Israel agrees not to convert 'lost tribe' in India

[Guest guest]

It is fine to convert Hindus to other religions. But to convert

Christians to other religions is objected to by the Indian

government.

Is this objection have anything to do with the fact that it is

actually

Smt Sonia Gandhi, an Italian born Roman Catholic, is the one who

actually pulls the strings?

 

Namaste.

Ashok Chowgule

 

 

Israel agrees not to convert 'lost tribe' in India

Jonathan Saul

http://in.news./051109/137/60ynz.html

November 9, 2005

 

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - 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.

 

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