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The Tribe of Menashe Discovered in North East India

One of the most exciting events in the end-time redemption of Israel is the great testimony of the discovery of descendants of the tribe of Menashe in North East India. This tribe which numbers around 5 million has a very old tradition that they are the tribe of Menashe which was taken from Israel after the destruction of the Northern Kingdom by the Assyrians. They observe Shabbat and the festivals and the Biblical Jewish laws. They have synagogues and sing "We desire Zion" and pray to the G-d of Israel to answer and fulfill their desires to return to Zion and they direct their prayers towards the Temple Mount which is called by them, Mount Zion. They are deeply connected to the people of Israel and a major desire is to return to Israel.

The Government of Israel may soon send a team to north East India to meet the communities of the tribe of Menashe to learn everything about them and to investigate how to reunite them with the people and land of Israel. The advisor to the Prime Minister of Israel regarding Diaspora Jewry, Channa Isakov, advised the Knesset that this team be sent. The Chief Rabbinate of Israel is now checking the possibility to bring the tribe back to Israel.

Last year the Israeli Ministry of the Interior, gave citizenship to the first hundred members of the tribe and they are now in Israel. Rabbi Eliyahu Avichail was the first to discover the descendants of Menashe in India in 1979. In his testimony he stated that in this year a letter came to him from the Menashe Jews and he immediately travelled to meet them in India. His initial conclusion on meeting them was that they are deeply connected and are a part of the people of Israel. Rabbi Avichail is the man who for many years has pushed this issue. He has travelled to the East on many occasions to discover descendants of the ten Lost tribes of Israel. According to him he has discovered descendants of all ten tribes in India and in the high mountains of Afghanistan. He also discovered that they still call themselves by the original names of the Ten Tribes. He continues to research the matter and will not stop until he has discovered all the descendants. He brought to the attention of the Knesset very clear evidence of the deep connection of the members of the tribe in India to Israel and to the Jewish tradition and heritage. He continues his research into the remainder of the Ten Tribes.

On his recent return from North East India where he visited the Menashe communities, Rob Wolfsohn, a journalist who is writing a book on the Menashe communities, stated that in the area of Manipur, he found a synagogue of the Menashe tribe and when he prayed in this synagogue he felt that he could have been in a synagogue in Brooklyn. He said that he had gone to the place not believing that the story was true, but that he had returned with a deep feeling that there is evidence of a very ancient linkage of the Menashe communities to the people and land of Israel.

(from the hope-of-israel.org)



Israeli Tribes: Once Lost
and Now Found?

Searching for the Lost Tribes of Israel in India and Afghanistan


NEWSWEEK

Oct. 21 issue — When the veteran Israeli journalist Hillel Halkin began hunting for the Lost Tribes of Israel four years ago, he thought the claim that a community of Indians on the Burmese border was descended from one of the tribes was either a fantasy or a hoax. The fate of Israel’s 10 lost tribes, which, after being driven from ancient Palestine in the eighth century B.C. by Assyrian conquerors, disappeared into ethnic oblivion, ranks among history’s biggest mysteries.

ON HIS THIRD trip to the Indian states of Manipur and Mizoram, Halkin was shown texts that convinced him that the community, which calls itself the Bnei Menashe, has roots in the lost tribe of Menashe. The documents included a will and words to a song about the Red Sea.
The argument, made in his new book “Across the Sabbath River” (Houghton Mifflin), is not just academic. Some Israeli rabbis believe descendants of the lost tribes number more than 35 million around the world and could help offset the sharply increasing Palestinian population. As founder of the organization Amishav (My People Return), Eliyahu Avichail trots the globe in search of lost Jews, in order to bring them back to their religion through conversation and direct them to Israel. He’s even hoping to make it to Afghanistan later this year. “I believe that groups like the Bnei Menashe are part of the solution to Israel’s demographic problems,” says Amishav director Michael Freund. The group has already brought 700 of the Bnei Menashe to Israel and believes thousands more are eager to come. Most have been put up in settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip—the main arena of Israeli-Palestinian fighting.
Last week at Utniel, a hilltop settlement south of Hebron, a few of the recent Indian immigrants brought back by Amishav sat on the grass during a break from their Jewish studies, singing songs they learned in Manipur about redemption in Jerusalem. A day earlier, Palestinians had shot two Israelis in an ambush a few miles up the road from the settlement. “We feel good here; we’re not scared,” says one of the students, Yosef Thangjom. At another settlement in the area, Kiryat Arba, Manipur native Odelia Khongsai explains why she chose to leave India two years ago, where she had family and a good job. “I had everything a person could want, but I still felt some-thing spiritual was missing.”
Halkin plans to return to India in February with a team of Israeli and American doctors who will conduct genetic tests on the Bnei Menashe to determine scientifically if their ancestors hail from ancient Palestine. But this time it’s the Bnei Menashe who are skeptical. “I think DNA testing is just hogwash,” says Khongsai, who lives with her 6-year-old daughter in a trailer home in Kiryat Arba. “I know I’m a Jew from the Bnei Menashe tribe, and that’s all that matters.”
—Dan Ephron