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Establishing an Institute for Bnei Menashe
Machon Mey Daath / Center for Jewish Studies
Manipur, India
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This video will take a few minutes to load after clicking on the above link.The Shehebar Sephardic Center in Jerusalem, including Rabbi Sam Kassin, Rabbi Eliyahu Shamoula and Rabbi Yaakov Peretz, have provided the International Sephardic Leadeship Council with the video: Establishing an Institute for Bnei Menashe which we invite you to view. The film was produced by Rabbi Shlomo Gangte.
Background: The Jews of India aren't one singular community. Among themselves they are divided into different communities. Each community has its own different culture, background and origin. Each community claims its arrival in India in different ways and it is not always clear how they really came to India. The three main Jewish communities of India are: Beni Israel, Cochini and Baghdadi. Besides there were Ashkenazi Jews and a community in east India which claim Israeli origin and call themselves Beni Menashe. The first three communities had some social religious connections with each other but most of the social religious connections of each community were within their own community and they regarded the other as ‘outsiders’.
In east India in the States of Manipur and Mizoram exists a community which sees itself as descendants of the Beni Menashe Tribe (which is one of the 10 lost tribes). These people have Chinese appearance and they claim that after their forefathers were exiled and enslaved by the Assyrians they somehow escaped from slavery and arrived in China. Later on they moved to the Chinese-Burmese border and much later on to the neighboring east India. Most of the residents of Mizoram and Manipur are Christians. Among the Manipur Jews there are some who believe that all the Manipur and Mizoram residents (about 2 million people) are originally from the Menashe tribe. The Manipur Jews believe that the Christian missionaries in the 19th century, forced these Jews to abolish their Jewish identity and adopt Christianity.
From 1951 after a local chief, named Tchalah revealed to his people that God had told him that his people should return to their original religion and land (Judaism and Israel), there is a movement to return to Judaism and immigration to Israel. Some of them contacted with Israeli rabbis and started learning Judaism. Some of the Israeli rabbis accept their Judaism and others don’t see them as original Jews. Many of the immigrating Manipuri Jews to Israel have converted to Judaism through strict Jewish laws.
