Officials in the Prime Minister's Office yesterday denied reports that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had decided to allow the remaining 7,000 members of the Bnei Menashe community in India to immigrate to Israel.
Bnei Menashe, a community of some 7,000 from India's northeastern border states, claim descent from Menashe, one of the Ten Lost Tribes.
The officials said Olmert had not made up his mind yet, and that Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit, who must sign the immigration approval, strongly objects to the move.
Some 600 Bnei Menashe immigrants were brought to Israel in the past decade. About half were converted to Judaism before immigrating and the rest after arriving, due to India's objection to religious conversions on its soil.
Israeli officials fear that approving the immigration of the entire Bnei Menashe community would meet objections from India and would encourage other groups to demand the right to come to Israel. They also fear that such a decision would ire those people acting to bring the Falashmura community from Ethiopia, which Israel has recently decided to stop bringing as a group.
Cabinet secretary Oved Yehezkel, who is in charge of the Diaspora, supports bringing the Bnei Menashe community here.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Conversion - Bnei Menashe from India in limbo
Haaretz reported:
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The Bnei Menashe are a perfect test case for charedi attitudes towards gerus.
ReplyDeleteThey are gerei zedek according to every possible meaning of the word. There are no halachic issues. All of them are frum, and they make extraordinary sacrifices to keep mitsvos and learn Torah. Their conversion is direct rejection of and rebellion against evangelical Christianity (they see themselves as leaving the Christian distortion of the Torah for the true, Jewish Torah). They come from small, lovely Indian states where making aliyah means severely lowering their quality of life (gashmiyus) and destroying their stability. Rather, they make aliyah to be part of Am Yisrael and to live in Eretz Yisrael despite extreme hardships when they get to Israel.
But on the other hand, they are not charedim. They have no identification with the charedi world, its social mores, or its gedolim. So the charedi world has nothing to "gain" from their aliya.
The question is this: After all the recent harsh campaigns by the charedi world against gerus that they accuse as being too lenient, will the charedi world now champion the rights of true gerim to come live in Eretz Yisrael? Will the charedi parties in the Knesset do everything to push the government to let them in? Or is "ahavas ha-ger" only important to them when the ger will wear a black hat and send his kids to charedi schools?
Anonymous said:
ReplyDeleteThe Bnei Menashe are a perfect test case for charedi attitudes towards gerus.... The question is this: After all the recent harsh campaigns by the charedi world against gerus that they accuse as being too lenient, will the charedi world now champion the rights of true gerim to come live in Eretz Yisrael? Will the charedi parties in the Knesset do everything to push the government to let them in? Or is "ahavas ha-ger" only important to them when the ger will wear a black hat and send his kids to charedi schools?
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Aside from your profound dislike for chareidim - you have not expressed your views very clearly.
The Bene Menashe are a complicated issue both in regards to halacha, politics and sociology.
Why don't you try expressing yourself in more respectful terms and if you are really interested in discussion - perhaps we can have one.
Anonymous 8/21/08's description of the area where the Bnai Menashe originate does not anywhere match the reality.
ReplyDeleteThe Bene Menashe are Christians living in Manipur and Mizoram between Burma and Bangladesh.
Bangladesh is one of the world’s poorest countries, ranking third after India and China in the extent of poverty. Most of the country is made up of flood plain, and while the alluvial soil provides good arable land, large areas are at risk because of frequent floods and cyclones, which take lives and destroy crops, livestock and property.
The implementation of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) in 1958 resulted in the designation of Manipur as a "disturbed area" .
There has been constant war in the area since 1958. My relatives(Iraqi Jews) who fled Burma in the 1970s, abandoning their homes, vast lands (coffee plantations), businesses and other assets due to the violence and unstable government.
Ordinary Manipuris are tired of the rebels' influence and disruption of life and economy. They also issue dictates and rulings on moral and social behavior, enforced with the threat of violence. Extortion is also rampant in Manipur. Most professions are forced to pay the rebels regular sums of money that are locally called 'tax'.
Christians (which the Bnai Menashe are) are the victims of ongoing violence from local tribal people and the Hindu majority who have beheaded pastors and burned churches. There has been constant violence against Christians perpetrated by Hindus who do not wish to have their children taken from them and converted to Christianity.
Myanmar, also called Burma is one of Asia's poorest countries. Ravaged by a junta bent on keeping power, political and social unrest have been as much a part of the culture as the people. The area has been predominately unstable since the invasion of Great Britain in the 1800s.
Christian persecution in Burma is growing because it is an ethnic issue. The government of Burma has declared a culture war against Christianity by offering 6,000 kyats to any man who will marry a Christian woman because the children will be of the father's religion. The majority of the people (89%) are Buddhist and Christians are 4%.
The Bnai Menashe claim descent from one of the Lost Tribes of Israel. Linguistically, they are Tibeto-Burmans and belong to the Mizo, Kuki and Chin peoples. The group was named Bnei Menashe by Eliyahu Avichail because he believes that the legendary Kuki-Mizo ancestor Manmasiis is one and the same with Menasseh, son of Joseph.
Prior to their conversion to Christianity in the 19th Century, the Chin-Kuki-Mizo were headhunters and animists. They have no written history but their legends refer to a beloved homeland they were driven away from called Sinlung/Chhinlung.
Anthropologists and historians believe that it was located in China's Yunnan province and that the Tibeto-Burman migration from there began about 6000 years ago.
Although Michael Freund claims that the Bnei Menashe claim to have a chant they call Miriam's Prayer, the words of the chant are identical to that of the Sikpui Song .
Freund claims that according to the Bnei Menashe "a century ago, when British missionaries first arrived in India's North-East, they were astonished to find that the local tribesmen worshiped one god, were familiar with many of the stories of the Bible, and were practicing a form of biblical Judaism".
By all empirical historical accounts, the entire tribe were animists at the time of the arrival of the missionaries.