Shavei Israel To B’nei Menashe: Sign A Loyalty Oath Or No Aliyah!

(August 26) J.P. is a member in good standing of Manipur’s B’nei Menashe community, but he has asked for the initials of his name to be changed in order to protect his identity. He and his family are on the list of B’nei Menashe approved for Aliyah in 2016 who have not yet come to Israel and who are slated to compose the next group of immigrants in the months ahead J.P. has also been a supporter of the B’nei Menashe Council, the representative body chosen by Manipur’s B’nei Menashe last November in democratic elections that Shavei Israel sought to prevent and whose outcome it subsequently tried to undermine.

Recently, J.P. received a call on his mobile phone from Manipur’s Shavei Israel administrator Sehjalal Shlomo Kipgen. If he wished to make Aliya, Kipgen told him, he was required to report immediately to Shavei Israel headquarters at the Beit Shalom synagogue in Churachandpur , where he would be given a form to sign. J.P. relates:

“When I reached the office, I was directed to sit in a waiting room. There were two or three other B’nei Menashe there – whether for the same reason I was, or for something else, I don’t know. When my turn came, I was asked to enter an inner room. Sehjalal was sitting at a table. on the other side of which, typing on computers, were Avior Haokip [the editor of of Shavei News] and Bentzion Suantak [a Shavei activist]. Sehjalal handed me a typed statement in Kuki and said: ‘Read this. No one is forcing you to sign it. But remember:

Shavei Israel is in charge of the B’nei Menashe’s Aliyah. Whether you sign or not is up to you. If you don’t, though, don’t blame anyone but yourself for losing your chance for Aliyah.”

J.P. was not allowed to take a copy of the document with him when he left and could not remember its exact wording. He did, however, recall five things that he was made to declare:

Sehjalal Shlomo Kipgen

1. That his name had been put without his knowledge on a B’nei Menashe Council petition asking for the community’s Aliyah to be taken out of Shavei Israel’s hands. (Signed by over a thousand B’nei Menashe, this petition was sent last February to The Jewish Agency and Israel’s Ministry of Immigration.)

2. That he wished Shavei Israel to have sole jurisdiction over the B’nei Menashe’s Aliyah with no involvement of outside organizations such as The Jewish Agency.

3. That he did not in any way support Degel Menashe or its activities.

4. That he regretted having registered as a BMC member and acknowledged the errors of his way.

5. That he did not recognize the BMC or its chairman W.L. Hangshing as legitimate representatives of Manipur’s B’nei Menashe.

“What could I do?” J.P. told our Newsletter. “Not a word of it was true, but I didn’t want to be taken off the Aliyah list with my family. I had no choice but to sign and I did.”

In recent days, our Newsletter has learned, this scene has been repeated many times at Beit Shalom. A phone call is made, a summons is issued to a family head to report to Shavei’s office, and the statement described by J.P. is handed him to sign with the same warning of what will happen if he refuses. The great majority of those contacted have come to the office and signed. They were encouraged to do so by Degel Menashe, which issued a communiqué, disseminated over B’nei Menashe social media, urging all prospective Aliyah candidates to submit to Shavei’s ultimatum rather than put their Aliyah at jeopardy.

“Shavei can make you sign a piece of paper,” said the Degel Menashe statement, “but it cannot make you change your thoughts and feelings. We know that in your hearts many of you will continue to support us. Sign what you are asked to sign with our blessing!”

Here is the full text of the WhatsApp announcement:

“What Shavei is doing is obscene,” says Yitzhak Thangjom, Degel Menashe’s executive director, in whose name the communiqué was issued. “It is using its control over the Aliyah process to coerce people into violating their consciences and knowingly putting their signatures to lies. It was a difficult decision for us to tell them to go ahead and sign, but we felt that we had to do it. Aliyah comes before all else. Once those who signed are in Israel and out from under Shavei’s thumb, they will be able to be their true selves again.”

Despite Degel Menashe’s urgings, there were those who refused to give in. One of them was Demsat Yosef Haokip , 57, a Churachandpur rice cultivator and BMC advisor. “I’m proud to be associated with the BMC,” he told our Newsletter, “and I won’t pretend otherwise. If anyone should be denounced, it’s Shavei for having divided our society by sabotaging the BMC."

Demsat Haokip

Demsat continued.. "And I won’t sign anything against Degel Menashe, either. It’s the only organization that has taken our grievances seriously and that has provided aid during the Covid pandemic. Aliyah is my right. I don’t have to sell my soul to a corrupt organization like Shavei to be entitled to it.”

Bidan Lalthang Singson, 55, a rice farmer too, agreed. “In the end, I’m sure I’ll get to make Aliyah even if I don’t sign,” he said. “It’s been promised me by Minister Pnina [Tamano-Shata, Minister of Immigration] and I’m confident she’ll keep her word.”

And Nachshon Haokip, 37, a plumber and mason, declared:

“If Shavei wants me to sign, let them give me a copy of what I signed for my records and so that I can show everyone what I was made to do . Otherwise, they can forget about it.”

Haaretz: Shavei Given Millions With No Tender

(August 26) An article in the prominent Israeli newspaper Haaretz, written by veteran reporter Judy Maltz, has revealed that the Jerusalem-based Shavei Israel has been granted nearly ten million shekels (about $3.1 million) by Israel’s Ministry of the Treasury for the job of bringing 548 B’nei Menashe immigrants to Israel. The sum was approved by an Exemptions Committee that accepted a request by the Ministry of Immigration to waive the usual requirement for a public tender that would have mandated bidding for the job. However, a second request made to keep the agreement a secret was denied by the same committee, which published an announcement of it.

“The [first] request, wrote Maltz, “was approved even though the Ministry had been made aware of harsh allegations against Shavei by members of the B’nei Menashe community. Petitions and letters sent to Aliyah Minister Pnina Tamano-Shata and her aides in recent months by members of the community and by organizations representing them – copies of which were obtained by Haaretz – allege that Shavei has engaged in tactics of intimidation, discrimination and blacklisting to silence its detractors. According to testimonies shared with the Aliyah Ministry and the Jewish Agency, community members who dared criticize the organization would find their names deleted from lists of candidates for Aliyah. In the case of those already living in Israel, they would receive threats that their relatives would not be allowed to join them.”

Shavei Israel, Maltz’s article points out, has been “effectively awarded a monopoly by the government to oversee the Aliyah of the B’nei Menashe,” thus making it “the only case of a private organization being vested with responsibility for a particular community of prospective immigrants [to Israel].” Its monopolistic status also garnered it two previous Aliyah contracts similarly conducted without tenders: one for $7 million in 2013 for the bringing of 899 Bnei Menashe, and another for $6.6 million in 2016 for the bringing of 712.

Asked why the present agreement was for a larger sum but fewer immigrants, an Aliyah Ministry spokesman told Maltz, “Our professional investigations determined that the costs of putting these immigrants up in Israel have risen over the years.” And yet no breakdown of the $10 million appears in the Exemptions Committee’s announcement and it is unclear how or on what the money will be spent.

In explanation of its request to waive the tender requirement, the Ministry, Maltz writes, informed the Treasury that Shavei is the only organization that “works with the Bnei Menashe in the country of their origin” and that it alone is “acquainted with the special characteristics of this community.” Confronted by Maltz with the existence of Degel Menashe and its widespread activities in Manipur and Mizoram, the Ministry spokesman backtracked by explaining that Shavei alone “provides lessons in Judaism and conversion preparation.”

Degel Menashe chairman Hillel Halkin, Maltz reports, accused the Aliyah Ministry with knowingly having provided the Exemptions Committee with inaccurate information. For years, Halkin says, Shavei Israel has exploited the monopoly granted it to the detriment of the B’nei Menashe community, and “the Ministry of Aliyah knows this.” The Ministry’s request to keep the agreement with Shavei a secret, he told Maltz, would appear to stem from its desire to avoid a public inquiry into Shavei’s prolonged misconduct and the Ministry’s complicity in it.

To our Newsletter, Halkin added: “Since no tender was issued, it’s impossible to say whether or not Degel Menashe could have competed in it. Obviously, Shavei Israel has experience with the Bnei Menashe’s Aliyah that Degel Menashe does not. This does not mean, though, that Degel Menashe could not have bid on parts of a tender had there been one.”

In response to the question why he thought the Ministry was so eager to go on working with Shavei despite its awareness of the numerous complaints of malfeasance against it, Halkin said: “I’m not sure what the answer to that is. The Ministry and Shavei have been working together for years and have developed a cozy relationship that the Ministry is loathe to disrupt, but I can’t tell you why its determination to continue it is so great that it wishes to hide Shavei’s abuses from the public. There is much that we still don’t know. I hope that Judy Maltz and Haaretz will continue to investigate.”

281 Mizoram B’nei Menashe Say: No Longer, Not In Our Name!

(August 19) 281 B’nei Menashe from Mizoram have sent a petition to The Jewish Agency and Israel’s Ministry of Immigration and Absorption, calling on these two bodies to free them from the tyranny of Shavei Israel and its monopolistic control of their Aliyah.

The petition was emailed from Mizoram’s capital of Aizawl on August 18. It reads in full:

“We, the undersigned 281 members of the B’nei Menashe community of Mizoram, declare our complete lack of trust in the Shavei Israel organization and demand an end to its stranglehold on our Aliyah. For the past two decades, it has cynically exploited our community and our dream of living in the Land of Israel to further its own enrichment and power. We say: No longer, not in our name!

“We accuse Shavei Israel of the following:

“Introducing rank nepotism and favoritism into the process of our Aliyah, the candidates for which have been selected on the basis of their obedience to Shavei and their family connections;

“Deliberately separating families in drawing up Aliyah lists – children from parents, brothers and sisters from each other – so that it can say to those left behind, “Toe the line and do our bidding if you wish to be reunited with those you love”;

“Using its control of our Aliyah as a stick with which to browbeat us into submission, to the point that a sincere commitment to Judaism and its belief in the Almighty and His Torah have been replaced among us by the fear of Shavei Israel’s leaders;

“Dictating to us where and how to pray and denying us the right to worship in synagogues of our own choosing, even when this has meant leaving some of us with no accessible places of worship at all;

“Subverting and destroying all independent organizations that we have tried to create, so that here in Mizoram it has become practically impossible to take a breath without Shavei Israel’s express permission;

“Seeking to expel from our community’s ranks whoever does not swear fealty to Shavei Israel, with the result that hundreds of us in Mizoram have been struck from its rosters, no longer exist in its eyes, and have lost all hope of ever making Aliyah.

“Shavei Israel’s rule over us has had devastating consequences for our community. It is for this reason that the recent news that the Jewish Agency has decided to assume responsibility for our Aliyah filled our hearts with joy. However, given our bitter experience over the last two decades with Shavei Israel, we are convinced that as long as it continues to play a major role in the Aliyah process, we who have refused to obey its dictates stand little chance of returning to the land of our forefathers. We hope this petition will cause you to consider our plight in the democratic traditions of the state of Israel. For too long we have gone without a voice, not because we did not have one but because it was silenced and ignored. We ask you to ignore it no longer.”

The petition was sent by “The Mizoram B’nei Menashe Congregation Committee,” an ad hoc body. “Since Shavei Israel has eliminated all B’nei Menashe organizations in Mizoram except for itself,” one of the petition’s framers told our Newsletter, “we had to give our group a name. It emerged from informal discussions that took place over a period of months among a number of like-minded people in Mizoram. We were motivated by a common feeling that The Jewish Agency was showing no signs of keeping last spring’s agreement between it and Shavei Israel, which we were told would involve its supervising Shavei’s administration of the Aliyah process. We had the sense that we had been misled and that Shavei was continuing to be one hundred percent in control of the process.”

The petition’s framers did not actively campaign for signatories. Those who signed it, our source said, “heard about us by word-of-mouth and came to us of their own accord to offer their support. It was truly a grassroots phenomenon.” This could not have happened, the source went on, half-a-year ago, when “a similar petition was framed in Manipur and only 60 Mizoram B’nei Menashe asked to sign it. There was almost universal fear then of Shavei and its punitive character. Now, the number of those wanting to sign has grown nearly fivefold. Many more people have the courage to stand up to Shavei. They’ve crossed the mental Rubicon of subservience to it.”

The signers and their families represent roughly thirty percent of Mizoram’s B’nei Menashe population. Asked whether active canvassing on the committee’s part would have resulted in many more signatories, our source was doubtful. “There’s still a lot of fear,” was the answer. “Although most people have deeply held grievances against Shavei, those who didn’t approach us because they still are frightened would not have been likely to change their minds had we approached them.”

The petition framers’ main difficulty was paring down the initially lengthy document that they composed to the essentials of a final draft. “Our first draft,” our source related, “was an amalgamation of many voices. Each member of the committee was eager to include in it the injustices committed by Shavei that he or she knew of, and we ended up with a very long list of complaints. It was a powerful indictment, but it wasn’t the kind of document that you could expect to be read by a high official. There were numerous details that we had to cut out in order to concentrate on the main points.

“For instance: all ordinary B’nei Menashe in Mizoram are told that unless they report regularly for the evening classes organized by Shavei Israel, where strict attendance lists are kept, they stand no chance of being chosen for Aliya, and many hard-working families that struggle to make ends meet are forced to go to these lectures even though they are bone-weary by the end of the day. Yet everyone in Mizoram knows of B”nei Menashe who have barely set foot in the classroom but have been selected for Aliyah anyway because they were Shavei’s lackeys. While there was mention of this in our petition’s first draft, it didn’t survive to the final one.

“Or to take another example. Because so many B’nei Menashe in Mizoram have been ostracized by Shavei for not accepting its dictates, Shavei’s estimates of the state’s B’nei Menashe population has been unrealistically low, thus underrepresenting us in the joint Manipur-Mizoram Aliyah lists. Last winter, speaking to a group of new B’nei Menashe immigrants from Mizoram at the Nordiya absorption center in Israel, Shavei’s director Tsvi Khaute told them there were only 300 of their brethren left behind, when the real number is at least triple that. This, too, was something that did not make it through to the petition’s final draft. Neither did many other similar details.”

The petition’s signers are now awaiting a response from The Jewish Agency and the Ministry of Immigration. And they, too, are no entirely free from fear. They have requested that their names remain confidential, lest Shavei Israel take retaliatory measures against them.