Mizo Jews to migrate to Isarel

Aizawl, Nov 15 (UNI) The fist batch of 115 members of the Mizo-Jew community will bid goodbye to their homeland Mizoram and return to the "Promised land" Israel today.

This batch would be led by Rabbi Rafkharnok from Israel.

Member of the migrant group Benjamin Lalrinliana told UNI here that 218 Mizo Jews would move to the northern Israeli towns of Karmiel and upper Nazareth areas.

''Advocates had been working for years to convince Israeli authorities that the Bnei Menashe were indeed long-lost Jews, who had returned to the faith'', he said adding ''about 218 Mizo Jews went through conversion courses and were approved for conversion by rabbinical judges. They came to India last year by Israel's Sephardi chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar''.

Officials in the Shavei Israel Hebrew Centre here said, '' Amar declared that Bnei Menashe 'descendants of the Jewish people' had been working to help facilitate the 'aliya', the conversion, of those who want to live in Israel.'' About 7000 Bnei Menashe live in the NE states of Mizoram and Manipur. They trace their descendents from the Menashe tribe, one of the 10 tribes expelled from ancient Israel by the Assyrians.

Officials said their ancestors wandered eastward toward China, then eventually settled in India and nearyby Myanmar.

In 722-721 BC, the Ten Tribes, comprising the northern kingdom of Israel, disappeared.

Conquered by the Assyrian king Shalmaneser V, they were exiled to upper Mesopotamia and Medes, the modern day Syria and Iraq. The tribes had never been seen since then.

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