Bnei Menashe

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The Bnei Menashe (Hebrew: בני מנשה, lit. 'Children of Menasseh', known as the Shinlung in India) is a community of Indian Jews from various Tibeto-Burman speaking ethnic groups from the border of India, Bangladesh and Myanmar who claim descent from one of the Ten Lost Tribes, allegedly based on the Hmar belief in an ancestor named 'Manmasi'. Some of them have adopted Judaism. The community has around 10,000 members. The movement began in 1951, when a tribal leader reported having a dream that his people's ancient homeland was Israel; some tribal members began embracing the idea that they were Jews. Before the movement's start, the community was largely a Christian one. Members are from the Chin, Kuki, and Mizo ethnic groups, amongst others. In the late 20th century, the Israeli rabbi Eliyahu Avichail, of the group Amishav, named these people the "Bnei Menashe" based on their account of descent from Manasseh. In 2003–2004, DNA testing of several hundred male community members did not yield conclusive evidence of Middle Eastern ancestry. In 2005, a Kolkata-based study found evidence of maternally descended Near Eastern ancestry but suggested the findings were an artifact of thousands of years of intermarriage between peoples of the Near and Middle East. Research from Mizoram University reveals that many customs, like ritual songs and animal sacrifices, which the Bnei Menashe point to as Jewish parallels through their oral history, were already present in the region, and to this day, there’s no written evidence suggesting a connection. Israel did not formally support immigration of the Bnei Menashe until 2005, when Shlomo Amar, then Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel, recognized the Bnei Menashe as a lost tribe. Bnei Menashe must obtain special dispensation from the Knesset to make aliyah.