This article contains information on all three communities in Peru – the Amazon Jews in the cities of Iquitos and Tarapoto; the Bnei Moshe; and the larger Jewish community of Lima. Click here to view the article. The New York Times ran an...
We'll be posting background and research information on the Jews of the Amazon here. If you have material you'd like to submit, you can write to us on the Contact Us page....
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History was made on Wednesday when Shalem Gin became the first IDF officer from the Bnei Menashe community. Gin received the rank of second lieutenant in front of friends and family at a ceremony held at the Bahad 1 military base in the Negev. 'I...
History was made on Wednesday when Shalem Gin, 20, became the first IDF officer from the Bnei Menashe community - descended from one of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. Gin received the rank of Second Lieutenant, known as Sagam, before friends and family at...
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Immigrating to Israel is challenging at any time. Now, try doing it without your parents and then jumping straight into the Israel Defense Forces. Such brave new citizens are known as “lone soldiers.” And now the army has two more – from the Bnei Menashe community of India.
Binyamin Vaiphei and Sagi Haokip are following in the footsteps of Tamir Baite, the first Bnei Menashe lone soldier who served in 2006 (see picture). The two newcomers arrived in Israel in 2007 along with 232 other Bnei Menashe who were brought on aliyah by Shavei Israel. Due to limits imposed on the number of Bnei Menashe immigrants allowed in at the time, their families were forced to stay behind.
After an initial period of acclimatization, during which they studied Hebrew and Judaism, the two young men were set up in apartments by Shavei Israel – Vaiphei in a Jerusalem suburb and Haokip in the Galilee town of Ma’alot. They subsequently joined the IDF and were drafted into the elite Golani unit.
TORONTO-RAANANA - One of the current priorities for Shavei Israel (literally, ‘Israel returns’), a non-profit organization which – according to its mission statement – “reaches out and assists ‘lost Jews’ seeking to return to the Jewish people,” is the Subbotnik Jews, who descend from peasants...
He wanders Amazon jungles, travels to Chinese villages, searches Spain for Marranos, and sees India’s Bnei Menashe as his life's mission. Michael Freund has an obsession: Discovering remote Jews. Read the article in Ynet....
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When Gila Arditi’s grandfather purchased a burial vault for his family in Colombia, he made sure that the structure faced towards Jerusalem. His daughter is now living a dream her grandfather could only have imagined, moving with her husband Ariel and their two children to Israel. Gila and Ariel now study at Shavei Israel's Machon Miriam Conversion and Return Institute in Jerusalem.
The path has not been a quick or easy one for the Arditi's. The couple, who are now in their late 60s, met when they were just teenagers. Their romance had a “West Side Story” twist: Gila’s family were artisans, while Ariel had a strong agricultural background.
Unlike Tony and Maria, though, this young couple from Bogota had a shared Jewish tradition. As Bnei Anousim – people whose Jewish ancestors were compelled to convert to Catholicism more than five centuries ago - both families kept many of the Jewish holidays, fasted on Yom Kippur and lit candles for Shabbat.
Other customs Gila and Ariel kept growing up included salting their meat (a part of the process for making meat kosher), keeping separate sets of dishes for dairy and meat, washing hands before eating, and circumcising their infant boys. The families also sat “shiva” in a low chair when someone died, and they mourned for a year - the traditional Jewish practice.
Ariel’s large family – he has 9 siblings - went so far as move to a new village where the market takes place on a Sunday so they could refrain from working on the sabbath.
There were also some interesting interpretations: they divided the land into seven parts and each year let one rest (reminiscent of the Jewish law of shmita). During the Passover holiday, they ate seven different kinds of soups for each of the intermediary days.
And then there was the shofar. “Since we were young,” Ariel says,” we knew how to blow the shofar, but it wasn’t a religious thing. During the thousand day war (a civil war that rocked in Colombia from 1899-1902), we needed to communicate between places, to tell each other if there was danger. The Jews had their own special language through the shofar.”
Despite all these clues, the Arditi’s - like many Bnei Anousim - didn’t make the connection between their family traditions and Judaism until much later – when Gila’s daughter began exploring her own roots.
“We always knew we were different,” Gila says. “The people in our village told us so, but for us it was totally natural.”
