Source: @IsraeliPM / X
When Prime Minister Narendra Modi met representatives of Israel’s 85,000-strong Indian Jewish community on the second day of his two-day state visit to Israel, on 26 February this year, he observed, “Their deep-rooted connection to India and their remarkable contributions to Israel stand as a living bridge between our two nations.”[1] This people-to-people connector between the two nations is slated to grow even stronger, as the remaining 6,000 Bnei Menashe (children of the tribe of Menashe) from India’s northeast states of Mizoram and Manipur prepare to make their migration or Aliyah (‘to go up’) to Israel.[2] [3] [4]
The Bnei Menashe are from the Tibeto-Burman Kuki-Mizo tribes. In the 1930s and 40s, after converting to Christianity, certain pre-Christian beliefs and rituals persisted. The most important was the strong belief that they were descendants of Manmasi or Manasia, a revered Judaic ancestor.[5] When they studied the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament, as Christians, they felt a familiarity that Christianity did not evoke. The strongest was that their ancestor, Manmasi, was possibly Menashe, grandson of the Biblical Patriarch Jacob and one of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. This became a conviction, and a movement to revert to their roots began.
Since the late 1970s, the Bnei Menashe, with a population of about 10,000, have struggled to be recognised by Israel’s Chief Rabbinate as one of the ten lost tribes of the Biblical Northern Kingdom of Israel, exiled and dispersed in 722 BCE after an Assyrian invasion. According to Jewish religious law, they are not considered Jews because of their 2,700-year break from practising Judaism. But they persisted, first by forming proto-Judaic groups whose leaders reached out to India’s traditional Jewish communities; from the early 1990s, an Ashkenazi rabbi began bringing them to Israel. Finally, in 2006, Israel’s Chief Rabbinate recognised the Bnei Menashe as a ‘seed of Israel’ or Lost Tribe.
Source: @narendramodi / X
In November 2025, an Israeli cabinet decision reversed Israel’s decades-long policy of fixed quotas for Bnei Menashe immigrants. It launched “Operation Wings of Dawn”, a $29 million programme that sponsors, trains and resettles them across Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has earmarked 2030 as the year by which all Bnei Menashe who wish to make Aliyah or return can do so under the auspices of Israel’s Ministry of Aliyah and Integration and the Jewish Agency for Israel.
Following this and PM Modi’s state visit to Israel, about 600 Bnei Menashe immigrated to Israel in April and May this year. The remaining Bnei Menashe in Mizoram, about 600, will leave before the end of this year.[6] About 4,800 still reside in the conflict-torn state of Manipur and are scheduled to leave between 2027 and 2030.
Source: @ofir.sofer / Instagram
For this article, members of this community living in Aizawl and Kosabi, the latter being Bnei Menashe Kuki refugees from Manipur, were interviewed. The Manipur refugees are poor, eking out a living through daily-wage work, making necklaces, handweaving Mizo textiles, and selling vegetables and homemade snacks. Consequently, they look forward to a better life in Israel and the prospect of finally joining family and community members there, a few of whom had immigrated in the early 1990s.[7] All of them will undergo a formal Orthodox conversion to Judaism that will entitle them to Israeli citizenship. The process takes six months after they reach Israel.[8]
The religious fervour and hopes this community will carry with itself to its new home in Israel can only be understood through their history, sometimes fantastical legends, beliefs, and the role of individuals and non-government organisations (NGOs) in bringing this small community of tribal Indian Northeast Jews to the attention of the mainstream Jewish world.
Historically, two strands explain the discovery of the Bnei Menashe as an Israelite tribe.
One is their pre-Christian belief that they are descendants of Manasia, the grandson of Jacob. Jacob’s 12 sons form the Twelve Tribes of the undivided Biblical Kingdom of Israel. The territorial share of one son, Joseph, is represented by his sons, Menashe and Ephraim.[9] The Assyrian invasion of the Northern Kingdom of Israel in 722 BCE, after undivided Israel split into two on the death of King Solomon in 922 BCE, resulted in the exile and dispersion of the Ten Tribes of the North, including descendants of Jacob’s grandsons Menashe and Ephraim.
When and how the Bnei Menashe arrived in the hills of present-day Mizoram and Manipur is not known, but the discovery of Jewish lost tribes like Maharashtra’s Bene Israel (Children of the Kingdom of Israel) or Ethiopia’s Beta Israel far from their ancestral and spiritual homeland is not uncommon.[10]
Source: Sifra Lentin
The conviction that this community was indeed a Lost Tribe firmed up over time. The strong similarities between their rites, rituals, and practices in their pristine state and those of Halachic (Jewish religious) ones were unmistakable to Rabbinic scholars who visited them. This was triggered after the community wrote to the head librarian of Hebrew University in 1979, asking for information on Judaism. The letter reached Rabbi Eliyahu Avichail, who replied.[11]
Community member and Chazzan (cantor) of Shalom Tzion synagogue, Aizawl, Asaf Renthlei, points to the community’s pre-Christian practice of covering their heads, shoulders, and arms with large Mizo-woven shawls when praying, as Jews traditionally do. Today, Bnei Menashe men continue this practice but instead enter their synagogue with a kippah (cap) and a tallit, a large Jewish prayer shawl, draped over their head, shoulders, and arms, while women enter with their heads covered and long sleeves. “These were practices we remembered down generations,” Renthlei recalls. Other similarities emerged, like a Bnei Menashe song that spoke of the parting of waters akin to the parting of the Red Sea when Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt and towards Canaan, and food preparation practices similar to kosher dietary laws.[12]
Source: Elisheva Zodingliani
These similarities became evident after the community converted to Christianity in the late 19th century, when the British gained control of India’s northeast and permitted missionaries from different Christian churches and sects, particularly the Presbyterians and Baptists, to establish themselves there.[13]
What drew the Bnei Menashe to normative Judaism were the numerous Christian Evangelical sects they joined and constantly shifted loyalties from one to the other, particularly the Messianic, Sabbather (like the Church of God), and Vanmi (People of Heaven). These Christian sects adopted rites and rituals from the Hebrew Bible, such as observing the Jewish Sabbath, while remaining Christian. This restlessness reflected the times. In 1959, the region was ravaged by famine, soon followed by the 1962 Indo-China War in India’s northeast border state of Arunachal Pradesh. Economic distress was a key factor behind the Mizo National Front’s armed insurgency for a separate, independent Mizoram.[14]
“One of the most consequential was the Vanmi in the early 1970s,” says Isaac Thangjom, a founder of Degel Menashe, an Israeli NGO working for the community, and co-author of ‘Lives of the Children of Manasia’ (2022).[15] “I would term them as being proto-Judaic,” he says, “as they discussed the Old Testament, the Law, and the Jewish Sabbath.”
Remarkably, despite the civil war in their region, their isolation, and their humble backgrounds, they reached out to other Indian Jewish communities.
Source: Sifra Lentin
Their first success was when T. Daniel from Churachandpur, Manipur, visited Bombay, soon after a visit to Calcutta in 1973.[16] He stayed for three months with an elderly Baghdadi woman named Esther, who taught him Hebrew and the practices of normative Judaism. He returned home with Jewish prayer books, wrote a book, ‘Israel Ihi’uve, We Are Israel’, and founded the first Jewish-style congregation in Churachandpur, Manipur. The next one was established in Imphal.[17] These congregations were made up of breakaway groups from Christian sects, which embraced Judaism. However, the numbers remained minuscule.
The second historical strand in the community’s early history is the role of Jewish NGOs, which advocated for and sponsored the Bnei Menashe’s early Aliyah to Israel. The most important figure is the late Israeli Rabbi Eliyahu Avichail, an Orthodox Ashkenazi rabbi well known as a Lost Tribes hunter.[18]
Source: Sifra Lentin
Source: Elisheva Zodingliani
Since receiving the letter in 1978 from the community, Rabbi Avichail made a concerted effort to reach them. He made his first visit to Silchar, Assam, in 1986, because he was not given the Indian government’s Protected Area Permit (PAP) to enter Mizoram and Manipur. He and the community delegation failed to meet in Silchar; he returned to Calcutta, where they finally met. He first visited the Bnei Menashe in 1989-90 in Aizawl. Elisheva Zodingliani, the community’s grand old lady now over 80, remembers this visit and the ones that followed fondly. She helped set up and run the first Hebrew school in Aizawl.
Rabbi Avichail was the first authoritative religious figure to teach the Bnei Menashe their faith.[19] His influence on this small community is profound. He gifted them Torah scrolls, prayer books and tallitot (prayer shawls), set up a Hebrew School, and named them ‘Bnei Menashe’. Crucially, he sponsored a community member, Gideon Rei, on a trip to Israel and a two-year stay to study the religion in a yeshiva, or religious school.[20] Rei returned to Aizawl to oversee his community’s religious life.
Meanwhile, Mumbai’s Organisation for Educational Resources and Technological Training (ORT) school, which provided skills-based training and familiarity with Israeli culture for those making Aliyah from India, was critical in preparing the first Bnei Menashe immigrants as early as 1983.[21] [22] [23] The Rabbi sponsored about 50 of these ORT students through his NGO, Amichav, to immigrate to Israel.
Even today, although ORT schools in Mumbai are closed, it runs the Sunday Hebrew classes in Aizawl and a full-fledged regular school for internally displaced Bnei Menashe children in Kibbutz Ma’oz Tzur in Lamka, Manipur.[24] In 2006, another NGO, Shavei Israel, founded by Avichail’s deputy Michael Freund, was permitted by the Israeli government to sponsor the migration of the Bnei Menashe.[25] Between 2006 and 2020, Shavei sponsored about 4,000 Bnei Menashe migrants.[26]
This year brought hope for many of those left behind because the Israeli government itself has taken full charge of the sponsorship and immigration process. When ‘Operation Wings of Dawn’ winds down in 2030, and the final 4,800 Bnei Menashe leave for Israel,[27] India’s Northeast will be without almost all its Jews.
There is palpable excitement in the small communities in Aizawl and Kolasib as they prepare to leave by brushing up on their Hebrew, while settling more mundane property and other matters. Not all are leaving. Elisheva believes it’s too late for her to settle in Israel, while Nadav Havnar, treasurer of Shalom Tzion synagogue, plans to leave in 2030. He feels someone should lock up and secure the synagogues. But most look forward to their new lives with a prayer on their lips and hopes for prosperity.
Sifra Lentin is Bombay History Fellow at Gateway House.
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References:
[1] “PM Modi interacts with Indian-origin Jews in Israel, lauds their deep-rooted connection to India”, PTI, Jerusalem, 27 February 2026. https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/pm-modi-interacts-with-indian-origin-jews-in-israel-lauds-their-deep-rooted-india-connection/article70681428.ece.
[2] The number 6,000 is taken from a press release by Israel’s Prime Minister’s office.
Prime Minister’s Office. ‘PM Netanyahu to New Immigrants from the Bnei Menashe Community: “We Are Going to Bring the Entire Community to Israel over the next Four Years.” Prime Minister’s Office’. 11 June 2026. https://www.gov.il/en/pages/event-newcomer110626.
[3] The tribe of Menashe is one of the Ten Lost Tribes of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, whose capital was Samaria. When the Assyrian king Antiochus Epiphanes invaded Israel about 722 BCE, the ten tribes were exiled and dispersed. India’s Marathi-speaking Bene Israel community from Maharashtra’s Konkan Coast traces its origins to the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel; hence, they call themselves Bene Israel or the Children of Israel.
[4] On July 5, 1950, the Knesset unanimously adopted the Law of Return, 1950. Section 1 of the Law reads as follows: Every Jew has the right to immigrate to the country.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs. ‘The Law of Return – 1950’. 20 August 2001. https://www.gov.il/en/pages/the-law-of-return-1950.
[5] This revered ancestor is referred to as Manmasi in Manipur and Manasia in Mizoram.
[6] A residual community comprising mostly its elders will likely remain in Mizoram.
[7] Interviews were conducted from 9 to 11 June 2026 in Aizawl and Kosabi.
[8] Judaism is a non-proselytizing religion; hence, the process of conversion is arduous. According to one interviewee, when Rabbi Avichail, the first Israeli Rabbi to visit Mizoram and Manipur, religiously mentored the Bnei Menashe and sponsored a few to make Aliyah, the conversion process took as long as two years. Today, it is shortened but requires intensive preparation. It is only orthodox conversion that is recognised by Israel’s Chief Rabbinate.
[9] The Kingdom of Israel split after the death of King Solomon in 922 BCE into the Northern Kingdom of Israel, home to ten tribes, and the Southern Kingdom of Judah, home to the two tribes of Judah and Benjamin. ‘Israel (Biblical Kingdom) | Map, History, & Kings | Britannica’. Accessed 27 October 2026. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Israel-Old-Testament-kingdom.
[10] The Bene Israel of Maharashtra and Ethiopia’s Beta Israel are considered Jews by Israel’s Chief Rabbinate; hence, they do not undergo formal conversion. The Bnei Menashe’s long break from Judaism is the reason why they must undergo formal Orthodox conversion.
[11] A feisty, educated, Mizo insurance agent, Zaithangchhungi, visited Israel to meet Rabbi Eliyahu Avichail in 1982. Zai, as she is fondly known in the community, remained a Presbyterian Christian, but her book “Israel-Mizo Identity” made the case that the Mizo (Chhinglung) tribes are children of Menashe and descendants of Israel.
[12] For a detailed study on this, see Halkin, Hillel, Across the Sabbath River: In Search of a Lost Tribe of Israel (New York, Houghton Mifflin & Co., 2002)
[13] Lentin, Sifra. ‘Mizoram’s Chin Refugees from Myanmar’. Articles. Gateway House, 23 July 2026. https://www.gatewayhouse.in/mizorams-chin-refugees-from-myanmar/.
[14] Mizoram was then the Lushai Hills district of Assam state.
[15] The author interviewed Mr Thangjom over a WhatsApp call on 2 September 2026.
[16] Money was raised for these visits by T. Daniel’s uncle, who sold part of his rice fields to sponsor his nephew.
[17] Halkin, Hillel, and Isaac Thangjom. Lives of the Children of Manasia. Gefen Publishing House Ltd., 2002. Oral interview in this book with Isaac Thangjom.
[18] Hillel Halkin’s book “Across the Sabbath River: In Search of a Lost Tribe” (2002) recounts the challenges and umpteen disappointments Avichail faced while searching for Israelites in the dense forests along the China-Myanmar border in the 1990s. Orthodox (Hassidic) Jews believe that the Messiah will only arrive after all the Lost Tribes return to the Holy Land.
[19] He taught them the Ashkenazi or East European liturgy, unlike the Sephardic liturgy sung by India’s traditional Jewish communities.
[20] Gideon Rei and Shimon Gir travelled to Israel at the same time. Shimon’s passage was paid for by his father. The first Bnei Menashe to travel to Israel was T. Avichail Hangshing, who went on his own sometime in 1983 or 1984.
[21] Isaac Thangjom pointed out that the earliest Bnei Menashe students to study in ORT, Mumbai, arrived around 1983. He highlighted the help that the Bene Israel community extended to his community. This was possible because two prominent members from the Bnei Menashe community, his father and T. Avichail Hangshing, who were cousins, were both IAS officers and interacted with the Bene Israel in Delhi and Mumbai. This was how the first Bnei Menashe students made their way to ORT Mumbai.
[22] Interview with Isaac Thangjom on 2 September 2026.
[23] Polytechnic courses like shorthand-typing, machine-tools training, beautician, cooking, and later computer courses, which would help new immigrants earn a living, were once taught at the ORT School. Hebrew classes were also held.
[24] This community enclave was established in 2023, after the COVID pandemic and Manipur ethnic violence erupted on 3 May 2023. It is intended for internally displaced Bnei Menashe refugees and is wholly sponsored by the Israel-based NGO Degel Menashe (lit. Flag of Menashe), whose secretary is Isaac Thongjom, a well-regarded community leader and historian.
[25] In 2006, the Bnei Menashe community was split in its loyalties. Rabbi Avichail’s deputy, Michael Freund, headed a breakaway faction from the Bnei Menashe Council and founded the NGO Shavei Israel to rival the Rabbi’s own NGO, Amichav. When the Israeli government permitted Shavei Israel to facilitate the Bnei Menashe’s immigration to Israel, many switched loyalties, and old-timers like Elisheva, who had advocated tirelessly for her community to make Aliyah, were left behind. The rivalry was so bitter, say community members, that only Shavei loyalists were chosen for Aliyah between 2006 and 2020.
[26] ‘Bnei Menashe’. Shavei Israel, n.d. Accessed 27 October 2026. https://www.shavei.org/communities-2/bnei-menashe/.
[27] The conversion rate used is 1 New Israeli Shekel (NIS) to 0.33 US dollars. Rate as of 6 September 2026.