More Than 200 Bnei Menashe Arriving in Israel

The Bnei Menashe claim descent from the tribe of Menashe, one of the ten tribes exiled from the Land of Israel by the Assyrian empire over 2,700 years ago. They reside primarily in the two Indian states of Mizoram and Manipur, along the border with Burma and Bangladesh. In recent years alone, over 800 members of the community have made Aliyah, thanks largely to the efforts of Shavei Israel, a Jerusalem-based group that reaches out and assists “lost Jews” seeking to return to the Jewish people. They reside mainly in Kiryat Arba, south of Jerusalem, and Beit El and Ofrah, north of Jerusalem.

Until six years ago, the Interior Ministry allowed 100 Bnei Menashe to come to Israel as tourists annually. They then converted here and became Israelis, a policy that was ended by then-Interior Minister Avraham Poraz (Shinui), who reportedly preferred to have no olim (immigrants) from the group rather than increase the number of G-d fearing Jews in Israel who support Israel's right to sovereignty over Judea and Samaria.

To overcome the Poraz's ban on immigration of this lost Jewish community, the Israeli Chief Rabbinate agreed to send a Beit Din

Kiryat Arba settlers

(rabbinical court) on its behalf to India to formally convert the Bnei Menashe to Judaism there. More than 200 Bnei Menashe were converted by the Beit Din and arrived in Israel at the end of 2006 as new immigrants. But then the Indian authorities forced Shavei Israel to stop the program because conversion is against the law in India. Hence the need for the new system of entry on tourist visas and conversion in Israel.

The Mayor of Pardess Chana, Chaim Ga'ash, has been less than enthusiastic about the new arrivals, however. Ga'ash said that the arrival of the Bnei Menashe had not been coordinated with him or with the Ministry of Absorption of Aliya. Ga'ash has even gone so far as to raise the possibility that the Bnei Menashe are in fact "foreign workers in disguise," because as he put it, "it makes no sense that a group of immigrants would arrive in Israel secretly.