The first 83 Bnei Menashe immigrants arrived in Nof Hagalil
After a solemn and moving ceremony, with the sound of shofar blasts and the singing of ‘HaTikvah’, the first 83 immigrants out of the 253 members of the Menashe community who were absorbed in Nof Hagalil were received Monday. The immigrants entered the houses they rented in the city and enrolled their children in the schools and kindergartens: “From today you are an integral part of our beautiful landscape,” Mayor Ronen Plot greeted them. Plot accompanied them along with the Minister of Absorption, Pnina Tamu Shata and the Knesset’s Absorption Committee.
“Nof Hagalil is happy and excited to absorb a new community from the Bnei Menashe immigrants. We have an earlier group in the city that has done amazingly well,” said Plot, adding that this is a holiday for the city. The families of the immigrants, mostly young couples with children, will live in rented apartments with the help of the Shavei Israel organization that accompanied and assisted in the entire process of their arrival in Israel, and will be closely accompanied by the Nof Hagalil Municipality through the Absorption Division.
“We have been accompanying the families since the day they arrived in Israel about two months ago and have been in close contact with them throughout their initial period of acclimatization at the Nordia Absorption Center,” said Svetlana Jakubowicz, director of the Absorption Department.
The apartments in which the families will live were furnished with the help of donations collected by the residents of Nof Hagalil as part of a special operation organized by the Absorption Department in cooperation with the Hesder Yeshiva and the religious community in the city. Since the immigrants came from two states that speak different languages in India, Mizoram where the Mizo language is spoken and Manipur where the Kuki language is spoken – they will be accompanied by two project managers who come from the two states, Meir Paltual and Yona Hyangta. The community will also be accompanied by national service girls from the other Bnei Menashe residents in the city and families who speak their language in order to bridge the language gaps.
Mira Zilberman, Director of the Galilee and Valleys Area at the Ministry of Absorption, is involved in the absorption process and closely monitors the optimal adaptation of the immigrants, and in the coming days, with the arrival of the other families, Hebrew classrooms will open for them. Members of the community, mostly observers of national Zionist religious traditions, will also learn at Nof Hagalil Hesder Yeshiva headed by Rabbi Danny Seglis and the yeshiva’s director Udi Klein Members of the religious community will also be led by Tzachi Weiss.