{"id":361684,"date":"2026-04-28T15:31:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T10:01:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/?p=361684"},"modified":"2026-04-28T15:31:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T10:01:13","slug":"bnei-menashe-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/bnei-menashe-2\/","title":{"rendered":"B\u2019nei Menashe"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><b>News: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Approximately 250 members of the B\u2019nei Menashe community from Northeast India have recently reached Israel, becoming the first group to arrive under \u201cOperation Wings of Dawn.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>About B\u2019nei Menashe<\/h2>\n<figure style=\"width: 400px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.hindustantimes.com\/ht-img\/img\/2026\/04\/25\/400x225\/ISRAEL-INDIA-JEWS-IMMIGRANTS-13_1777108815649_1777108835378.jpg?resize=400%2C225&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"Bnei Menashe \" width=\"400\" height=\"225\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Source: Hindustan Times<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Benei Menashe is a small ethnic community<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0evolved <\/span><b>within Chin-Kuki-Mizo tribes<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, known collectively as the <strong>\u201cZo.\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/li>\n<li><strong>Distribution:<\/strong> They are located in<b> North East India, particularly within Manipur and Mizoram, and neighbouring areas of Myanmar and Bangladesh.\u00a0<\/b>\n<ul>\n<li>About <strong>five thousand Bnei Menashe live in Israel<\/strong>, scattered between <strong>Kiryat Arba, Nof HaGalil, Sderot, Nitzan, Akko and a few other towns. <\/strong><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They are known as the <\/span><b>Shinlung in India. <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Around <strong>10,000 members of the community l<\/strong>ive in India.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><b>Origin: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">According to their belief, <\/span><b>they are descendants of the tribe of Manasseh <\/b>(regard themselves as<b> &#8220;Children of Menashe&#8221;), <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">one of the<\/span><b> ten lost tribes of Israel <\/b>who<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> are believed to have<strong> gone into exile after the Assyrian conquest of Israel around 722 BCE.<\/strong><\/span>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They believe <\/span><b>their ancestors migrated eastward through regions like Persia (modern-day Iran) and Afghanistan <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">before settling in Northeast India. <\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Before British rule in the late 19th century, <\/span><b>they followed an ancestral tribal religion featuring a figure called Manasia or Manmasi.<\/b><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Over time, during British rule, many of them <\/span><b>converted to Christianity due to missionary influence.<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Religion:\u00a0<\/strong>They largely follow <b>Judaism.\u00a0<\/b><\/li>\n<li><strong>Language:<\/strong> The languages they speak<strong> belong to the Tibetan-Burmese family.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Tradition:<\/strong> <strong>Men<\/strong> typically wear <strong>kippahs or hats<\/strong>, while married <strong>women cover<\/strong> their heads.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><b>Bnei Menashe movement: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The <\/span><b>Bnei Menashe movement <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">began in 1951 when <\/span><b>Challianthanga (Challa),<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> a Mizo Pentecostal leader in India, had a vision that his people&#8217;s homeland was Israel.\u00a0<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This sparked <\/span><b>a shift among the Chin-Kuki-Mizo people in Northeast India,<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> leading them to embrace their identity as<\/span><b> descendants of the lost tribe of Manasseh.<\/b><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In the 1970s,<\/span><b> a Judaizing movement inspired by the Hebrew Bible began, with limited contact with global Judaism<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In the 1980s, <strong>Eliyahu Avichail<\/strong> guided the community and introduced Jewish traditions.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">However, those moving to<\/span><b> Israel must convert again to Judaism to gain citizenship.<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>News: Approximately 250 members of the B\u2019nei Menashe community from Northeast India have recently reached Israel, becoming the first group to arrive under \u201cOperation Wings of Dawn.\u201d About B\u2019nei Menashe The Benei Menashe is a small ethnic community\u00a0evolved within Chin-Kuki-Mizo tribes, known collectively as the \u201cZo.\u201d Distribution: They are located in North East India, particularly&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/bnei-menashe-2\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">B\u2019nei Menashe<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10366,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1566,11212,12039],"tags":[11872,10500],"class_list":["post-361684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-factly-articles","category-history-and-art-culture-in-news","category-knolls","tag-9pm-daily-factly","tag-indian-express","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10366"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=361684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361684\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=361684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=361684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=361684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}