Brass Wine Jug Tells of Olden Days

(March 17) “It was given me by my father, who said it belonged to his grandfather,” Demsat Haokip, 52, told our Newsletter. Haokip, a former vice-chairman of the Beith Shalom synagogue in Churachandpur who is still awaiting his Aliyah, was commenting on a photograph he had sent us of a brass wine jug that has come down to him from his ancestors. Since Demsat’s grandfather inherited it from his own father, the jug is at least four generations old and must date to no later than the early 20th or late 19th century.

“According to what I was told,” says Demsat, “the jug was used as a ritual wine container for animal sacrifices. Since I never saw such a sacrifice myself, I can’t tell you exactly how it was used. This was in the old days when our old religion was still practiced, before the British came and brought Christianity. In those days, every village had a chief, a priest, and a blacksmith. The priest conducted religious rituals, but the blacksmith was just as important and no village could get along without one. Smiths made pots, pans, knives, swords, agricultural tools, and whatever else was needed by the villagers, and I assume that ritual objects like this jug were made by them, too.”

Demsat with the jug

Elitsur Haokip, 85, who came to Israel in 2014 and lives in the Lower Galilee town of Migdal ha-Emek, is a generation older than Demsat. Having seen many sacrifices before they vanished as a result of Christianization, he knew exactly how the jug was used. “It’s a zuphit khon,” he said after studying the photograph, using a Kuki terms that means “wine-spraying vessel.” When sacrificing a goat or other animal on an altar, he explained, the priest sipped rice wine from the jug and sprayed it from his mouth onto the ground as a libation to Pathen, the supreme God of the old, pre-Christian religion. Perhaps this was a way of saying, “This wine is for God, and so rather than drink it myself I will give it to Him.” This particular zuphit khon, Elitsur said, was “a real treasure. Its owner must have been wealthy by the standards of those times. Not everyone could afford such an object. Most wine containers were shaped like this one but were made by a potter from clay. Smaller ones were of bamboo.”

Elitsur Haokip

Elitsur agreed that the jug was most likely made by a village smith. The brass, he said, would have been heated to its melting point and poured into a clay mold that was broken after the metal cooled. Its filigree crosshatching would have been made separately and soldered to it. Besides being an indispensable part of religious rituals,” Elitsur told us, “rice wine was widely drunk on social occasions, especially on holidays and festivals. For social drinking, there were special gobletsmade of hollowed and dried gourds.”

Elitsur did not think that possession of a ritual wine jug necessarily meant that its original owner was a village priest. “In the old pre-Christian religion,” he says, “there were public sacrifices that the priest performed, but there were also private ones that were conducted within the family and presided over by the head of each household. The zuphit khon in the photograph could have belonged to such a family.”

Demsat Haokip wishes he knew more. “If only I could go back in time and ask my father about these things while he was still alive!” he exclaimed. “There have been many people who wanted to buy this wine jug from me, but I’ve turned down every offer. Such an object is priceless. I’ll never part with it. I plan to bring it with me to Israel, and find a worthy place for it, perhaps in a museum or heritage center.”

B’nei Menashe Voters in Israel Lean Heavily to the Right

(March 17) If next Tuesday’s elections were be to decided by Israel’s B’nei Menashe, the pollsters could confidently predict a landslide for the Right. Indeed, in talking this week to prospective B’nei Menashe voters from all over the country, from Kiryat Arba in the south to Afula and Migdal ha-Emek in the north, our correspondent couldn’t find a single person intending to cast a ballot for a party of the Center or the Left.

Most popular by far was Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu’s Likud. “It’s in our interest to have a right-wing government, and I don’t think there’s a better party to lead it than Likud,” said Ovadia Pachuau, 71, of Afula, in a typical answer to our correspondent’s questions. “True, Likud won’t be able to form a government on its own. It will have to join hands with other, similarly-minded parties. But when I look at potential leaders. I don’t see anyone capable of replacing Bibi at this time. A vast majority of our community feels the same.”

Meir Lotzem, 54, of Kiryat Arba agreed. “As a community,” he told our correspondent, “we have traditionally voted Likud. I myself am no different. I’ve always identified as a Likudnik. It’s in my blood. It’s in all of Kiryat Arba’s B’nei Menashe. And it’s not just them. I’ve talked to friends in the north. The mood there is solidly Likud, too.”

It’s that mood that sways Elitsur Haokip, 83, of Migdal Ha-Emek. “I’m an old man who hasn’t lived in Israel that long and doesn’t know that much about its politics,” he says. “If I were still in India, I’d have more of an opinion. But then, again, my vote counts as much as anyone’s, and from the conversations I hear around me, the Likud is supported by most people. My son and daughter-in-law plan to vote for it and so will I.”

Levana Chongloi

Among younger B’nei Menashe, one finds strong pro-Likud sentiment, too. Levana Chongloi, 28, of Tel Aviv plans to vote for the Netanyahu government because she gives it high marks on the economic and diplomatic fronts. Her one caveat is with its handling of the Corona pandemic. “It was a big letdown,” she states. “The pandemic hit ordinary people badly. A lot of businesses went down, not enough relief came from the government, and health protocols were not enforced uniformly.” Still, she says, “I’ve always voted Likud and I’ll do it this time, too.”

Bat-El Rently, 30, of Bet-El isn’t sure she’ll vote at all. Four elections in two years, she says, is “too much.” But if she does vote – “Well, the last three times it was for Likud and it would probably be the same again. I really can’t think of any other party.”

One of our few interviewees who could was Yitzhak Lhungdim, 25, from Kiryat Arba, for whom the Likud isn’t right-wing enough. Yitzhak plans to vote for Betzalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism Party. “He’s the politician who is most honest about his opinions,” he says.

David Lhungdim

Another non-Likud voter is David Lhungdim, a religious leader in the B’nei Menashe community of Sderot. “I’m a Haredi, as are many of us in Sderot,” he said. “I and most of my friends will vote for Shas,” the Sephardi religious party. Lhungdim points out that many of Sderot’s B’nei Menashe study in Shas intitutions and share its “ethos of studying Torah and praying for the Jewish nation." He sees a vote for Shas, which can be counted on to join a Netanyahu-led coalition, as a vote for Netanyahu, too. “I feel that the present government with Bibi as prime minister is doing well,” he says. “On the world stage, I don’t see anyone representing Israel as well as he has done. No one who wants to replace him is of the same caliber. I feel that Likud and Shas make a good team.

None of the B’nei Menashe our correspondent spoke to so much as mentioned the corruption charges facing the prime minister, let alone thought they would affect the B’nei Menashe vote. When our correspondent asked Degel Menashe’s executive director Yitzhak Thangjom about this, he said with a laugh that there was an obvious explanation. “Most of us come from Manipur,” he said. “It’s one of the most corrupt states in India, which is not exactly a cleanly run country. We know what real corruption is, and what Netanyahu is being charged with doesn’t strike us as coming close to it.”

Thangjom also thought that the political views of Israel’s B’nei Menashe were unsurprising. “In the first place,” he said, “we are, as a group, nationalistic. We come from a part of the world in which ethnic identity comes first and universalist values count for little, we’ve thrown in our lot with the Jewish people, and we naturally identify with its more militant spokesmen, such as the Likud and other right-wing parties. And secondly, the society that we hail from was traditionally one in which life was dominated by village and regional chiefs. We still have that mentality. The chief is to be respected and obeyed, and no one in Israel is a more powerful chief than Benjamin Netanyahu.”

A Lunch With the Ambassador

(March 9) At a March 5 lunch on, Indian ambassador Sanjeev Singla hosted representatives of Israel’s four Indian Jewish communities: the Bene Israel of India’s west coast, the Cochin Jews of its southern tip, the Baghdadi Jews of Bombay and Calcutta, and the B’nei Menashe of Mizoram and Manipur. Representing the B’nei Menashe was Degel Menashe’s executive director Isaac Thangjom.

The lunch was held at Ambassador Singla’s residence in Herzliya. The guests included deputy ambassador Anitha Nandhini; embassy first secretary Rakhee Mayuri; Joel Malkari, vice-president of the International Organization of Bene Israel; Bombay-born Hebrew University professor Shaul Sapir; Isaac Ashkenazi, like Sapir from a Baghdadi background but born in Calcutta; and Tzipora Meir, Tirtza Lavi, and Shulamit Kedar, all from families hailing from Cochin.

From left to right: Deputy Ambassador Nandhini, Professor Sapir, First Secretary Mayuri, Degel Menashe's Thangjom

The lunch began with Ambassador Singla soliciting ideas from the guests for the new Indian Cultural Center recently opened in Tel Aviv. Although it has gotten off to a slow start due to the limitations imposed by the Corona epidemic, it now hopes to move into higher gear. Suggestions were made for a wide variety of activities, from yoga and classical Indian dance classes to courses in Indian languages and Ayurvedic medicine.

Another subject raised by the ambassador was the embassy’s Know India Program, which has so far failed to attract many participants despite the large number of Israeli tourists who visit India every year. A proposal was made to add to it a “Roots” dimension whereby young Israelis of Indian ancestry would be aided in exploring their heritage and families’ pasts. Such a program would target post-army youth, which traditionally backpacks all over the world after its conclusion of military service.

Isaac Thangjom presents ambassador with photograph

On behalf of Degel Menashe, Executive Director Thangjom presented Ambassador Singla with a framed picture of B’nei Menashe children taken by photographer Dorit Lombroso. He also reported on Degel Menashe’s various educational and cultural programs, dwelling especially on its Oral History Project, which will culminate this spring with the publication of Lives of the Children of Manasia, a book of twelve extended oral history interviews with elderly members of the B’nei Menashe community in Israel. Ambassor Singla expressed great interest in the book and spoke of making it a central feature of the joint 75 th \-year Israel-India independence celebrations that are planned for 2022. He also promised to lend the embassy’s support to Degel Menashe’s musicology project, which, in collaboration with the Hebrew University, is dedicated to the collection and preservation of old B’nei Menashe music. Temporarily stalled by the pandemic, too, this program, Thangjom told the ambassador, is about to be given new impetus. Ambassador Singla pledged to do all he could to help.