Aviel (Tongkhohao) Hangshing, the oldest member of the B'nei Menashe community, and among its most respected, passed away in Israel, in the town of Kiryat Arba, on Saturday evening at 11 pm. His well-attended funeral, presided over by Rabbi Shimon Gangte, was held the next day . He is survived by his four children, all living in India. His eldest son Lalam Hangshing is the chairman of the B'nei Menashe Council of India.
Aviel Hangshing was born in Kangpokpi, in northern Manipur, in 1925. His father, Seilal Hangshing, was one of the first Kukis to receive a western education and taught at the Kangpokpi Mission School. At the outbreak of World War II, Aviel worked as a guide for British surveyors building military roads in preparation for a Japanese invasion of the Indian northeast and then joined his family in fleeing to Imphal when heavy fighting broke out. At the war's end, he enrolled in Imphal's Johnstone Higher Secondary School. After graduating, he went on to study Philosophy at Guwahati's Bishop Cotton College.
Hangshing in his early 20s.
Unable to find a suitable job in Manipur after obtaining his B. A. degree, Aviel and his newly- wed wife, Boisi Gangte, moved to New Delhi. There, Aviel found work as an Upper Division Clerk at the Indian Defense Ministry and served there for the following five years, during which he was promoted to Section Officer. In the late 1950s he and his family, which now included three children, moved back to Imphal, where he was given the post of a departmental Undersecretary. In the early 1970s, he joined the elite Indian Administrative Service and remained with it until his retirement as a Commissioner to the Government of Manipur in 1988.
Aviel Hangshing was one of the pioneers of the Judaizing movement in northeast India. A practicing Christian, he became attracted in the early 1970s to various Christian denominations that emphasized Christinaity’s Jewish roots. In 1981, he traveled to Israel with his wife and met with Rabbi Eliyahu Avichayil, who would soon bring Orthodox Judaism to Mizoram and Manipur. The contact with Rabbi Avichayil was one of several factors that led Aviel to abandon Christianity entirely and embrace Judaism without reservation. By the mid-1980s, he was a leader of the B'nei Menashe congregations of both Kangpokpi and Imphal. Relatively well-off, he donated money and services to the community and sponsored many of its festivals.
Aviel and his wife during their years in Imphal.
Throughout the 1990s, Aviel worked closely with Rabbi Avichayil and the B'nei Menashe Council in organizing and advancing Jewish life in Manipur. This continued until the split between Rabbi Avichayil and his organization, Amishav, and the newcomer Michael Freund's Shavei Israel, which divided the community in two. Aviel sided staunchly with Rabbi Avichayil and lost his position of leadership when Shavei Israel triumphed over Amishav in 2004.
Because of his association with Amishav, Aviel was denied Aliyah by Shavei for ten years. In 2014, he finally came to Israel, where he lived in the northern city of Acre until moving to Kiryat Arba in 2017. A venerable figure in B;nei Menashe life, he is fondly remembered for his many generous contribution to it.
(15 October) An estimated 200 B’nei Menashe from all over Manipur gathered in Churachandpur last Sunday to demonstrate against Shavei Israel and its monopolistic grip on the community's Aliyah to Israel. The demonstrators came from Phalbung, Saikul, Pejang, Tuolaphai, and other places in addition to a large group from Churachandpur itself. Carrying banners and chanting slogans, they demanded an end to Shavei Israel's stranglehold on the Aliyah process.
The demonstration came on the heels of the departure for Israel of some 250 B'nei Menashe immigrants, some allegedly chosen on the basis of favoritism and discrimination against B'nei Menashe who have resisted Shavei Israel's control. The protest was also sparked by the visit to Manipur of Shavei Israel's director Tzvi Khaute. Announcing that he would soon begin compiling a list of the next group of B’nei Menashe to be cleared for immigration to Israel, Khaute stressed that the only candidates to be considered would be those registered with the rump “B'nei Menashe Council” recently established by Shavei. This breakaway faction has sought to displace the official B'nei Menashe Council elected democratically last November by all 24 of Manipur’s B’nei Menashe congregations and recognized by a Manipur court as the community’s legitimate representative.
The banner close up.
The demonstration took place in front of Shavei headquarters at Churachandpur's Beit Shalom synagogue, to which the demonstrators marched from the home of former Beit Shalom official Demsat Haokip. (Demsat arrived this week in Israel with the group of 250 immigrants.) It called for a fair and transparent Aliyah process that included the many individuals and congregations whose refusal to obey Shavei Israel’s dictates has led to their being bypassed for Aliyah, sometimes for. decades. A concomitant demand was for the B’nei Menashe community’s three ordained Orthodox rabbis, all of whom have been sidelined by Shavei from the procedure of selecting new immigrants, to be made part of it.
Some of the demonstrators.
Much of the demonstrators’ anger was directed at Khaute, who is regarded by them as a corrupt and dictatorial figure. Shouts of "Down with Tzvi Khaute" and "Tzvi Khaute go back [to Israel]" were heard from many of them. Their numbers were particularly impressive given their awareness that they were risking their own chances for Aliyah by attending the protest. "I’m sticking my neck out for justice", said one of them, Hosea Kipgen of the village of Pejang. "I know that if Shavei Israel continues to be in charge, I may never make it to the Holy Land, which has been a dream of a lifetime. But bad things have been happening to our community and somebody has to take a stand against them."
The demonstration was given wide coverage by the local Manipuri media. Two newspapers, Manipur Express and Nisin Thuhiltu and two local cable TV stations, TCNews Thusoh and Tualsung Thuthang reported on it in detail.
A report from Manipur Express.
The article above reads like this:
DISCONTENT OVER SHAVEI ISRAEL BRING CONFLICT
Lamka, Oct 10: This morning there was a gathering of people who were unhappy over the Bnei Menashe Council which has been split into two at the Shavei Israel Hebrew Centre, B. Vengnom by members of the Bnei Menashe community against a Jerusalem based organization, Shavei Israel who was blamed for bringing about this division of the community. Shavei Israel assists lost Jews, in particular, the Bnei Menashe from the northeast India to Israel. The Bnei Menashe Council in northeast India is in possession of registration under the Co-operative Society, Churachandpur along with its own constitution and byelaws to help administration. Shavei Israel has been interfering through its director, Tzvi Khaute by appointing Paolam Singson as chairman at Boljol on October 3, 2021.
In accordance to the byelaw, a general meeting was called on October 25, 2020 and decisions were taken to call for election on the November 5, 2020 which saw W. L. Hangshing(retd IRS) against Sehjalal Kipgen (Shavei Administrator Manipur) for the post of the chairman. Votes were cast and W. L. Hangshing emerged as the winner. It came to be seen that Shavei had been using the Bnei Menashe for their economic benefits. Since W. L. Hangshing became the chairman, it was revealed that the BMC bank account had been closed by them and an amount of Rs. 77.2 lacs(7,72,000) which, according to the byelaw Article 13(d), was to have been subject to audit was found missing and Meital Singson had closed the bank account without giving notice to anyone. An FIR had been lodged at the Churachandpur Police Station.
The complainants also reported that Shavei Israel tried to hold a re-election on the November 2020 but the Churachandpur Magistrate Court put a restraining order against that. It has been learnt that Shavei director, Tzvi Khaute and Shavei Administrator set up a fake election in contravention of the court's ruling and propped up an illegal BMC on the 26th August 2021. On September 26, 2021, they organised their first meeting while distributing bogus BMC census, which has led to the splitting of the Bnei Menashe into two.
Supporters of the original BMC gathered at Beit Shalom, B. Vengnom to present their anger by saying that BMC has laws to deal with this. There is no need to bring in a foreign NGO like Shavei who has been unnecessarily interfering in the Bnei Menashe community and an appeal will be made to the Israeli, Indian and the Manipur governments to prevent Shavei Israel from entering into internal matters of the Bnei Menashe.
Noteworthily, three days before the demonstration, Khaute met with Lalam Hangshing, the legal B'nei Menashe Council's elected chairman, in the latter's Imphal home. Although Shavei Israel spokeman claimed that at this meeting Hangshing capitulated to Khaute and accepted his authority, Hangshing scoffed at this. The meeting was held, he informed our Newsletter, at Khaute’s request and it was Khaute who did most of the talking, devoting nearly two hours to defending himself against the charges against him. “I simply sat there and listened,” says Hangshing, who dismissed the meeting as a Shavei PR stunt. “Khaute made no concessions and I certainly made none of my own. He obviously prefers the status quo of being in sole charge of everything.”
On the whole, Shavei officials, while reportedly taken aback by the demonstration's size, did not react publicly to it. The one exception was Shavei Advisory Board member Eliezer Baite who wrote to a Shavei WhatsApp group; "I haven’t heard any of you speak up. Are we going to take this sitting down? If we allow them [the demonstrators] to keep it up, there will be more and more of it. Let’s take action against these nobodies who have risen against Shavei. We need to strike back and silence them."
(October 14) A group of 250 B'nei Menashe olim from Manipur landed Wednesday at Ben Gurion Airport. Traveling on a flight arranged by Shavei Israel, the private Jerusalem-based organization tasked with bringing them, the group comprised the last of 722 B'nei Menashe whose Aliyah, though approved in 2015, was delayed for years by Israeli government procrastination.
The immigrants were welcomed at the airport by the Minister of Aliyah and Absorption, Pnina Tamano-Shata. After a brief ceremony, they were taken to an absorption center at an undisclosed site, where they will spend the next three months studying Hebrew and preparing for their rabbinical conversion to Judaism. Subsequently, they will be given housing in the northern city of Nof ha-Galil (formerly Upper Nazareth), as were the two groups that preceded them.
The immigrants flew to Israel from Manipur's capital of Imphal via New Delhi, where mishaps betook several of them. In one case, a small child was diagnosed with Covid-19 and she and her family were unable to continue on their way. In other instances, persons were discovered not to have Israeli visas. How they could have boarded the Imphal-New Delhi flight without them is unclear.
But the most curious case was that of 35-year-old Nachshon Haokip, who was traveling with his wife and two small children. Nachshon had angered Shavei Israel by participating in the Degel Menashe food relief campaign in the summer of 2020 that Shavei opposed and by refusing to sign the oath of allegiance to it that it had demanded from all the immigrants. In addition, his brother, Hillel Haokip, is a known anti-Shavei activist in Israel.
Although nevertheless included in the group, Nachshom was informed upon reaching New Delhi that he could not proceed further because details on his Israeli visa did not match those on his Indian passport: whereas the passport bore his Kuki first name of Henjangam, his visa had his Hebrew name of Nachshon, and while the passport correctly gave his year of birth as 1986, the visa stated it as 1982. The devastated Nachshon, forced to part from his wife and children who continued to Israel, received a telephone call from Shavei Israel's chairman Michael Freund telling him to return to Manipur and expressing the hope that he would eventually be able to rejoin his family.
Could it be a coincidence that the one person in the group of 250 whose passport and visa did not tally was someone who had been on Shavei Israel’s blacklist? The details in Nachshon's passport were, like those of all the immigrants, forwarded by Shavei Israel to the Ministry of Interior in Jerusalem, which then issued the visa. No one in Jerusalem could have known Nachshon's Hebrew name. Only Shavei’s office could have substituted it for his Kuki one.
This and the incorrect date of birth inevitably lead one to wonder whether Shavei, unable to punish Nachshon by removing him from the government-authorized 2015 list, deliberately falsified details of his passport in order to render his visa invalid. His being ordered back to Manipur only strengthens the suspicion. Would not another telephone call, a simple clarification from Michael Freund to the Ministry of Interior, affirming that Nachshon was the victim of a clerical mistake on Shavei’s part, have sufficed to allow him to fly with his family to Israel?
