Aliyah from India: Elitzur Seikhogin Haokip
Elitzur Haokip and family before making aliyah
We continue our series of profiles of Bnei Menashe who have made aliyah in the past two years with Shavei Israel’s help. The timing is especially meaningful: as this article is winging its way to you, Shavei Israel staff is flying to India to bring 247 more new immigrants from Manipur to Israel. They will join the 413 other Bnei Menashe who have arrived in the last 12 months – the most ever in one year. As the Bnei Menashe pack their bags and head for the buses that will take them to the airport in New Delhi, let’s take a moment to say hello to Elitzur Seikhogin Haokip.
———-
Elitzur Seikhogin Haokip, 74, made aliyah in November 2012 after two long careers, first in the Indian National Army and then at the “All India Radio” station in Imphal, the capital of the northeastern Indian state of Manipur. The Haokip family were members of the Beit El synagogue in Imphal. Making aliyah with Elitzur were his wife and 12-year-old daughter.
“I was brought up according to traditional Manmashi customs,” Elitzur explains, recalling the path that led him to Judaism and then to Israel. Manmashi was the patriarch of the Bnei Menashe community – the name Manmashi is derived from “Menasseh” (that is, Menashe, one of the lost tribes of Israel) – and many of the customs of the Kuki people of Manipur who claim Manmashi as their ancestor are similar to those found in biblical Judaism. However, in the 1950s, when Elitzur was growing up, many Bnei Menashe had not yet made that connection.
Elitzur received a Bible as a youth, which he read “thoroughly,” he says. The more he explored the stories and laws contained in the Torah (the five books of Moses), the more he began seeing how “the rituals and practices of ancient Israel were related to our present Manmashi norms.” When he learned that Judaism was alive and well in the modern world, “I embraced it immediately, for I knew this was indeed the faith of my ancestor Manmashi and that the G-d of Manmashi was the G-d of Israel, the only true G-d in the universe. From that moment onwards, I have waited for G-d to send someone to bring us, the Bnei Menashe, back to Zion.”
Elitzur is writing a history of Manmashi customs and traditions, which he hopes to publish now that he is in Israel.
Aliyah for Elitzur is not only the culmination of many years of waiting; it is an opportunity for him to observe Jewish Law to the fullest. “To me, no matter how much I practice Judaism in the Diaspora, it is incomparable to a Jew living in the Land of Israel. And as long as I am alive, I want to serve G-d just as the Jews of Israel do.” He then adds, with a wry smile, “Perhaps it will also increase my chances of making it to olam haba,” – referring to the Hebrew for “the next world.”
Please join us in wishing Elitzur and his family many years of successful aliyah – right now, in this world.