Shavei Israel profile: Bnei Menashe social worker Esther Colney follows a family tradition
Esther Colney
If you ask a Bnei Menashe immigrant to Israel what the happiest day of his or her life was, you’ll often receive the response, “When I made aliyah.” For Esther Colney, who came to Israel from India with her family at age 15, it was an achievement that occurred a few years later that topped her list: receiving her high school diploma.
“When we made aliyah, I didn’t know a word of Hebrew,” she explains. “So to finish school and pass my matriculation exams, I felt like, yes, I made it!”
Helping other Bnei Menashe immigrants to “make it” like she did is now Colney’s life work: a year and a half ago, she received a master’s degree in social work from the Safed Academic College in Israel’s northern Galilee. Throughout her studies in Safed, Colney received assistance and support from Shavei Israel. Today she has a caseload of some 50 teenagers – including, although not exclusively, Bnei Menashe – in a religious community south of Jerusalem.
It’s something for which Colney, now 30, derives great satisfaction. “When you receive something, sure that’s fun and nice. But when you can help people, it gives you a very special feeling, like you’re worth something,” she says. “When I come home in the evening after work, I’m just so happy.”
Colney is not the first social worker in the family: her older brother Itzkhak also studied in Safed and received the same degree two years before his sister. For the past year, he has been working for Shavei Israel, providing counseling services for Bnei Menashe immigrants at the Kfar Hasidim absorption center, where the new olim live when they first arrive in the country.
Itzkhak Colney
The first group of Bnei Menashe have left the center already, relocating to their own apartments in the cities of Acre and Migdal HaEmek. Now Itzkhak is moving out with them: the Migdal HaEmek municipality has hired him as a full time social worker to handle Bnei Menashe cases. We have a full profile of Itzkhak here.
Both Esther and Itzhkak made aliyah from the Indian state of Mizoram with their parents in 1999. This was before Shavei Israel was active and Esther Colney says it was tougher then than it is today for Bnei Menashe immigrants to find their way in Israel. “There was no absorption center, no social workers, no job assistance in those days,” she says. ”Fortunately, we were able to stay with another Bnei Menashe family that had come before us.”
Colney was a good student and picked up Hebrew quickly. After high school graduation, she performed her National Service in a home for seniors. “My supervisor was a social worker and I saw what she did and how she loved her work, helping people,” Colney says. “Until then, I hadn’t really thought of becoming a social worker myself, but after my brother enrolled in school in Safed, I thought, I could do that too.”
It didn’t hurt that her best friend Sonia Manlun – also a Bnei Menashe immigrant – signed up with her. Although they are both from India, Sonia is from the state of Manipur and speaks the Kuki language, while Colney speaks Mizo. “So we speak to each other only in Hebrew!” Colney says.
At first, the other students in Safed didn’t know what to make of Colney and her friend. “They wouldn’t believe we are Jewish. They’d think we were from China or Japan,” she recalls. “That was hard. We came here to live fully Jewish lives and it’s not so nice to get reactions like this. But the thing about Israelis is, once they get to know you, they treat you like Israelis very quickly. Today I have many friends – both native-born Sabras and Bnei Menashe.”
The classes Colney took towards her degree prepared her for more than just the specifics of the work she would be doing. She also learned a lot about her place in the multicultural melting pot of modern Israeli society. “We had classes where we would learn about all the different cultures in Israel – Ethiopian, Russian, ultra-Orthodox,” she says. “After a while, I didn’t feel so different. Studying actually made me feel more a part of Israeli society.”
Colney’s parents always knew they were Jews and they joined the Bnei Menashe community in Aizawl, the capital city of Mizoram when she was 5 years old. Her brother, then 9-years-old, was circumcised at that time, and the family did its best to live according to Jewish Law, keeping kosher and observing the Sabbath and Jewish holidays.
It wasn’t always easy. At school parties, pork was usually served, which Colney wouldn’t eat. And her classmates were sometimes cruel. “Some would say that I was going straight to hell,” she recalls. “But it didn’t really hurt me, because I had friends who supported me and a big family. I was proud to be Jewish. And most important, I knew we would be making aliyah soon.”
“Soon” turned out to take longer than she expected. “We talked about it in our family for as long as I can remember,” she says. “Year after year passed. After ten years of thinking about it, we finally came.”
Colney has been back to visit only once since moving to Israel. She was 19 and said she “felt like a stranger there. I still have friends and family in India, but I now feel more connected to Israel. It actually feels really good – to know where you belong. The same thing will happen with the new immigrants – after 2-3 years, they will stop missing India, too.”
One thing Colney stopped missing almost immediately was Indian food. “My brother will tell you that I don’t eat any of the food my mother makes!” she laughs. “I like falafel, schnitzel, spaghetti and frankfurters” more than traditional Indian curries.
The Bnei Menashe teenagers that Colney works with in her role as a social worker have similar clashes with their parents – but it goes beyond just different culinary preferences.
“Especially with Bnei Menashe teens that are born in Israel, they have half the culture of India and half the culture of Israel and they really don’t know how to act,” she explains. “They are always asking ‘who am I?’ And they get frustrated with their parents for not knowing Hebrew, for not being able to help them the way that other parents can help their children with their schoolwork. Sometimes they almost switch roles, because of their parents’ language difficulties.” These are just a few of the issues Colney addresses in her work.
Colney has been very focused since she came to Israel: learning Hebrew, graduating from high school, studying in a women’s religious seminary (she learned at Jerusalem’s Machon Ora after finishing her National Service) and of course her four years of social work courses in Safed. “I was so busy, I never had time for a boyfriend,” she says. “Now that I’ve started working, I can finally think about dating!”
Indeed, her biggest dream, she says, is that “now that G-d has given me everything I need, I want to establish a family – a Jewish family – in Israel. ” She pauses, then adds, “I also want to be successful in my job, to be able to help my community…because they need a lot of help.”
With Esther Colney and her brother Itzkhak serving the Bnei Menashe, it’s clear that help is on its way. And for Esther, we have no doubt that love will surely follow.