At a special celebration at Ben Gurion Airport, Mirna Singsit, 18, from Manipur, India was honored with being the 2,000th Bnei Menashe member to make aliyah to Israel. She arrived in Israel along with 53 other Bnei Menashe community members including both of her parents and three brothers. 

Singsit was a student at Churachandpur University in Manipur studying for a Bachelor's Degree in Political Science, which she hopes to continue in Israel and eventually become a school teacher.

Click here to read more about this momentous occasion for Mirna, the Bnei Menashe and Shavei Israel.

Yonatan Haokip

There is a custom among Bnei Menashe women to read from the Book of Psalms every day. The women divide up into groups and split the verses among themselves, so that every psalm is recited by at least one woman on behalf of the group each month. But many of these women do not understand Hebrew - they can recite the words (and sometimes even read them), but the true meaning has remained hidden...until now.

Yonatan Haokip, 31, a Bnei Menashe who has lived in Israel since 2009, has taken on the vital task of translating the psalms into Kuki, the language spoken by the Bnei Menashe in Manipur, where Haokip himself was raised. His goal: to produce a fully translated and transliterated edition of the psalms, including commentaries in Kuki, available to every Bnei Menashe woman who steps off the plane after arriving on aliyah from India. Now that those historic flights have resumed, Haokip's clock is ticking. 

Shavei Israel will be assisting Haokip in distributing his impressive achievement. Please consider supporting Yonatan Haokip's psalms project. It costs $10 to print each copy and we want to publish 1,000 books initially to meet the keen demand. We need to raise all the money up front so we can order a single print run from the publisher. Visit our Support page to make your contribution.

Click here to read Yonatan Haokip's full story and to see advance pictures of his Psalms project.