September 18, 2005
WELCOME BACK:
A passage to Israel for lost tribe of India (SHAIKH AZIZUR RAHMAN, 9/18/05, Scotland on Sunday)
AFTER almost three millennia in exile the Bnei Menashe Jews of India believe they are about to be returned to the Promised Land.More than 7,000 mainly impoverished Indian Jews will convert to orthodox Judaism in the coming weeks, thereby gaining the right to live in Israel.
In April Shlomo Amar, the Sephardic chief rabbi, announced in Jerusalem that he accepted the Bnei Menashe, which means "Children of the Messiah", as one of the 10 lost tribes of Israel.
A Beit Din, or rabbinical court, arrived in India last week on a mission to convert the Bnei Menashes of India's Mizoram and Manipur states to orthodox Judaism, giving hope to thousands of a new life in Israel. [...]
Shavei Israel, a Jerusalem-based organisation that has been trying to locate descendants of lost Jewish tribes around the world and bring them to Israel, believes that all Chins in Burma, Mizos in Mizoram and Kukis in Manipur - three prominent tribes of the region - are descendants of Menashe.
According to the organisation there are up to two million Bnei Menashes living in the hilly regions of Burma and north-east India.
After an Assyrian invasion in around 722BC, Jewish tradition says 10 tribes from Israel were enslaved in Assyria. Later the tribes fled and wandered through Afghanistan, Tibet and China.
In around 100AD, one group moved south from China and settled around north-east India and Burma. These Chin-Mizo-Kuki people, who speak Tibeto Burmese dialects and resemble Mongols in appearance, are believed to be the Bnei Menashes.
According to Shavei Israel, there are more than one million ethnic Bnei Menashes in India. Because they lived for centuries in north-east India, mingling with local people, many of their Jewish traditions became diluted. And after Welsh missionaries arrived in the area in 1894, nearly all Bnei Menashes, Kukis and Mizos were converted from their animistic beliefs to Christianity.
DNA studies at the Central Forensic Institute in Calcutta conclude that while the tribe's males show no links to Israel, the females share a family relationship to the genetic profile of Middle-Eastern people.
Rabbi Eliyahu Birnbaum, a dayan or rabbinical court judge who is leading the Beit Din conversion mission in India, said the decision to accept Indian Bnei Menashes as a lost Jewish tribe followed a careful study of the issue.
"After the conversion the Bnei Menashes can apply for immigration to Israel under the Law of Return, which grants the right of citizenship to all Jews," said Birnbaum.
Interesting gender-based genetics, those. Posted by Orrin Judd at September 18, 2005 12:00 AM
Jewishness has traditionally been assigned through the mother's line, not the father's. Amazing what those old timers knew well before DNA was "discovered."
Posted by: erp at September 18, 2005 10:22 AMAnd of course mitochondrial DNA comes from the mother. So when you see a sub-population whose maternal lines are related genetically at that level to one another and to middle eastern Jews, but whose exterior culture is diluted with another group's names, customs etc. it's a fair conclusion that these are descended from Jewish women and therefore qualify as Jews born to the faith under Jewish law.
Not my religion, but it makes perfect religious and scientific sense. Unless you think men are special and define God's people, that is ....
Posted by: Robin Burk at September 18, 2005 11:59 AMNeat. If all maternal descendants of Jews accept, Israel will soon have a population of 3 billion and be the world's most powerful nation. Best to do the recruiting while much of the world is still poor.
Posted by: pj at September 18, 2005 4:27 PMBnei Menashe translates as: The sons of Menashe. Menashe was one of the twelve tribes of ISRAEL.
It does NOT translate as: The sons of the Messiah.
Posted by: obc at September 18, 2005 6:58 PMerp;
Uh, no. The key point is that maternal descent is never in question as paternal descent can be.
Posted by: Annoying Old Guy at September 18, 2005 10:32 PMAOG, true, but paternity can be pretty well assured if women are kept in the custody of their mothers-in-law (see Islam).
Not if there are battles and city sackings going on. And even without those, the custody thing requires eternal vigilance and hysterical overreaction to female infedility. In contrast, maternal descent just works, even in situations of chaos and confusion. It is, as we say in my trade, far more robust and clearly the better choice for the pragmatic tribe.
Posted by: Annoying Old Guy at September 19, 2005 1:41 PM