252 Jews from Northeast India emigrate to Israel to begin a new life

TEL AVIV: As many as 252 people belonging to the Jewish community, including infants and elderly, from the Bnei Menashe community of India's Northeast region on Tuesday landed at the Ben-Gurion airport in Tel Aviv, Israel. They include 50 families, 24 singles, four infants under the age of two, and 19 people over the age of 62. The immigration of the Northeast Indian Jews was approved by the Israeli government in October, 2020.

"Some 90 per cent of them have completed their aliyah (immigration) permit process and soon all of them will be taken to a Shavei Israel absorption centre in the Nordiya moshav close to Netanya," a Bnei Menashe community member told media persons.

Jews looking to immigrate to Israel are being facilitated by the Shavei Israel, which is a non-profit organisation.

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The emigrated Jews will complete their quarantine period at the moshav (an agricultural commune) and spend some three months there going through the formal absorption process, including learning Hebrew. Following that they are likely to be settled in the north in the Nazareth Illit area.

The ministry of Immigration and Absorption said that some 2,437 people from the Bnei Menashe community have so far immigrated to Israel from the north-eastern states of Manipur and Mizoram since 2003, .

I am happy that I have the merit to bring the Bnei Menashe to Israel after many years of waiting, Minister for Immigration and Absorption Pnina Tamano-Shata said.

There have been intense debates around the Jewishness of Bnei Menashe in the past but in 2005, the then Chief Rabbi of the Sephardi community, Rabbi Shlomo Amar, recognised them as descendants of Israel paving the way for their immigration to Israel. The community claims that it belongs to the Menashe tribe, one of the ten tribes pushed into exile by the Assyrians some 2700 years ago.

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