Bnei Menashe

The New York Times SHAVEI SHOMRON, West Bank, Dec. 16 — Sharon Palian and his fellow immigrants from India are still struggling with the Hebrew language and remain partial to homemade kosher curry rather than Israeli cuisine. But the 71 immigrants, who arrived in June with the firm conviction that they were descended from one of the biblical lost tribes of Israel, feel they have completed a spiritual homecoming.
The Jerusalem Report AIZAWL / NORTHEAST INDIA The hand-painted letters on the shutters of the "public phone service" announce "Sabbath close." On any other day locals can call long-distance for 42 rupees (around $1) a minute from the worn touchtone phone at this little convenience kiosk. But today is Shabbat and the booth's owner is at home in a sparse cinderblock cubicle at the back, which serves both as a tin-pot kitchen and a single-cot bedroom, and is dissected diagonally by the underside of stairs belonging to the residence above. She's a petite woman in a knitted white cloche, and is just saying kiddush over Styrofoam cups of grape juice and chocolate-cream biscuits, beneath a Xeroxed pin-up of the Ten Commandments rendered into the Mizo tongue.
The Jerusalem Post  Interior Minister Avraham Poraz (Shinui) announced that he has decided to stop members of the Bnei Menashe group from coming to Israel. Over the last decade, some 800 members of the group from the Mizo tribe in northeastern India, which claims descent from a lost tribe of Israel, have immigrated, converted, and settled here.

Last year I spent Sabbath, as well as the week previous to it, in the precinct of Manipur in southeast India, not far from Bangladesh. I was on a mission, together with my distinguished colleagues Rabbi Eliyahu Bierenboim, a revered Rabbi in Israel; Rav Eliyahu Avichail;...

From The Jerusalem Report, 1993   Could Israel be inundated with millions of Africans and Asians claiming Jewish descent? As the first members of the Shinlung tribe, from the remote Indian-Burmese border, undergo conversion in Israel, the notion is becoming ever less absurd. And Israel´s minister of...

Bnei Menashe boy at Ben-Gurion Airport. It was a bright summer morning recently at Ben-Gurion International Airport outside of Tel Aviv when I found myself standing in the arrivals hall, waiting impatiently to witness a miracle.

50 members of the Bnei Menashe, a group claiming descent from a lost tribe of Israel, have arrived in Israel, Israel Radio reports. They arrived as tourists and will undergo conversion before being accepted as immigrants. "The Bnei Menashe have a remarkable thirst for Jewish...

I was born and raised in Imphal, the capital city of Manipur, India´s easternmost state and home to many Bnei Menashe. In the mid-1990s, Rabbi Eliyahu Avichail of Jerusalem opened the Amishav house in Imphal. It consists of a synagogue, two guest rooms, a mikvah...

This coming December when many people are thinking of skiing holidays or warm Florida vacations a small adventurous group of people will be setting out to visit one of the ten lost tribes. Tucked away in the Indian provinces of Manipur and Mizoram between Burma & Bangladesh are a group of people that have returned to Judaism after thousands of years. The Bnei Menashe believe that they are descended from the ancient tribe of Menashe. Evidence shows that after the exile of the northern kingdom of Israel in 721 BCE, many Israelites made their way across the silk route ending up in China. The Shinlung tribe, as they were also called in China, eventually migrated to Burma and north east India, losing many of their Jewish customs along the way.
Jewish Telegraphic Agency JERUSALEM - Shlomo Gangte is a graphic designer, a documentary filmmaker and a recently ordained rabbi. That wouldn't be so unusual, except that Gangte is one of the recently arrived members of the Bnei Menashe, a community from northeastern India that says it is descended from one of the biblical Lost Tribes of Israel.
Show more
Loading...