Bnei Menashe

My name is Amos Sektak. I am 25 years old and made Aliya to Israel in 2000 from Manipur State, India. As a child, I went through many difficulties, many humiliations and suffered many “jokes” made by my “friends.” They always called us the “Saturday people” or the “circumcised ones,” and laughed at our religion. Even in school there were all sorts of difficulties, socially as well as requiring us to take our examinations or do our turn of duty on the Sabbath day. My life's dream was to come on Aliya to Israel, to live in a Jewish state and feel like I belonged and not different. With God's help as well as with Shavei Israel's, I came on Aliya to Israel. My dream became a reality. I spent one and a half years in a yeshiva in Jerusalem and felt that I was simply at home. Nevertheless, mixed in with my happiness was the sadness that my family remained in India.
Hello! My name is Sonia… The name my parents gave me at birth and I don’t know why! People love to ask me why… “Because Sonia is a Russian name!” I didn’t know how to answer them except to say that in Indian, the name means “My dear”! I came on Aliya on August 10, 1999 together with my family, coming directly to Kiryat Arba, because until then my eldest sister lived there ever since making Aliya in 1993. She married in Israel, started a family and lives happily with her husband and three children! So, we stayed by her for a half year. During this time, we studied Hebrew at the Kiryat Arba Community Center. After about four months, I was enrolled at the Kiryat Arba Ulpanah for Girls. I began studies in 8th grade. This was a year I shall never forget for the rest of my life, due to problems with the Hebrew language. So, I was so quiet, never uttering a word and never wrote anything.

My name is Liron Menelon. I arrived in Israel on February 11, 2000 and did not know any Hebrew. I have two uncles in Kiryat Arba where I also lived. My Hebrew I learned in an Ulpan. Afterwards I went to live with my uncles. I began...

Was it tragedy or fate that brought Dr. Aaron Abraham and his family from India to Israel? Abraham was the family doctor for Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife Rivki, the young couple who ran the Chabad House in Mumbai (formerly known as Bombay). On November 26, 2008, Islamic terrorists attacked several sites in the city, including Chabad. When Abraham learned that they had murdered five people inside the Jewish center, including the Holtzbergs, he was devastated. Abraham's initial encounter with the Holtzbergs took place several years ago while he was working in a Mumbai hospital. Rabbi Holtzberg came in on a Friday with one of his boys who needed to be admitted. Abraham could see the rabbi was worried about leaving his son over Shabbat, “so I offered to stay with the child,” Abraham recalls. From that point forward, the Holtzbergs turned to Abraham for all of their family medical needs. Abraham then became a regular at the Holtzberg’s Shabbat table. For over five years, he walked up to an hour each way through the crowded Mumbai streets to celebrate the Sabbath with them each week. He participated in their Passover Seders, celebrated all the Jewish holidays, and learned Hebrew and Jewish law from the Holtzbergs. “We were very close,” Abraham says in fluent English. “We were never separated.” Indeed, after the attack, it was Abraham who had to take the couple to the morgue.
As a child growing up in the small Indian village of Churachandpur near the Burmese border, Tzvi Khaute didn't pay all that much attention to Jewish tradition. Like most kids, Tzvi was more interested in playing soccer with his friends and doing well at school. Nonetheless, even from a very young age, Tzvi always knew that by being Jewish he was different. "My grandfather, who was the chief priest of the village, told us that our living in India was only a sojourn and temporary, and that we Bnei Menashe are separate from the rest of the country - politically, socially and ethnically," Tzvi recalls. His family instilled within Tzvi a deep pride in their roots as Bnei Menashe (Hebrew for "the Children of Manasseh"), who trace their descent from one of the Ten Lost Tribes which were exiled from the Land of Israel some 27 centuries ago by the Assyrian empire. As he grew up, Tzvi began to take more interest in his heritage. He took note of the rituals of the Bnei Menashe that he would later learn were in many ways parallel to modern Jewish observance. "Shabbat was always observed as a rest day from work," he says. "We never mixed milk and meat, and chicken and cattle were slaughtered by the community priest."(Spanish test) As a child growing up in the small Indian village of Churachandpur near the Burmese border, Tzvi Khaute didn't pay all that much attention to Jewish tradition. Like most kids, Tzvi was more interested in playing soccer with his friends and doing well at school.
When Dina Samte sings, it’s hard to believe she’s only 17. Her expressive voice and expertise at the keyboard suggest a professional with years of training and performance experience. Even more remarkable is that not only is Dina entirely self-taught, but she was also born blind. Dina Samte is a member of Bnei Menashe, a group living in northeastern India which is descended from a Lost Tribe of Israel. She made aliyah in 2007 along with 230 other members of the community. Now living near Jerusalem, Dina credits Shavei Israel, which facilitated the process for her and her family, with “taking us in her wings like an eagle.” Dina was born in Churachandpur, a rural village in Manipur with limited facilities for teaching the blind. “I received no formal education,” she says. But her aptitude for music became quickly apparent. Her father bought her a small keyboard when she was just 9 years old. “I learned by myself without any help,” she says proudly.
When Tzvi Khaute landed at Tel Aviv for the first time, he wanted to kiss the earth. Alas, the modern airport was all tarmac and stone, so he kissed the first soil he came across, in a flowerpot. Thousands of diaspora Jews from around the world make aliyah — the migration to Israel — every year, but for Tzvi and his fellow Tibeto-Burmese immigrants from the far northeast of India, the journey was particular freighted with symbolism. They believe they are descendants of one of the ten lost tribes of Israel, sent into exile by the Assyrians almost 800 years before the Romans destroyed the temple in Jerusalem.
Hundreds of Bnei Menashe in northeastern India gathered together earlier this week for communal celebrations of Yom Haatzmaut (Independence Day) to mark Israel's 62nd birthday. The Bnei Menashe (Hebrew for "sons of Manasseh") claim to be descendants of one of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, who were sent into exile by the Assyrian Empire more than 27 centuries ago.
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