B’nei Menashe Congregant Expelled From Synagogue, Home,For Aiding Degel Menashe Food Relief

(August 5) As Degel Menashe gears up for a third round of its Covid-19 food relief program in Northeast India, others are working to obstruct it. They gained a victory this week in a village on the outskirts of Churachandpur, where Yosef Chongloi, a member of Ohel Menashe, a B’nei Menashe congregation, was expelled from it for a double “crime.” His first infraction, he was told, was playing an active role in Round 2 of the relief operation, carried out in early June. His second was refusing to apologize for this publicly and to sever all ties with Degel Menashe.

Yosef Chongloi’s two children in front of the home they have to leave.

Chongloi, 31, a businessman, father of two children, and chief executive officer of the Loisei Investment and Finance Company, has been living in the village for the past three-and-a- half years. Behind his expulsion, he told our Newsletter, lay Ohel Menashe’s fear of antagonizing Shavei Israel, the NGO that has dominated B’nei Menashe life since 2003 and that controls all B’nei Menashe immigration from India to Israel.

“Since Ohel Menashe did not oppose Round 1 of the food relief drive,” Chongloi said, “I had no hesitation about taking part in Round 2.” His participation included transporting sacks of rice to B’nei Menashe communities and serving as a liaison between Degel Menashe’s Covid-19 Emergency Relief Committee and the Manipuri media. “But afterwards,” he related, “members of the congregation, many of them my relatives, came to me and told me they feared that they would be stricken by Shavei from its Aliyah lists if I didn’t renounce all my connections with Degel Menashe.”

Ohaliav Haokip

An additional point against him, Chongloi said, was his having hired Ohaliav Haokip, a Degel Menashe representative in Manipur, as a website designer for his company. Apart from abstaining from further food relief efforts, he was also ordered by the Ohel Menashe congregation to dismiss Ohaliav and have nothing more to do with him. “An uncle of mine,” Chongloi reported, “approached me and begged me to agree. He said he had been waiting for Aliyah for 30 years and would lose all chance of ever making it if I didn’t. I told him that Ohaliav was my employee and that I depended on him for technical help, but it made no impression.”

On July 29, the eve of the fast of Tisha b’Av, Chongloi was summoned to a meeting of the congregation. “I was warned that if I ignored its ultimatum, I would be kicked out,” he said. “My answer was that I wasn’t going to fire Ohaliav or knuckle under. Three days later, on August 1, I received notice of a second meeting scheduled for August 2 at which I was told to appear. I did and even brought with me a large pot of tea, a traditional conciliatory gesture in our culture. It didn’t help. I wasn’t permitted to say a single word, and when my father and mother rose to make a plea on my behalf, they might as well have been talking to the wall.” The meeting voted to expel him.

The Ohel Menashe congregation then issued an official announcement over the B’nei Menashe social media. Its English translation reads in full:

“On Sunday, August 2, at 8 am, the Ohel Menashe Congregation summoned Mr. Seiminthang (Yosef) Chongloi to a meeting called to discuss his case.

“Ohel Menashe has been working under the administration of the B’nei Menache Council [a Shavei Israel-appointed advisory group] and the Shavei Israel organization. The fact has come to our attention that he [Chongloi] has been actively working for another organization. Although members of our congregation repeatedly sought to get him to mend his ways, he has persisted.

“Accordingly the congregation has decided to cancel Mr. Chongloi and his family’s membership.”

Ohel Menashe Announcement

A copy of the announcement, signed by congregation chairman Shlomo Kipgen, was sent to Shavei Israel but not to Chongloi, who learned of it from the social media . Since Kipgen is also the head of the village council, he has the right according to Manipuri law to demand that Chongloi leave the village. This the latter is now in the process of doing.

The congregation, whose 21 families received three-quarters of a ton of free rice from Degel Menashe in the first two rounds of the food relief operation, has thus almost literally bit the hand that fed it. Moreover, it is now asking some of these families to go hungry, since they are being told not to accept aid from Round 3, even though they are no less in need of it than are other B’nei Menashe in Manipur and Mizoram.

For his part, asked whether he would help out again in Round 3, Chongloi answered, “Of course. Although living in Israel is my dream, I won’t let fear of Shavei Israel deter me.”

Chongloi does not believe that Shavei actually ordered his expulsion from Ohel Menashe. He does, however, hold responsible a “fear psychosis” created by Shavei’s use of its monopoly on Aliyah to intimidate the B’nei Menashe community.

Shavei Israel itself denies any involvement in Ohel Menashe’s actions. “We don’t interfere in such matters,” Meital Singson, Shavei’s Manipur coordinator, told Ohaliav Haokip. “We let every community make its own decisions.”

Degel Menashe Project Director Clarifies Organization’s Stand on Aliyah

(July 29) In an editorial posted today on our Website, Project Director Yitzhak Thangjom spelled out Degel Menashe’s thinking about the Aliyah of the 5,000 B’nei Menashe still in northeast India while dismissing rumors that it plans to launch an Aliyah operation of its own.

The full text of his statement can be found on our Letters & Opinions page. “We are a young organization with a small budget, and bringing B’nei Menashe to Israel at our own expense is not on our agenda,” Thangjom stated in his editorial. What Degel Menashe wishes to do, he said, is to help change Israeli government policy regarding the Aliyah of the B’nei Menashe, which since 2003 has been outsourced to Shavei Israel, a private NGO

Declaring that Shavei had abused its monopoly on Aliyah from northeast India, Thangjom accused it of bringing too few immigrants over too long a time and of practicing discrimination in its choice of them. In the past 17 years, he said, an annual average of slightly more than 100 B’nei Menashe olim have reached Israel while thousands have remained in India, waiting in vain for their turn. Many of these thousands, Thangjom charged, were excluded from Aliyah lists because of their refusal to follow Shavei Israel’s dictates. The composition of these lists, until now decided on by Shavei alone, needs to be made transparent and subject to public oversight, he said.

Alternative ways for B’nei Menashe wishing to come to Israel must be found, the project director’s editorial stated, so that the community is no longer at the mercy of Shavei..One such way, it suggested, could be permission for B’nei Menashe to make Aliyah on their own, sponsored and assisted by their families in Israel.

Asked by our Newsletter whether there were in fact B’nei Menashe in India and Israel with the financial means to do this, Thangjom answered: “Of course there are. I can’t tell you exactly how many, but there must be quite a few. This wouldn’t solve the problem of all B’nei Menashe waiting for Aliyah, but it would certainly solve that of some. It would be a start in breaking Shavei Israels’s sole grip on the Aliyah process.”

Thangjom conceded that even before the era of Shavei, when the B’nei Menashe’s Aliyah had been administered by Rabbi Aliyahu Avichayil and his organization Amishav, it had been in non-governmental hands. “Still,” he observed, “there’s a a great difference. In Rabbi Avichayil’s time, there was a B’nei Menashe Council, which he consulted in drawing up Aliyah lists. The members of the BMC were democratically elected by a popular vote and served a set term. They performed their function well, if not perfectly, until 2003. There was a degree of transparency and accountability that ceased with Shavei’s taking over.”

Thangjom was asked what proof Degel Menashe had of the discriminatory Aliyah practices it accuses Shavei of following. He replied: “This discrimination started in 2003, when Shavei split the B’nei Menashe community,

which had until then prayed according to the Ashkenazi liturgy, by introducing the Sephardi one and blacklisting whoever did not adhere to it. Large numbers of people were affected. Whole congregations, like Petach Tikva in Buolzawl near Churachandpur, were kept off the Aliyah lists. No one has made Aliyah from Petach Tikva since 2002.

“When Degel Menache began its Covid-19 emergency food distribution program last spring,” Thangjom went on, “we discovered B’nei Menashe congregations, such as that of the village of Phalbung, which had been so thoroughly shunned by Shavei that hardly anyone knew of their existence. Numerous individuals have been denied consideration for Aliyah because they dared voice criticism of Shavei, or because they have not followed Shavei’s instructions on how and where to lead their lives.”

Shavei Israel’s monopoly, Thangjom said, made things easy for Israel’s government, which was why it has continued for so many years. “Shavei has worked closely with the Rabbinate,” he explained. “It gives the Rabbinate lists of B’nei Menashe olim whose Jewish observance and commitment it vouches for, and the Rabbinate trusts Shavei and approves these lists with no means of independently reviewing them. If B’nei Menashe were to bypass Shavei in coming to Israel, some other mechanism would have to be found. I’m sure that it could be.”

In his editorial, Thangjom speaks of “being in contact with official bodies” regarding the issue of B’nei Menashe Aliyah. Could he, our Newsletter inquired, tell us what these bodies were?

“I’m afraid it’s too early for that,” he answered. “These contacts are preliminary and we have no assurance that they will prove successful. We don’t want to arouse false expectations. We’re trying to change an entrenched bureaucratic process, and bureaucratic processes are notoriously difficult to change. But we do have justice and fairness on our side, and our hope is that they will prevail.”