When Tzvi Khaute landed at Tel Aviv for the first time, he wanted to kiss the earth. Alas, the modern airport was all tarmac and stone, so he kissed the first soil he came across, in a flowerpot. Thousands of diaspora Jews from around the world make aliyah — the migration to Israel — every year, but for Tzvi and his fellow Tibeto-Burmese immigrants from the far northeast of India, the journey was particular freighted with symbolism. They believe they are descendants of one of the ten lost tribes of Israel, sent into exile by the Assyrians almost 800 years before the Romans destroyed the temple in Jerusalem.
About 1,700 members of the Bnei Menashe tribe — the Sons of Manasseh, one of the original 12 biblical tribes of Israel — have migrated to Israel, completing what they believe is an extraordinary, 2,700-year exile that took them from the Middle East seven centuries before the Christian era, through Afghanistan, China, Burma and India, before they heard that a new state of Israel had been created 62 years ago.
“A hundred years ago, my forefathers thought the land of Israel was not on this earth, they thought it was something in heaven,” said Mr Khaute, a smiling 35-year-old wearing a kippa, or skullcap. In India, about 7,000 more are waiting for the green light to close the circle of almost three millennia.
The Bnei Menashe, then known as the Shinlung or Kuki people, were discovered in their remote home in the India-Burma border state of Manipur by Christian missionaries at the end of the 19th century. They were surprised to find that the natives already seemed to know some of the biblical stories they taught, while local people believed they had rediscovered the religion told about in their traditions relating to a long-lost ancestor. Many converted to Christianity, but in recent decades have begun switching their faith to Judaism, a creed that was not yet fully formed when their ancestors left the Middle East.