(July 22) With the drastic worsening this month of the Covid 19 situation in Mizoram, as in the rest of Northeast India, Degel Menashe reached out to the state’s B’nei Menashe community for the second time in a year with emergency aid. Twenty-seven households totaling 109 individuals, an estimated ten percent of Mizoram’s B’nei Menashe population, received an initial amount ranging from 500 to 700 rupees (close to ten dollars) per family member for the purchase of food.
A grandmother and grandson with an aid carton.
Although such sums may seem small by Western standards, they go a long way in India, where two days’ worth of rice, the staple that provides much of the average person’s diet, cost well under a dollar.
The aid campaign was administered by Elisheva Khiangte, a long-standing member of the B”nei Menashe community of Aizawl, the state capital.
Elisheva Khiangte.
Of the 27 families, 18 were from Aizawl while the others were from outlying towns and villages. As with previous Degel Menashe relief operations, this one, too, was fiercely opposed by Shavei Israel, the Jerusalem-based organization entrusted by the Israeli government with the B’nei Menashe’s Aliyah to Israel, on the grounds that it infringed on Shavei’s control of the B’nei Menashe community. Many needy B’nei Menashe families, their breadwinners put out of work by the pandemic, declined to accept the proffered aid because of Shavei’s threats. Asking to remain anonymous, one of Aizawl’s B’nei Menashe told our Newsletter:
“When Shavei representatives in Mizoram learned of the aid, they were furious. A year ago, when Degel Menashe also stepped in with food for hungry B’nei Menashe families, community leader Jeremiah Hnamte was forced by Shavei to public apologize at a Shabbat service for helping to distribute it, and Shavei was confident that no one would dare defy it again. I personally know of one case in which a person involved in the current aid effort received a telephone message to back off or risk placing his future Aliyah in jeopardy. It was given him by a friend who felt uncomfortable about relaying it but had been ordered by Shavei officials to do so. Four households that I know of that had initially agreed to accept aid from Degel Menashe changed their minds under pressure from Shavei.”
Shavei Israel itself, while succeeding in blocking aid to many families, has provided them with none of its own. “A few weeks ago,” the same source told our Newsletter, “Shavei posted a notice in Aizawl that it would soon be sending assistance. Yet nothing arrived and there have been no further updates. Everyone knows that Shavei is hard-pressed for funds, but whether this is the reason for its utter failure to help so far, I can’t say.”
The B’nei Menashe families in Mizoram who were willing to stand up to Shavei are now in a better position to pay for other necessities that competed with food, such as rent and non-Covid-related medical expenses. “I know we’re mourning for the Temple,” a woman wrote from the town of Birkawthlir on the day before the fast of Tisha b’Av, “but I was overjoyed when I received food aid from Degel Menashe. Our lives have been very difficult these past three months. I hope God will forgive me for finally smiling happily after so long a time.”
And Elisheva Khiangte sent Degel Menashe a message saying:
“From the Holy Land you are the only ones who sent the poor families of the B'nei Menashe community of Mizoram money to buy food and medicines with. God bless you!”
(July 15) When Avi Hangshing applied for a Degel Menashe scholarship in 2019, his ambitions were not just for himself. “As my personal hope,” he wrote in his application for funding that would help him to train to be a competitive handgun marksman, “I want to be a good model for young B’nei Menashe.” Although pistol shooting was not one of the fields Degel Menashe had in mind when it launched its scholarship program, Avi so impressed the scholarship committee with his seriousness and motivation that he was awarded a grant. This month he justified its faith in him by coming in first in the League 6 handgun competition held in Kibbutz Ginegar by the Israeli branch of the International Practical Shooting Confederation (IPSC) – and in doing so, proved the role model he had hoped to be.
Fresh from his victory, Avi was interviewed this week by our Newsletter. Here is what he had to say.
Tell us a bit about your background.
I was born in 1984 in Kangpokpi, a town in northern Manipur. Kangpokpi had many different ethnic groups, and I grew up surrounded by different religions and cultures – besides the Kuki spoken by us B’nei Menashe, there was Manipuri, Nepalese, Hindi, and all kinds of tribal languages. We kids all played together and spoke each other’s languages. You couldn’t tell a secret in any of them because everyone would understand it!
The B’nei Menashe community was too small to operate its own school and I attended a Christian elementary school and high school. It was a four-kilometer walk in each direction to get there and back, but the buses were so slow and stopped so often for passengers that we could race them and sometimes beat them.
When did your family come to Israel?
When I was 16. Although I grew up always knowing that we would make Aliyah one day, it was hard to believe it was happening when the time came.Even though it was a huge change, I felt at home from the day we arrived in Israel. I took learning Hebrew very seriously, and perhaps because I already knew so many languages, I was speaking it well in four or five months.
We lived in Kiryat Arba. After finishing high school, in 2003, I began my army service. I asked to be assigned to the Paratroopers because I wanted to be in a crack unit, and I got through the selection process. Of the 500 of us who started, only 85 made it to the end. After a year of training, including parachute jumps, we were put on front-line duty. It was a difficult time. The worst part of the Second Intifada was over, but the situation was till tense and we were constantly involved in anti-terror operations. There were times when we were given leave and then called back to our base even before we managed to reach home. The single thing that most kept us going was the sense of brotherhood that developed among us: Moroccans, Ethiopians, Russians, Indians, Yemenites, Argentinians, and others – we cared for each other and took care of each other as though we had grown up under one roof. There were good times and bad times, but it’s the good ones I remember – and if the bad ones come to mind, you joke about them and they become good ones, too.
What happened after your discharge from the army?
For 15 years, I worked as a security guard and shooting instructor in Kiryat Arba. Recently, I took a job with a company named Bul Armory in Tel Aviv and moved there.
Avi Hangshing.
It’s an Israeli company that makes customized guns, mainly for competitive shooters, which are sold all over the world. I work in quality control. We have to make sure that every gun meets the customer’s specifications and is tested for accuracy before being shipped.
How did you get interested in shooting?
I always loved sports – soccer, basketball, whatever. But shooting was my real passion – not just with guns, but archery too. After I finished the army I took a job as a security guard for which I had to go through additional firearms training. I loved it, and our trainer told me at the end of the course that I had good form and should become a trainer myself. I took his advice, took another course, and got my instructor’s license. One day years afterwards someone saw me giving a demo shooting class and asked if I had ever heard of the IPSC. I hadn’t, but when I looked into it I saw that competitive shooting was a whole new world. I began to take part in it and am now in my third year of competition.
How does competitive shooting different from ordinary shooting?
In ordinary shooting, the main thing is accuracy. You want to hit the target. In competitive shooting, it’s accuracy, speed, and maneuverability. You have to hit a target or multiple targets as quickly as possible, and from a variety of positions – standing, kneeling, running, turning.
Avi shooting from a seesaw.
Some of the targets are moving or swinging themselves. It’s important not only to be a good marksman but also to be in good physical shape, because you may have to shoot while encountering an obstacle, or crouching at a low window, or sprinting from one point to another. And you’re doing all this against the clock, so that every fraction of a second counts.
You have to be the cowboy with the fastest draw!
Not exactly. It’s possible to shoot from the hip like a cowboy and hit a target – but only if it’s close. Past a range of 10 meters or so, it’s very hard. In competitions we shoot holding the gun with two hands in front of us. In my type of event the target can be as far as 70 meters away and you get to fire two shots at each.. There’s a bullseye and you get five points for hitting the inner circle, three points for the next, and one point for the next.
Before working for Bul Armory, I didn’t have the advantage of other competitors, who had sponsors and could train three times a week or more. I would train with an empty gun in my room, pasting different-sized stickers on the wall and imagining that the bigger ones were closer targets and the smaller ones further off. Once I received my Degel Menashe grant, I was able to buy more bullets and make more use of firing ranges. In 2019, I came in fourth in the League 2 competitions at Ginegar, and I’ve been improving steadily since. There are many shooting clubs in Israel, several in each in league, and the three winners in each get to compete in the annual National Championships.
Did you think you had a chance to be one of the top three this time?
I knew the match was going to be a hard one. My rivals were good and not easy to beat. On the day of the match, I tried to feel calm. I guess I didn’t look it, though, because a former national champion came up to me and asked: “Avi, are you nervous?” I smiled and said “Yes,” and he smiled back, patted me on the shoulder, and said, “Good. Then you’re one of us.”
I knew the sequence of shots I would have to take and I tried to plan them all out in advance without any unnecessary moves, pauses, or bullets. I felt that I was making a lot of five-point hits and reloading quickly. I could hear the judges complimenting me, too, and when I took my last shot and said “Whew!” and sat down to cool off, people began to congratulate me and tell me that I had won.
The winning scorecard.
I didn’t believe it, though, until I saw my scorecard. I had a perfect score and had beaten several previous national champions!
What next?
The National Championships will be in September-October, and the top three places will get to represent Israel in international competitions. Who knows? If I keep working hard I might eventually, God willing, earn a slot to compete overseas on behalf of both Israel and the B’nei Menashe. One of the reasons I compete is to let people know who I am and where I’m from – that I belong to the one of the lost tribes of Israel that has come home. It’s one of the best ways we can introduce ourselves to the world. I’d like to see more B’nei Menashe youngsters take up sports and succeed. If I can do it, why can’t they? And I’d like once again to thank Degel Menashe for its support. It was definitely a factor in my winning.
(July 8) Shirel Lunkhel, 18, of Kiryat Arba may not have been thinking of the B’nei Menashe community of Israel to which she belongs when she was chosen to be her Border Guard company’s torch bearer last week at a ceremony ending several months of basic training. Yet the evident pride and joy with which she bore the torch in honor of being judged the company’s outstanding cadet, so fully reflected in her face and manner, have made her the pride and joy of the entire B’nei Menashe community as well.
Shirel is not the first B’nei Menashe girl to serve in the IDF. (Although the Border Guard is technically a branch of Israel’s police force, it is a combat unit fully integrated within the army’s structure.)
Shirel Lunkhel.
She was preceded by four others, including her two older sisters Yael and Adi, all Kiryat Arba neighbors who grew up together and influenced each other. All showed grit and independence of mind, since the Rabbinate and its educational institutions, which set the norms for the Orthodoxy that nearly all B’nei Menashe practice, prefer that young women wishing to serve their country enroll in its civilian National Service rather than in its military. It takes character to fly in the face of this.
“I never thought Shirel would join the army,” our Newsletter was told by her mother Rivka Lunkhel when she spoke with us over the phone from her Kiryat Arba home. (Shirel herself, in accordance with army rules, could not be interviewed.) “She was the fifth of our children, all girls, and the baby in the family until her sister Ilanit came along seven years after her. In our culture, youngest children are doted on. Though I wouldn’t say Shirel was spoiled by me, her father, or her older sisters, we did give her a great deal of attention and indulged her a lot. She has a very feminine nature, and after she finished high school I was sure she would opt for National Service. That seemed to suit her better than the army. ”
Yehoshua and Rivka Lunkhel and their six daughters, Ronia, Tzurit, Yael, Adi, Shirel, and Ilanit.
“Shirel was always on the delicate side,” her father Yehoshua agreed. “Army training is tough even for a young man. Shirel had doubts about it right up to the minute I dropped her off for the first time at her base.
Shirel saying goodbye to her father at army base.
She asked me if I thought she was doing the right thing. I told her that she should make good on what she had started. She had made her decision and now she should see it through. “To tell the truth,” Yehoshua went on, “I never believed Shirel would accomplish what she did. She’s my daughter and I know her well. Had she just managed to get through basic training without dropping out, I would have considered that an achievement. I couldn’t help worrying about her and wondering whether she shouldn’t have sought placement at some army desk job rather than in a combat unit. Her coming out at the top of her company totally surprised me.”
Yet Shirel always has had a lot of determination, says her mother. “I watched her grow up. She’s not at all aggressive, but once she makes up her mind to do something, she does it. Although I was also surprised when she chose the Border Guard, I didn’t say anything. In Israel, children make their own decisions. It isn’t like India, where their parents decide for them. At the end of Shirel’s training, she was at the top of her unit, and I’ve been told that she’s been offered a place in an officer’s training course. Even though she hasn’t made up her mind about it yet, that’s still a big honor. Whatever career she chooses in the future, this is a good beginning.”
Yehosuhua Lunkhel agrees. “It made us proud to see Shirel come through basic training with such flying colors,” he says. “If she goes on to be an officer, we’ll be even prouder.”
