– Reuben Paulianding Naulak, 1st Year,B.A Philosophy Honours
The visit of India’s President, Pranab Mukherjee, to Israel on October 2015 was a historic one in the sense that it was the first time the President of the largest democracy visited the only democracy in the Middle East. More inconspicuous but as significant, it was also the first time the Bnei Menashe community of India was publicly acknowledged by an Israeli premier. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in his speech, said of the Bnei Menashe:
“There is among us a living bridge; the wonderful Bnei Menashe, whose members have and are making Aliyah from India to Israel. And with their love for Israel and their great humility, and through impressive efforts, they are absorbed into Israeli society. But they also create that living bridge between our two peoples.’’
THE CHIN-KUKI-MIZO-ZOMI (CHIKIMZO)
The Bnei Menashe (also known as Chins, Mizos, Kuki and Zomi) are a group of tribes inhabiting Mizoram and Manipur, the Chittagong Division of Bangladesh and the North West region of Myanmar. They are of Mongoloid stock, speak the Tibeto-Burman family of languages and comprise of over 28 sub-tribes with noticeably close cultural, linguistic, historical and territorial affinities.
In the late 1890s, Christian missionaries arrived at the region where the CHIKIMZO settled and worked to convert them. Within a few decades, just about the whole CHIKIMZO population accepted Christianity. But in the mid-nineteenth century, a group of people within the CHIKIMZO tribe began a Messianic movement, claiming Jewish origins and correspondingly adopting Jewish customs and practices. In the 1980s and 1990s, they established contacts with other Jewish groups in Israel and some even emigrated to Israel, after completing the required formal conversion to be accepted there as Jews. This was due to the considerable role paid by Rabbi Eliyahu Avichail, who investigated this group’s claim of Jewish descent, making several trips to North East India. At long last, convinced by his finds, he named them as ‘’Bnei Menashe’’ (Hebrew for ‘Sons of Menashe’). Subsequent investigations and research on the CHIKIMZO and their alleged Jewish ancestry involving genetic tests, collating historical accounts and an examination of their vast oral traditions, moved the Chief Rabbi of the Sephardic Jews, Shlomo Amar, to formally accept the Bnei Menashe as descendants of one of the Lost Tribes of Israel in April, 2015. This adjudication granted the Bnei Menashe the right to immigrate as Jews to Israel under the country’s Law of Return.
Before we delve into the evidences that came forth to justify such a seemingly ludicrous claim, we shall retrace our steps three thousand years back and explore the background of our study as narrated by Biblical and historical accounts.
THE KINGDOM OF ISRAEL, ITS FALL AND THE EXILE OF THE ISRAELITES (c.1030 BCE – c.722 BCE)
Genesis chapter 35 verses 10 to 12 mention how the Israelite God changed Jacob’s name to Israel and blessed him and his descendants. Jacob, by two wives and two concubines had twelve sons who became the progenitors of the twelve tribes of Israel. The third king of Israel’s reign, King Solomon’s, (c.970-930) for forty years marked the golden period of the kingdom of Israel. His death was followed by the disintegration of the kingdom into two parts: The southern kingdom, called the House of Judah, and the northern kingdom, known as the House of Israel. The kingdom of Judah was ruled by King Rehoboam with the allegiance of the two tribes of Judah and Benjamin, and a large portion of the tribe of Levi. The rest of the tribes paid obeisance to King Jeroboam who ruled the kingdom of Israel. In c. 722 BCE, the kingdom of Israel was invaded by the Assyrians under King Shalmanesar (2 Kings 17:6). The city of Samaria was plundered and the Israelites were deported to Assyria. However, the southern kingdom was spared the conquest and the Jews of today primarily descended from the tribes of Judah and Benjamin. The ten deported tribes intermarried with the local people, their distinct identity eventually disappeared, and their culture was lost to history. Hence, they were called ‘’The Ten Lost Tribes’’.
ORAL HISTORY, SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCES AND CULTURAL LIKENESS
There has already been a vast body of literature produced on the study undertaken to determine whether the CHIKIMZO have Jewish roots. Author and noted journalist Hillel Halkin have published, after five years of extensive research, an entire book on the subject titled ‘’Across the Sabbath River: In search of a Lost tribe’’. Plainly, it would be too arduous a task to examine each and every work produced on this subject matter, and would furthermore require copious amount of pages. Therefore, we shall highlight a few but significant discoveries that stood out as compelling evidences backing the Bnei Menashe claim.
The CHIKIMZO did not possess written history but chiefly relied upon their oral traditions to trace their past. According to one account, they emerged from Khul or Chhinlung (Cave) which is believed to be somewhere in and around the stone forest near Kunming in Yunan province, China, others maintain that they first lived in a place called Chiimnuai in the Chin Hills of Burma, from where they dispersed in different directions. There are even narratives among them which posits that they lived in the caves (Khul) to hide themselves from the Chinese emperor Huang Ti (246-219 BCE) who conscripted them as labour force for building the Great Wall of China, but this is entirely the subject of another study. The dichotomy between the theories of the Khul and Chiimnuai origin is extremely subtle, and in fact, they might as well be said to be a part of a larger history of migration and search for settlement. The Bnei Menashe have given an account justifying their claims of Jewish descent by claiming that they have an oral history which describes their escape from slavery in Assyria over 2700 years ago. They arrived at Persia, and from there moved to what is now Afghanistan. From there, they travelled towards Hindu Kush and proceeded to Tibet, then to Kaifeng, reaching the Chinese city around 240 BCE. Though this theory still requires material evidence, if it is taken into account, it astonishingly gives sense to the two theories of the Khul and Chiimnuai origins, which would then be a part and parcel of the long journey of the Bnei Menashe from Assyria across vast stretches of land and into northeast India.
When the Christian missionaries started work among the CHIKIMZO, they were bewildered to find that the tribes worshipped one god, Pathian, and were familiar with many stories of the Bible. This might have contributed to their prompt acceptance of Christianity. When the Bible was translated into the local languages in the 1970s, the people began to study it themselves. They discovered that the stories, customs and practices were peculiarly similar to theirs. For instance, the traditional Hmar harvest festival, Sikpuiroui, has a song called ‘’Sikpui Hla’’ which narrates the events following the exodus of Israelites from Egypt as found in Exodus 13 and 14. The English translation of the song is as follows:
While we are preparing for the Sikpui feast,
The big red sea becomes divided
As we march along fighting our foes,
We are being led by pillar of cloud by day
And pillar of fire by night.
Our enemies, O ye folks, are thick with fury,
Come out with your shields and arrows.
Fighting our enemies all day long
We march forward as cloud-fire goes before us,
The enemies we fought all day long.
The big sea swallowed them like wild beast,
Collect the quails,
And draw the water that springs out of the rock.
Similarly, a folksong called ‘’Tuipi san kan la’’, translated as ‘’The song of crossing the Red Sea’, narrates the same event. There are other numerous songs harking back to their ‘Israelite’ past, like ‘Litenten Zion’ and many more which contain Hebrew terms like Selah, Yah, Yahweh, etc. Much of their ancient songs invoke an ancestor who they referred to as ‘Manmasi’. This progenitor, the Bnei Menashe argued, was the Hebrew Menaseh, the son of Joseph and from whom the Israeli tribe of Menashe was supposed to be descended. Others contended that their common ancestor was Zo or Jo, who they further claimed was the Biblical Joseph himself. Hillel Halkin also discovered among the tribes texts and prayers reminiscent of Jewish liturgy.
To a certain extent, evidences in support of this theory also come from scientific lines. DNA studies at the Central Forensic Institute, Calcutta in 2005 suggested that ‘’while the masculine side of the tribes bear no links to Israel, the feminine side suggests a genetic profile with Middle Eastern people.’’ Bhaswan Maity, a research scholar at the institute who was involved in the DNA study remarked, ‘‘It is scientifically impossible to have the same genetic sequence in two populations living so far apart if they did not originate from a common stock who historically inhabited a common space.’’ Another scientific finding based on medical tests suggests that a particular disease, Tay-Sachs and Saitika-Zenghit, a gentic bone disease, which is inherited by the Semitic Jews, is found in the CHIKIMZO tribes. This find is fascinating as this disease is normally found absent in other racial groups.’’
POPULAR CRITICISMS
It is important to note that though the CHIKIMZO tribes number to around 3.7 million, less than 10,000 people from the community have adopted Judaism. The rest do not identify with the Jewish claim. There is also not a dearth of scholars who disagree with the theory of Jewish descent. In a 2004 study, Dr. Shaiva Weil, a senior researcher and noted anthropologist at Hebrew University said, ‘Although there is no documentary evidence linking the tribal peoples in North East India with the myth of the lost Israelites, it appears likely that, as with revivalism, the concept was introduced by the missionaries as part of their millenarian leanings.’ Historian Tudor Parfitt further argued that ‘’the Lost Tribes are indeed nothing but a myth’’, and asserts that this ‘myth’ was a vital feature of colonial discourse. There are also some, like the social scientist, Lev Grinberg, who cited political motive behind the move to convert people and bring them to Israel. Some critics thought that the government’s policy of settling the Bnei Menashe immigrants in the unstable Judea, Samaria, and Gaza strip was part of a recruiting campaign to help boost the Israeli population, while some dismissed them as economic migrants. Even the genetic tests in Calcutta was rendered dubious when Israeli Professor Skorecki pointed out that the geneticists ‘did not do a complete genetic sequencing of all the DNA and therefore it is difficult to rely on the conclusions derived from a partial sequencing.’ But he also added that, ‘after thousands of years it is difficult to identify the traces of the common genetic origin.’
There are still profuse accounts and diverse evidences surrounding this subject, but for Rabbi Aliyahu, historical evidences and genetic links do not determine a person’s identity. Speaking against the genetic researches conducted on the Bnei Menashe, he asserted, ‘‘I believe that the origin of this group is in the Jewish people not because of genetic considerations, and in any case Jewish identity is not determine according to genetics, but rather by the way people lead their life and by signs of cultural identity.’’
References:
Hmar, Isaac. ”The Jewish Connection: Myth or Reality”
Bhattacharya, Tathagata. “DNA tests prove that Mizo people are descendants of a lost Israeli tribe”, This Week
Eichner, Itamar. ‘’Members of Bnei Menashe to make aliyah’’, Ynetnews
Freund, Michael. ‘’Echoes of Egypt in India’’
“Lost Tribe of Israel?’’, Time Asia
‘’Rabbi Backs India’s lost Jews’’, BBC News
Sheleg, Yair. “In Search of Jewish Chromosomes in India”
Dr. Thangtungnung. “Origin and Migration of the Zo People’’
“Hmar, Hmar History: Manmasi thla, Manmasi descendent”, hmarpeople.blogspot
Pereltsvaig, Asya. “Controversies surrounding Bnei Menashe’’
Maity, Bhaswar. Sitalaximi, T. Trivedi, R. Kashyap, VK. “Tracking the genetic imprints of lost Jewish tribes among the gene pool of Kuki-Chin-Mizo population of India’’
ORCHID 