Breaking News: Bnei Menashe aliyah set to resume this summer
Celebrating at Independence Day in India
We have some tremendously exciting news to share with you. The long-awaited resumption of the Bnei Menashe aliyah from India is expected to begin this summer.
The first wave of 50 families, numbering some 250 people, is slated to arrive by the end of August. Another group should be in Israel in time for Chanukah. They will be settled in the Galilee in coordination with the Ministry of Immigrant Absorption.
The news broke to the Israeli media in a Jerusalem Post article that appeared this past Friday. You can find more press coverage about the process as it has enfolded over the past year on our website: here, here, here and here.
The Bnei Menashe, or “sons of Manasseh,” are descendents of one of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. “The return of this lost tribe to Zion, more than 2,700 years after their ancestors were exiled by the Assyrian empire, is nothing less than a miracle,” Shavei Israel Chairman Michael Freund told The Jerusalem Post.
But as we learn from our tradition, the Jewish people cannot rely solely on miracles. While the State of Israel has committed to paying for some of the absorption costs, Shavei Israel will need to cover the lion’s share.
Transportation from northeastern India to Israel alone is substantial, with domestic and international airfare approximately $1,200 per person. Another $1,800 per immigrant is necessary to cover initial absorption costs as well as to provide a modest grant to each arrival in Israel to assist them in getting started.
That is why we need your help now more than ever before. We have an unprecedented opportunity to enable the Bnei Menashe to fulfill their most heartfelt desire: to join the Jewish people in the land of their ancestors.
Moreover, this will be the first time in five long years that we have been able to bring a group of Bnei Menashe to Israel, after the previous government froze their immigration. And yet, even after this eventful aliyah, there will still be close to 7,000 Bnei Menashe remaining in India, waiting patiently and with unbending faith, to join the 1,700 Bnei Menashe whose passage to Israel we have been privileged to facilitate.
Please include the Bnei Menashe in your prayers – and please help us to help them come home to Israel. You can make a considerable impact on their lives, and any amount you can afford would be of immense assistance.
We will be updating you regularly as the date comes close. We look forward to you joining us on this most essential journey. Please click here to donate whatever you can to this vital cause.
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There has been extensive coverage of Shavei Israel and the Bnei Menashe in the press this week. Here are some links: