Kibbutz Galuyot, Slowly But Surely
Yeshaya 43:5-6:
אַל-תִּירָא, כִּי אִתְּךָ-אָנִי: מִמִּזְרָח אָבִיא זַרְעֶךָ, וּמִמַּעֲרָב אֲקַבְּצֶךָּאֹמַר לַצָּפוֹן תֵּנִי, וּלְתֵימָן אַל-תִּכְלָאִי; הָבִיאִי בָנַי מֵרָחוֹק, וּבְנוֹתַי מִקְצֵה הָאָרֶץFear not, for I am with thee; I will bring thy seed from the east, and gather thee from the west;
I will say to the north: 'Give up,' and to the south: 'Keep not back, bring My sons from far, and My daughters from the end of the earth;
Arutz Sheva:
Israel marked an aliyah (immigration) milestone Thursday with the arrival of the 2,000th member of the Bnei Menashe community. Eighteen-year-old Mirna Singsit arrived in Israel along with 53 other members of the community, including her parents and three siblings.
The Bnei Menashe live in the Manipur state in northeastern India. They claim descent from the Biblical tribe of Menashe, one of the ten “lost tribes” exiled when the Assyrians invaded the northern kingdom of Israel.
The community is now returning to Israel under the auspices of the Shavei Israel organization, a group that encourages communities of “lost Jews” around the world, including descendants of Jewish converts to Catholicism.
Shavei Israel director Michael Freund gave Singsit a certificate naming her the 2,000th arrival. Singsit told him that her arrival in Israel is the fulfillment of a life-long dream.
“It’s hard to express in words how excited and happy I am right now,” she said. “This isn’t just my dream from the day I was born, it’s been my community’s dream for thousands of years, and now it’s finally coming true.”
She plans to complete a degree in political science that she began in India, and then work as a teacher. Her family will start its life in Israel in an absorption center, but Singsit says she hopes to someday move to Jerusalem, “the holiest place on earth.”
The arrival of the 54 new immigrants was “unforgettable,” Freund said. “After 2,700 years, the tribe of Menashe is coming home,” he declared.
The government allowed immigration from Manipur to resume last October after a five-year freeze. Since then 275 members of the Bnei Manashe community have come to Israel as new citizens. The latest arrivals will live in an absorption center in Givat Haviva, and are then expected to move to Akko and Migdal Haemek in northern Israel.
VIN:
Tel Aviv - Jewish Agency and Ministry Absorption officials are keeping mum on reports in the Arab media that Israel has brought in a group of the last remaining Yemeni Jews to Israel via Doha. According to a report from the Palestinian newspaper Al-Manar quoted by the Iranian Fars news agency, Israel is “transferring Yemeni Jews to occupied lands” and is “preparing to host more Yemeni Jews in coming months.”
This new aliyah, the Iranian outlet reported, is part of “a Judaization plot to change the identity of the region.” Most of the Jews of Yemen were “lured to the occupied territories en masse” following Israel’s establishment in 1948, Fars reported.
Spokesmen for the Ministry of Absorption and the Jewish Agency declined comment, although a Jewish Agency source did note the origin of the report in a derisive manner.
Content is provided courtesy of the Jerusalem Post
posted by yaak @ 1/22/2013 12:22:00 PM
15 comments
15 Comments:
BARUCH HASHEM!!!
So what are the numbers now, Jews in Israel to Jews in diaspora?
Counting Jews is forbidden
thanks yeranen. with the election news coming in with lapid and labor in position 2 and 3, your news is so welcome and heartening. Baruch Hashem.
http://thepartialview.blogspot.com/2013/01/kushner-high-kars-4-kids-kidush-hashem.html
http://yeranenyaakov.blogspot.it/2006/11/rav-amar-no-proof-bnei-menashe-are.html
?
Anonymous, see the comments on that post.
There are over 6 million Jews in Eretz Yisrael now. And Ya'ir Lapid is not going to uproot the Torah of Israel. He is not a Socialist or a Communist or a Peacenik. He does not seek for the world to love us by cravenly saying that we should uproot Jews from their homes. Ya'ir Lapid is not a Leftist. I pray for compromise between his block, Bennett, and the Chareidim. The only other coalition that Netanyahu can form is a narrow coalition without the Chareidim including Lapid, Bennett, and Shaul Mofaz. It would be best if somehow both Lapid and the Chareidim COMPROMISE on the issue of the draft. It is in Lapid's platform that the Talmud should be taught in secular schools as a mandatory subject. So for him at least integrating the secular and the religious is a two way street. He is not his father. He does not share the same hatreds of his father. His election is not bad news at all. I happen to be a personal friend of Rabbi Dov Lipman, and I trust his judgement. He is number 17 on Lapid's list.
Maybe, as a personal friend, you can temper his vitriol against Shas and especially against Rav Ovadia.
Sorry. I cannot trust him for a minute.
Thank you a lot for your offer of a compromise which is meant to compromise us, and no thank you to it.
It is my modest opinion that there will be a short 19th knesset, which will dissolve well before expiring, but first will implement anti-hareidi laws and congratulate themselves. As a result some talmidim will be imprisoned and others will quit the country. The army? The anti-missile? I don't want to be the one who tests its effectiveness if Torah learning is disturbed.
The other interesting topic has to do with Iran.
Bad days ahead!
MeNaSHeH has the same letters as NeSHaMaH.... Take it as you want to... just a fun fact
I will do that Ya'ak. I actually agree with you about the Chupah ad. I think that it was brilliant and correct, precisely because it was true. That is another reason why Shas has to join. The conversion process needs to be Mehadrin. It has to be a process that everyone can accept including the most Machmir. Part of Achdut is to make sure that conversions done by the Rabbinate are recognized by everyone. So I think that Shas should control that post.
As far as Rabbi Dov Lipman, he received semichah I believe from Rav Ya'akov Weinberg of Ner Yisrael who is no longer with us, zt"l. He was in Cincinnati for several years especially during 1997/ 1998 when I was dating my wife. He was one of the founding members of the Cincinnati Kollel along with another friend of mine Rabbi David Spetner. I stayed by their house (the Lipmans) in Cincinnati approximately 7 times for Shabbat during our dating process. I believe Rav David found me a place to stay by them. So I used to know the names of all their children. Their hachnasat Orchim was top notch. So I am nogea, I must admit, in my bias for him in particular. He was #17 on the Lapid list. I believe that Lapid's number 2 is also a Rabbi. He is awed to be an MK now. Who would have thought that Lapid would have gained 8 seats in the 24 hour period leading up to the election. All polls showed him getting 11 or 12 Mandates. That is a 250,000 vote swing, at least, in just one day! And now Dov Lipman is forfeiting his American citizenship to serve in the Knesset. When HaShem grabs you for a post, life can turn upside down.
There is no way to create a giyur process as you suggest. There are different opinions and there are very intricate situations, and no one would dare suggesting, say, that Rabbi Ovadia should defer to the Litvaks, or viceversa. Or that the Chassidim should. Or that the Dati Leumi community should. And there is no reason to: we are not interested in investigating lineage of random people, but if there is a good reason, such as marriage, we investigate and we bring the facts to our rabbi and he will pasken. It impossible to "take the most machmir" approach, because in many cases being machmir actually relies on leniences elsewhere, and if we break the integrity of a psak, we may very well pasul it ----> terrible problems in future lineage. We have to do how it has always been done, people who wish to convert should see a respected rabbi and should marry someone who accepts the bet din and they should get married by a rabbi who trusts their geirut, and their children should do the same, and then eventually, all descendants of geirim who did correctly will be intermixed and indistinguishable from the rest of the klal. The rest is a job for Eliyahu Hanavi.
Back to Bnei Menasheh;
54 members of the Bnei Menashe have arrived in Israel.
Mazaltov! Welcome dear mishpacha!
May you find happy and productive lives 'at home' after thousands of years of exile!
BTW is not the no. 54 equal to 3 x 18. And 18=chai?
l'Chayyim, brothers!
And finally: 3 x equals, 'chazake', Does it not?
So, Chazak, chazak, venitchazek!
Now may we PLEASE have Moshiach and the ingathering of ALL the exiles!?
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