Author: Jonathan Saul
Publication: Yahoo News
Date: November 9, 2005
URL: http://in.news.yahoo.com/051109/137/60ynz.html
Israel has bowed to complaints from the Indian
government and stopped trying to convert to Judaism thousands of people in
India who believe they are a Biblical lost tribe, the Foreign Ministry said
on Wednesday.
Around 7,000 people in northeast India claim
they are members of Bnei Menashe, or the children of Menashe, one of the 10
"lost tribes" of Israel.
Efforts to convert them by a specially despatched
team of rabbis were called off after India, a major buyer of Israeli defence
exports, voiced its displeasure.
Israel's Chief Rabbinate had given the green
light to convert Bnei Menashe in India.
"The Indian authorities, through official
channels, told us they do not view positively initiated efforts at conversions
to other religions," Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said.
"When the Indian government issues a
complaint we take it seriously. At the moment there is a freeze on all such
conversions taking place," Regev said.
Some 800 members of Bnei Menashe have immigrated
to Israel since the late 1980s and many live in Jewish settlements in the
occupied West Bank.
Some members of the community were among the
settlers evacuated from Gaza in an Israeli pullout completed in September.
An Israeli official, who asked not to be identified,
said any Bnei Menashe members who choose to immigrate to Israel would be converted
to Judaism after their arrival.
Exiled by the Assyrians around 720 BC, the
tribe wandered through Afghanistan and China before ending up in a part of
India nestled between Bangladesh and Myanmar.
Decades after being converted to Christianity
by missionaries, descendants in various areas began to reconnect with Judaism
in the 1970s.
While much of their Jewish traditions had
been lost on the way, Bnei Menashe still practised customs which were Jewish
in origin. These included sanctifying a baby on the eighth day after birth,
the time when Jewish males are circumcised.
