Zion on the Myanmar Border

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.
Dozens of Majorca´s "lost Jews", or Chuetas, whose ancestors were forcibly converted during the Spanish Inquisition, will gather this Friday for a seminar in Palma de Majorca exploring their Jewish roots.
Hadassah Magazine  One growing group seeking to come home to Israel is bringing with them an unexpected bonus: Anousim have a devotion to Judaism that many have lost. Maria Villaralla knew that her mother’s family had Jewish origins in Spain. “We practiced Jewish tradition as much as we knew,” she says. a Ayelet Corona has Jewish roots on both sides and says her mother’s family came from a village in the Mexican state of Michoacan where most of the inhabitants “don’t mix milk and meat, didn’t work on Saturday and leave pebbles on tombstones.”
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...

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 (ritual...

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