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Israel’s foreign minister cuts India visit short as Jews caught in crossfire of violent clashes
(JTA) — India’s small Bnei Menashe community is reeling after a member was killed and a synagogue was burned during violent clashes in the country’s northeast.
Some members of the community, practicing Jews who are seeking to move to Israel, have sought shelter at paramilitary camps, according to Isaac Thangjom, a Jew from the area who now lives in Israel. He said the situation is “very grim,” conditions are “squalid” and food and aid are scarce.
“It’s anarchy,” Thangjom told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency last week. “They’re specifically targeting Kuki [tribe members] and calling us foreigners, telling us to ‘go back to Burma.’”
Bnei Menashe sources in Manipur, where the violence took place, were unreachable as the government suspended internet service in the region. Jewish community members in Mizoram, the nearby region which is also home to several small communities of Bnei Menashe Jews, said it had not been affected.
A planned visit to India by Israel’s foreign minister, Eli Cohen, was cut short on Tuesday because of a military operation in Israel. Cohen had not been planning to visit Manipur, the region where the violence took place, and Israel’s Ministry of Aliyah and Integration did not return requests for comment or questions about whether he would address the violence during his visit. His planned agenda included inaugurating a “Jewish Trail” in Mumbai that highlights sites of Jewish significance including synagogues there. An estimated 4,000 Jews currently live in Mumbai.
Manipur is home to an estimated 5,000 Bnei Menashe Jews, all members of a group that an Israeli chief rabbi in 2005 recognized as a “lost tribe” with historic Jewish ties. While researchers have refuted that claim, instead documenting that the group has undergone a recent mass conversion, community members all practice Judaism and many are trying to move to Israel, sometimes putting their lives on hold for years in preparation. About 5,000 Bnei Menashe have successfully immigrated to Israel, where they undergo formal Jewish conversions upon arrival.
The recent violence in Manipur began after a student group organized a protest against talks to grant “scheduled tribe” status to the Meitei community, which represents more than half of Manipur’s population of 3 million. The status would grant the Meitei special privileges in education and employment reserved for minority tribal groups, who say the Meitei community already has outsized political representation and privilege.
The region has been plagued by tribal conflicts for decades, but the recent violence is being seen as a side effect of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu-nationalist administration. The Meitei are mostly Hindus, while most members of the Kuki and other tribal groups are Christian. Members of the Manipuri Jewish community were targeted because of their dual identity as Kuki-Mizo tribe members, Thangjom says.
The Manipur government said Tuesday that violence has died down in recent days and the state is “returning to normalcy.” Hundreds of cars, homes and churches in the region were vandalized or torched, according to media reports. India’s army has evacuated some 20,000 people and issued “shoot-at-sight” orders as they attempt to gain control over the situation. According to the Manipur government, at least 60 deaths have been recorded so far.
The Indian army was been deployed to Manipur as the people who live there — including the Bnei Menashe — are trying to remain safe during a volatile situation.
In recent years, tensions have arisen within Bnei Menashe communities in Manipur and nearby Mizoram surrounding the process to move to Israel, which since the early 2000s has been managed by Shavei Israel, an Israeli nonprofit dedicated to easing immigration for descendants of Jews in isolated communities. A newer group, Degel Menashe, has launched to advance the emigration, which it alleges Shavei Israel has not advanced effectively; Shavei has denied those allegations. Thangjom is an organizer with Degel Menashe.
Michael Freund, founder and chairman of Shavei Israel, said in a statement that some members of the Bnei Menashe community had been wounded in this week’s violence, in addition to the one who died. A Torah scroll had been burned when a synagogue was destroyed, he added.
“The area in northeastern India where the Bnei Menashe community lives is experiencing grave ethnic conflicts and its members are in real danger,” Freund said in the statement. He added, “It is time for Israel to act and bring them home to the Jewish state before more Bnei Menashe Jews are killed.”
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UK adopts sweeping measures against antisemitism in schools
(JTA) — The U.K. has adopted sweeping measures to combat antisemitism in English schools, prompting pushback from the country’s largest teachers’ union.
The move came after a new government-commissioned review found that three in five Jewish students reported experiencing antisemitism in English schools. The most common incidents were jokes, stereotypes and comments about Jewish people. About half of respondents who witnessed or experienced antisemitism said the incidents were not reported, most often because they did not think they would be taken seriously.
The government on Wednesday accepted 27 recommendations from the report, including dedicated antisemitism training for leaders and staff, improved recording of antisemitic incidents and moves to build a better understanding of Jewish life, identity and contemporary antisemitism.
The government commissioned the report following a spate of high-profile attacks on Jews in Britain, including an attack on a synagogue in Manchester last year that left two men dead.
The report’s author, Sir David Bell, the vice chancellor of the University of Sunderland and former chief inspector of schools in England, recommended addressing antisemitism distinctly from other forms of racism. He argued that antisemitism was a “uniquely complex” problem because of intertwined racial and religious dimensions, since Jewish identity can encompass both an ethnicity and a religion, along with expressions of prejudice that hold all Jews responsible for the actions of Israel.
The government will also encourage English schools to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism. The definition is supported by many mainstream Jewish organizations and has been adopted by 47 countries, including the U.K., but critics say that it conflates some forms of antisemitism with criticism of Israel.
British Education Secretary Lucy Powell called Bell’s review a “generational moment” and said that “implementation is now my priority.”
However, the National Education Union, the largest union representing teachers, lecturers, teaching assistants and support staff in the United Kingdom and Europe, raised concerns on Wednesday about recommending the IHRA definition for schools. NEU general secretary Daniel Kebede said in a statement that the definition “risks deepening the problem rather than tackling it, and actively undermining efforts to confront antisemitism.”
“The IHRA’s contested framing risks blurring the line between antisemitism and legitimate criticism of the Israeli government and the genocide in Gaza, leaving teachers with uncertainty when they need clarity,” said Kebede. He cited a risk that “children who cannot critically explore issues through classroom discussion will instead seek their answers in online and unsafe groups.”
Kebede also encouraged Britain’s Department for Education to strengthen guidance on all forms of racism, not only antisemitism, saying that 65% of teachers report they have not received any antiracism training in the past year.
The Board of Deputies of British Jews, an umbrella organization for British Jewish communities, celebrated the antisemitism report and the government’s adoption of its proposed measures. The group specifically praised the report’s “clear recommendations that schools and local authorities follow government guidelines by adopting the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism as a tool to deepen understanding of contemporary antisemitism.”
“We remain concerned about undue external influence on schools driven by narrow political agendas, and tendentious materials seeping into schools and increasing disharmony, and we will continue to press for vigilance against this,” said the Board of Deputies.
The post UK adopts sweeping measures against antisemitism in schools appeared first on The Forward.
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Orthodox Jewish man stabbed in midtown Manhattan
(New York Jewish Week) — An Orthodox Jewish man is in stable condition after being stabbed on Wednesday evening in the Diamond District of midtown Manhattan. Police are investigating the attack as a possible hate crime.
Police told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the NYPD’s Hate Crimes Task Force is investigating the incident as a possible antisemitic attack, and Manhattan Shomrim — the Jewish community watch group — has asked people to share footage as police search for the suspect. No arrests have been made.
The victim was identified by police as a 26-year-old man, and Orthodox Jewish outlet COLLive identified him as a resident of Crown Heights, the neighborhood that is home to the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement’s headquarters.
He was taken to Bellevue Hospital in stable condition. Police said they were called at about 5:50 p.m. on Wednesday after the man was stabbed in the back with “an unknown sharp object” on 47th Street near Fifth Avenue. ABC7 reported that the victim told investigators he believed he was stabbed with a needle or syringe.
According to the Chabad website, which published an interview with the victim, he is a recently ordained Hasidic rabbi named Joseph, who commutes to Midtown each day to wrap tefillin with Jewish merchants. The attacker, Joseph told the website, was a woman who seemed to be following him prior to the stabbing.
The attack comes as Jewish New Yorkers have been targeted in more than half of the hate crimes committed in New York City this year, despite making up about 12% of the city’s population.
In July, an assailant stabbed two men on the Upper West Side, including one who was leaving a synagogue, while yelling “Allahu akbar,” and was charged with committing hate crimes.
Louis Keene contributed reporting.
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VIDEO: A Hasid gives us a tour of Morocco in Yiddish
דער ירושלימער יוטוב־שטערן וועלוול קירשנבוים האָט לעצטנס אַרויסגעשטעלט אַ ווידעאָ אויף ייִדיש פֿון אַ פּרעכטיקן וויזיט, וואָס ער האָט געמאַכט אין מאַראָקאָ. עס באַגלייט אים זײַן חבֿר אַבֿרהם פּרץ.
אינעם ווידעאָ זעט מען ווי קירשנבוים דאַוונט שחרית מיט די אָרטיקע ייִדן און באַזוכט אַ גוט אָפּגעהיטענעם בית־עולם, וווּ עס ליגן באַערדיקט גרויסע צדיקים ווי למשל הרבֿ חיים בן עתר (1696–1743), באַקאַנט ווי דער „אור החיים“. „מענטשן מיינען, אַז נאָר אין אייראָפּע זענען דאָ קבֿרים פֿון צדיקים!“ זאָגט קירשנבוים.
מיר זעען אַ גרויסע, שיינע שיל מיט אַ פֿײַנער אַרכיטעקטור אין קאַזאַבלאַנקאַ; דעם גרויסן אַראַבישן שוק, וווּ קירשנבוים קויפֿט זיך אײַן מלבושים פּונקט ווי די מאַראָקאַנער גייען אָנגעטאָן. ער באַוווּנדערט אויך די שיינע טיי־גלעזער און טשײַניקן, וואָס מע פֿאַרקויפֿט דאָרט, און באַקענט זיך מיט אַ ייִדישן סוחר וואָס האַנדלט מיט זילבער און גאָלד, פּונקט אַזוי ווי זײַן טאַטע און זיידע האָבן געטאָן פֿאַר דור־דורות.
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