have gotten unexpected assistance from Degel Menashe that will go a long way toward easing the financial burden of their studies, they would like to assist others like them in the future. Perhaps some of the 253 new arrivals will give them the opportunity to do just that.

Sudden Death of Avihu Singsit Followed By Promised Return of Missing BMC Records

YItzkhak Seimang Haokip

(November 19) The mystery of the missing records of the B’nei Menashe Council, heightened by the sudden death of outgoing BMC chairman Avihu Singsit on November 16, appears to have been solved. The records have turned out to be in the possession of the BMC’s outgoing secretary Seimang Yitzhak Haokip. Seimang, who at first denied having them, has now promised to make them available by Sunday, November 22.

How long he has had the missing documents, which include the BMC’s registration papers and all written accounts of its activities over the years, is unclear. They were gone from the BMC office in the Beit Shalom synagogue in Churachandpur when the Council’s newly elected officials took possession of it earlier this week. At a transitional meeting on November 15 with Avihu Singsit, the BMC’s outgoing chairman, they were told by him that the records were being held by Meital Singson, Manipur coordinator of Shavei Israel. But Avihu, a diabetic who was not in good health, died suddenly the next day, and Meital then issued a written denial of having the records and told the new BMC officials that they were with Seimang Haokip.

Meital Singson’s sworn statement

The meeting with Avihu Singsit, which had been scheduled to take place at Beit Shalom, was transferred to his nearby home because he was feeling poorly. Singsit was chosen as a Shavei Israel candidate for the post of BMC chairman in 2015. He did not run for re-election in the balloting held earlier this month, the first BMC vote in five years, in which Shavei-backed candidate Shlomo Kipgen was defeated in his bid for the organization’s chairmanship by independent Lalam Hangshing. At the meeting at Singsit’s home, our Newsletter has been told, Avihu congratulated Hangshing, kissed him on both cheeks, and offered his blessings for a successful tenure in office. He died the next day.

Shavei Israel did not take its electoral loss as graciously. Having unsuccessfully sought to prevent the elections from taking place, it subsequently attempted to overturn their results and render them null and void. In a letter sent to the Election Committee on November 11, a week after the ballots were cast, losing candidate Kipgen called for their invalidation on the grounds that several B’nei Menashe congregations took part in the vote that should not have been allowed to; that other congregations that should have been included were not; and that Election Convener Aharon Vaiphei was “arbitrarily” dismissed by the Election Committee before the vote took place.

These charges were unfounded. The congregations of Saikul, Peijang, Petach Tikva, and Phalbung that participated in the vote after a floor challenge to them was defeated had been expelled from the B’nei Menashe community by Shavei for defying its dictates; the congregations of Taipul, Charonching, and Lunjaijing, which Kipgen’s letter charged were excluded, were never part of the community to begin with. As for Aharon Vaiphei, a Shavei sympathizer, his “arbitrary” dismissal took place after he had refused several times to convene the Election Committee in an attempt to delay or ward off the vote.

The removal of the BMCs records from its office was another such maneuver. Without its registration papers, the Council would lack legal status and have difficulty operating. Moreover without written accounts of the BMC’s past activities under the domination of Shavei Israel, there would no way of documenting how it had been reduced by Shavei to rubber stamp status. If Avihu Singsit’s last words are to be believed, the records were taken either before or after the elections by Meital Singson, who passed them on to Seimang Haokip when an accusing finger was pointed at her.

Both Singson and Haokip are slated to leave for Israel as part of the contingent of 140 B’nei Menashe from Manipur who have been chosen by Shavei Israel to make Aliyah next month, and the legal threat of a restraining order to prevent their departure may have swayed them to disclose the whereabouts of the records. In a late development, at a meeting held today, November 19, with Lalam Hangshing and other newly elected BMC officials, Haokip reversed himself and admitted to having the documents , which he said he would produce shortly. It will soon be known if he does.