[MakkabI]
August 11th, 2004, 03:36 AM
A rabbinical fact-finding committee sent to investigate the Jewish roots of the Bnei Menashe returned Tuesday from a weeklong mission to northeast India. Their findings have yet to be released.
Two dayanim (religious court judges) were sent by Chief Sephardi Rabbi Shlomo Amar to the provinces of Mizoram and Manipur to report on the community of 5,000-6,000, who claim descent from the lost biblical tribe of Menashe.
Some 800 members of the community have immigrated to Israel over the last decade. However, a year ago Interior Minister Avraham Poraz (Shinui) halted their entry to the country pending further investigation. Amar's decision to send the rabbinical commission was a result of Poraz's continued refusal to issue visas to community members over the past year, said Amar spokesman Shlomi Parvar.
Amar is now waiting to receive a written report from the two dayanim, Petah Tikva religious court head Rabbi Zion Boaron and Jerusalem religious court judge Amram Elhadad, whom he sent to India to meet with Bnei Menashe elders. After consulting with other rabbinical authorities, Amar will rule if there is enough evidence to render the community members "safek" Jews, i.e., those whose claim to being Jewish weak enough to require conversion but strong enough to make it incumbent upon the Jewish community to take responsibility for them.
Parvar said the situation of the Bnei Menashe community was more problematic than that of the Falash Mura of Ethiopia. The latter, who had been forcibly converted to Christianity but who were shunned by the Christian community and so lived apart and kept up some Jewish practices, had written records of their Jewish lineage.
The Bnei Menashe, who began to believe in their roots in the 1950s and started practicing Judaism by the 1970s, a decade before their first contact with Israel in the late '80s, have no written records.
Two dayanim (religious court judges) were sent by Chief Sephardi Rabbi Shlomo Amar to the provinces of Mizoram and Manipur to report on the community of 5,000-6,000, who claim descent from the lost biblical tribe of Menashe.
Some 800 members of the community have immigrated to Israel over the last decade. However, a year ago Interior Minister Avraham Poraz (Shinui) halted their entry to the country pending further investigation. Amar's decision to send the rabbinical commission was a result of Poraz's continued refusal to issue visas to community members over the past year, said Amar spokesman Shlomi Parvar.
Amar is now waiting to receive a written report from the two dayanim, Petah Tikva religious court head Rabbi Zion Boaron and Jerusalem religious court judge Amram Elhadad, whom he sent to India to meet with Bnei Menashe elders. After consulting with other rabbinical authorities, Amar will rule if there is enough evidence to render the community members "safek" Jews, i.e., those whose claim to being Jewish weak enough to require conversion but strong enough to make it incumbent upon the Jewish community to take responsibility for them.
Parvar said the situation of the Bnei Menashe community was more problematic than that of the Falash Mura of Ethiopia. The latter, who had been forcibly converted to Christianity but who were shunned by the Christian community and so lived apart and kept up some Jewish practices, had written records of their Jewish lineage.
The Bnei Menashe, who began to believe in their roots in the 1950s and started practicing Judaism by the 1970s, a decade before their first contact with Israel in the late '80s, have no written records.