B’nei Menashe Singer Benny Khongsai Dies at 53

(February 18) Well-known B’nei Menashe singer Benny Khongsai passed away in Churachandpur, Manipur on February 1 at the age of 53. Khongsai was hospitalized after a heart attack and died a week later. He is survived by his wife, his son, and four daughters, two of whom, Amalia Khongsai and Tehilla Lhingboi Khongsai, live in Israel.

Born in Churachandpur and a lifelong member of its Beit Shalom synagogue, Khongsai was a popular performer. Reportedly, over 50 vehicles took part in the motorcade that accompanied him to his last rites. A graduate of Churachandpur College, his musical career ran parallel to a career in public service, in which he worked for 30 years in the Sericulture (silk-production) Department of the state government of Manipur and rose to the rank of Inspector.

Khongsai with dance accompaniment

A proud member of the B’nei Menashe community, Khongsai often performed with a kipa and avoided all public appearances on Shabbat. The composer of over 200 of his own songs, he was, as Manipuri music critic John Phailen put it , “an iconic singer” for the Kuki-speaking public of Manipur, one who, in his own words, believed that “music is about the human voice expressing the emotions of the soul for all faiths.” Yet there was a special place in his repertoire for songs of longing for Zion and Israel. One such song was Khongsai’s version of Chavang koulni lhum deh deh, “As the autumn sun sets gently,” originally written in the 1970s by T.Daniel, a seminal figure in the Judaism movement in North East India. Its first stanza translates as:

As the autumn sun sets gently,

How I long to reach you!

How I yearn for you ceaselessly, O Zion,

Land in which our beloved brothers dwell.

Toward Zion we march forth. Link to song.

“There was,” says Degel Menashe board member Gershom Mate, a lover of Khongsai’s music now engaged in a project of compiling his songs, “something special and unique about his voice. It was very soothing. He could carry a wide range of scales. His talent was so great that all his recording sessions, I’ve been told, were done with one take. There was no difference between his studio performances and his live ones. He was a very friendly man, too, always ready to talk with anybody, young or old, rich or poor, powerful or ordinary.”

Khongsai with his wife, Esther Siankim Khongsai

Speaking to our Newsletter. Khongsai’s daughter Tehilla also stressed his highly sociable nature . “We always had visitors in our house,” she said. “Not a day went by without someone for tea, lunch, or dinner. My father loved his old friends and loved making new friends. There was a constant stream of people in our house. On one day it might be a powerful politician or high-ranking official, on another a provincial farmer or villager from some remote place. He treated them all equally.”

Tehilla remembers her father as a friend, too. “True, he was a singer with a large following, but I never felt that at home. To me, he was simply my father, and I loved him. Sometimes I’d hear him in another room, making what sounded to me like funny noises; when I asked him about them, he’d tell me he was preparing for a show or recording session. But I don’t recall him ever working very hard at it. Singing came to him naturally, effortlessly. Maybe that was because he loved it so much.”

For all that, “Benny,” writes John Phailen, “was a deeply religious man. He followed all the Jewish dietary laws, and observed the Jewish Sabbath and all the traditional Jewish holidays. A secular singer, he was an Orthodox Jew who made believers out of skeptics.” “The people of Manipur adored him” says Zmira Khonsai Yaish, Khongsai’s niece who lives in Kirya Arba in Israel. “Most of them were not even B’nei Menashe. I take it that was God’s way of showing to all what Judaism really is. They witnessed it in my uncle’s life.”

Jewish Agency To Step In in B’nei Menashe Aliyah

(February 18) Negotiations to enable the Jewish Agency to play a major role in the Aliyah of the remaining 5,000 B’nei Menashe in North East India are now close to conclusion, our Newsletter has learned. Such an outcome would successfully culminate a year-long campaign by Degel Menashe to involve the Agency in the B’nei Menashe’s Aliyah, which until now has been the exclusive domain of the private Jerusalem-based organization Shavei Israel. This campaign was climaxed last week by a petition, signed by 1,230 members of the B’nei Menashe community, calling on the Agency to take charge of the B’nei Menashe’s immigration to Israel.

Hillel Halkin

Degel Menashe is not a direct party to these talks, which are being held between the Jewish Agency, the Ministry for Immigration and Integration, Shavei Israel, and the Rabbinate. Nevertheless, the development represents a significant achievement for it. “For the past decade- and-a-half,” says Degel Menashe chairman Hillel Halkin, “the Aliyah of the B’nei Menashe has been a Shavei Israel monopoly, and this had led to serious abuses that we have carefully documented and let the Jewish Agency and the Ministry of Immigration know about . With the Agency now part of the process, we have been promised that there will be an end to these abuses and we intend to hold the Agency to its promise.”

The agreement in the making, Halkin concedes, is not ideal. “Although we don’t yet know its precise details,” he told our Newsletter, “they will leave Shavei Israel in the picture, at least for the foreseeable future, as a co-participant in B’nei Menashe Aliyah. Degel Menashe would have preferred, like the petition signers, to see Shavei replaced by the Agency completely. Still, this is a big step forward and one that would never have happened without our efforts.”

Halkin was asked about a meeting held this week between Shavei Israel chairman Michael Freund and Israel’s Chief Rabbi David Lau. “It’s no secret that the Rabbinate and Shavei are on cozy terms,” he said. “We know from our sources that the Rabbinate is the main reason that Shavei can’t be sidelined entirely at this point. The B’nei Menashe are not halachically Jewish and must convert once they come to Israel. None can get a visa without the approval of the Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of the Interior won’t issue them one without a green light from the Rabbinate, and the Rabbinate trusts only Shavei, with which it has worked for years in vetting the prospective immigrants’ commitment to Judaism. Although there are far better ways of doing this than relying on Shavei, whose assessments have often been untrustworthy and discriminatory, that’s the situation at the moment.

Michael Freund with Chief Rabbi Lau

“Frankly,” Halkin added, “the Jewish Agency isn’t happy with this, either. But it’s thinking ahead. A high Agency official has said to me, ‘The agreement with Shavei is a way of getting our foot in the door. Once we do that, we don’t intend to go on standing in the doorway.’ Degel Menashe has been assured by both the Agency and the Ministry of Immigration that the compilation of Aliyah lists in the future will not be left to the whims of Shavei. This means that B’nei Menashe waiting for Aliyah need no longer be afraid of being denied it for getting in Shavei’s bad graces, as has been the case in the past.”

Yitzhak Thangjom

The impending agreement will not cover the 470 B’nei Menashe still in India who were, together with the group of 252 B’nei Menashe immigrants that arrived in Israel last December, approved for Aliyah in 2016. “The 470 are expected to arrive in the course of this year, some perhaps in the coming months,” we were told by Yitzhak Thangjom, Degel Menashe’s executive director. “They were chosen exclusively by Shavei, and while we will be happy to see all of them in Israel, many were included due to favoritism and many were left out because they were on Shavei’s blacklist. Even now Shavei is threatening to keep some of those on the list from coming in retaliation for disobeying its dictates while dangling in front of others the bait of being put in their place. The complete 2016 list is in Degel Menashe’s hands and we will do our utmost to prevent its being manipulated in such ways.

“We believe,” Thangjom says, “that this is the last time Shavei Israel will be given such power. In the future we expect Aliyah lists to be drawn up in consultation with genuine representatives of the B’nei Menashe community, such as the rabbis who come from its ranks, who have been deliberately ignored by Shavei until now, and the B’nei Menashe Council. The Jewish Agency has pledged to make the process a fair one. Degel Menashe will act as the watchdog that makes sure this pledge is kept.”

Briefed by Degel Menashe on the developments, leaders in the B’nei Menashe community in Israel and India reacted with a mixture of satisfaction and disappointment. “It’s good news,” was the reaction of Makhir Lotzem of the B’nei Menashe Council Initiative Committee of Kiryat Arba, “but why is Shavei still a part of it? The Agency must see to it that a fair and just Aliyah selection process is put into practice, one based above all on seniority and the length of time candidates have been waiting to come to Israel. Shavei has caused our community enough grief with its cronyism and coercion. We’ll go on fighting until there is a final end to this.”

Ohaliav Haokip, General Secretary of the B’nei Menashe Council in Manipur, though calling the impending agreement is “a step in the right direction,” also expressed his frustration that Shavei Israel was a side to it. Degel Menashe activist Nachshon Haokip of Churachandpur had similar reservations. “Although it’s nice to think of the process of Aliyah becoming fairer,” he said, “I’ll believe it when I see it. But at least something has begun to change. If not enough happens by itself, we’ll have to make it happen. There will be no turning back until there’s justice for all B’nei Menashe.”

Lalam Hangshing

Lalam Hangshing, the B’nei Menashe Council’s newly elected Chairman, stressed the role the BMC could play in the revised Aliyah process. “We’ll need to make the Jewish Agency aware that it has to work with us,” he said. “Shavei Israel doesn’t represent the B’nei Menashe of Manipur. It’s an Israeli organization that doesn’t have any legal standing in India. If the Agency wants to deal with a representative B’nei Menashe body, that’s us.”

It was the BMC that submitted the petition against Shavei, signed by 912 Manipur B’nei Menashe, to the Jewish Agency last week. “We have had enough,” it declared. “We ask the Jewish Agency, the Ministry of Immigration, and the government of Israel to assume direct responsibility for our Aliyah by taking it out of Shavei Israel’s hands and freeing us from its tyranny over our lives.”

Petition sent by 1,230 B’nei Menashe to Jewish Agency

Shavei Has Its Day in Court

Yitzhak Seimang Haokip

(February 11), Yitzhak Seimang Haokip, Shavei Israel’s Manipur Coordinator , appeared in Churachandpur magistrate’s court on February 10 to answer charges of criminal impersonation by pretending to be the General Secretary of the B’nei Menashe Council. Seimang, the Council’s former General Secretary, ceased to occupy that position when new BMC officials were chosen in elections held last November 5. Seimang was represented by his lawyer Ginsuanmong Naulot. In a 14-page brief, Naulot asked the court to rule that Seimang is still the BMC’s legitimate General Secretary because the November 5 elections, participated in by all 24 of Manipur’s B’nei Menashe communities, were illegal.

The case made by Naulot for the elections’ illegality, repeated several times in the course of the brief, rested on the contention that they violated an alleged “compromise” reached at a pre-election meeting attended by representatives of 17 of the 24 communities on October 25. This compromise, the brief claimed, consisted of an agreement to bar the four contested congregations of Petach Tikva, Pejang, Phalbung, and Saikul from participating in the elections, only after which would they be allowed to take part in B’nei Menashe affairs. The first three of them, Naulot explained, had been ousted from the BMC’s structure for continuing to observe the Ashkenazi rites of prayer despite the insistence of the then Shavei-controlled BMC that all B’nei Menashe congregations pray according to the Sephardic custom; since they were nevertheless allowed to participate in the November 5 vote, the latter should be declared null and void. “In the said [October 25] meeting,” the brief stated, citing as proof an October 29 news report from this Newsletter, “a floor fight ended with a compromise that the aforesaid 4 (four) communities/ congregations would not vote in the election to be held this time but would be full participants in all B’nei Menashe Council affairs in the future.”

The caption for Visual 3 is: "The misrepresentation of the October 25 meeting in Seimang's legal brief

Was this actually what was decided at the October 25 meeting? “Not at all,” says Ohaliav Haokip, the BMC’s newly elected General Secretary, who was present at it. “No such resolution regarding the November 5 elections was ever passed.”

A quick look at this Newsletter’s report, dated October 25, bears out Ohaliav’s denial.

Here is its exact language:

(October 26) In a sometimes tumultuous session of the heads of the B’nei Menashe congregations of Manipur at Beit Shalom synagogue in Churachandpur on Sunday, October 25, it was decided by a large majority to hold elections for a new B’nei Menashe Council in early November. The vote was a major defeat for Shavei Israel, the organization that has controlled B’nei Menashe affairs in Manipur and Israel for the past 15 years and that opposed the holding of the elections as a challenge to its power.

The 34 ballots were cast by 17 of Manipur’s 24 B’nei Menashe congregations, each represented by its chairman and secretary. Seven congregations did not take part in the vote. Three from the Churachandpur district, New Bazaar, Mualkoi, and Phalien, failed to attend the session for unclear reasons. Four others – Petach Tikva, Peijang, Phalbung, and Saikul – sent delegations whose right to vote was challenged by Shavei Israel on the grounds that they had been excluded by it from the communal structure that it has administered for the past 15 years. A floor fight ended with a compromise: the four congregations would not vote this time [emphasis added] but would be full participants in all B’nei Menashe Council affairs in the future.”

There was nothing in the news report about the four contested congregations being barred from voting in the November 5 election. On the contrary: the words “would not vote this time” clearly referred to the October 25 decision to hold the November 5 elections, not to the elections themselves, which were included in the reference to “all B’nei Menashe Council affairs in the future.” The “compromise,” in other words, was that the four contested congregations could not vote on October 25 but could vote on November 5.

“The truth is the exact opposite of what Seimang Haokip claimed in court,” says Yitzhak Thangjom, Degel Menashe’s Executive Director. “Anyone reading the Newsletter article, let alone anyone who was at the October 25 meeting, would know that Seimang was deliberately misrepresenting the facts.”

“The extraordinary thing,” Thangjom remarked, “is that the brief cites Shavei’s long-standing policy of religious discrimination against Petach Tikva, Peijang, and Phalbung as justification for Shavei’s claim that the elections were illegal. It’s no secret that Shavei, over the years, systematically boycotted every individual and community that went on using the Ashkenazi liturgy that the B’nei Menashe learned from Rabbi Eliyahu Avichayil. But to claim in court that ending this boycott made the election illegal? Seimang and his lawyer appear not to have known that religious discrimination of this sort is prohibited by Indian law. It’s astonishing that they would actually base their defense on Shavei’s having practiced it They’re like the man in the joke who told the judge that he couldn’t possibly have broken his neighbor’s window because he was busy at that exact moment stealing his neighbor’s cow!”