Two New Members Join Degel Menashe Board

(December 21) At Degel Menashe’s semiannual board of directors meeting this week, the board voted unanimously to add two members to its ranks, Yossi Dahan and Elhanan Fanai.

The two new board members complement one another. Yossi, 67 and a resident of Nes Tsiyona, is a senior El Al executive who has held various positions at the airline since 1995 and is currently director of its Retirement Division. Born in Ramle, his connections with his native town led to a friendship with Ramle resident Yitzhak Thangjom, Degel Menashe’s project manager. “It’s through Yitzhak and his wife Jessica,” Yossi told our Newsletter, “that I’ve come to know the B’nei Menashe and their story. They’re wonderful people and it’s an honor to be connected with an organization that is trying so hard to help them.”

Elhanan Fanai was born in Mizoram in 1988 and came to Israel in 2007. He served in a combat battalion in the IDF, held various jobs after his discharge, and started his career involvement with the B’nei Menashe community in 2016, when he worked as a counselor and teacher with a new group of B’nei Menashe immigrants in an absorption center in Kfar Hasidim. In 2019 he was chosen to be chairman of the Youth Division of the B’nei Menashe community of Afula, the city in the Valley of Jezreel where he lives, and since mid-2020 he has been employed by the Afula municipality as its B’nei Menashe Community Coordinator.

An older man and a younger one, an Israeli-born veteran and an oleh from India, an expert in organizational management and a community worker: Yossi Dahan and Elhanan Fanai bring with them contrasting backgrounds that Degel Menashe can put to good advantage. We welcome them both to our Board!