Nearly 5,000 new siddurim (prayer books) were sent from Israel to India recently and the Bnei Menashe celebrated with an outpouring of creativity, including folk dances presented by community members from various Bnei Menashe villages of Monglenphai, Sijang, Zohar, Patlen and Beith El Imphal (the residents...
Shavei Israel has appointed two new emissaries: one to Poland and another to serve in Colombia. Rabbi Avi Baumol will be serving the Jewish community in Krakow. Rabbi Marcelo Shimon Yehoshua will be our new emissary traveling between Bnei Anousim communities in Colombia. Here’s a...
Shavei Israel has published a new booklet in Spanish and Russian on the upcoming holiday of Hanukah. The 40-page booklet includes two main sections – one explaining the history and traditions of the festival, and the other outlining the laws of Hanukah. The booklet also...
Sitting amid a sea of Hebrew books last week at a rabbinical court near Jerusalem, Tony Pina of Palma de Majorca, Spain, defied history and logic and achieved the impossible. More than 500 years ago his Jewish ancestors had been forcibly converted to Catholicism. Last...
The November 15, 2013 weekend edition of The Jerusalem Post Magazine ran a major feature on Shavei Israel's recent seminar in Katowice, Poland and the revival (or continuation) of the Jewish community there. Here's how the article appeared in the print edition....
This Hanukah, joyous light will fill a setting infamously associated for nearly 200 years with torture and murder. For the first time in Italian history, Shavei Israel’s emissary to the Bnei Anousim in southern Italy, Rabbi Pinchas Punturello, will light the candles of the hanukiah...
Shavei Israel held its first ever weekend Shabbaton in Katowice, Poland, at the end of October. Seventy people from throughout Poland (and a few special guests from Israel, including Shavei Israel Chairman Michael Freund) attended the 3-day seminar, including 40 from the Katowice community itself....
Ruth Haokip came from India, a member of Bnei Menashe, “the children of Menashe.” Jin Jin grew up more than 1,700 miles away, in Kaifeng, China. And on the Upper West Side, they spoke about what they had in common: Both were members of “lost”...
It’s called “Study of Torah Street” in Chinese and for hundreds of years was the center of Jewish life in the ancient Chinese capital of Kaifeng. But since the 1850s, when the synagogue was shuttered and the last rabbi passed away, the “Study of Torah...
Shavei Israel held its first ever weekend Shabbaton in Katowice, Poland at the end of October. Seventy people from throughout Poland (and a few special guests from Israel, including Shavei Israel Chairman Michael Freund) attended the 3-day seminar, including 40 from the Katowice community itself....
