Last week, we invited you to join us in welcoming 43 new Bnei Menashe immigrants as they arrived at Ben-Gurion Airport. 

 

A big thank you to everyone who came - it was perhaps the most emotional aliyah flight of the year and the final in a series that has brought 410 Bnei Menashe to their homeland in the past six months. A new set of flights will be starting soon, as Shavei Israel has received permission to bring a total of 900 Bnei Menashe from India to Israel by 2015.

 

Among the distinguished guests who greeted the Bnei Menashe: Knesset Member Rabbi Dov Lipman and Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister's Office Mr. Ofir Akunis. They joined supporters who came from Ra'anana, Modi'in and Jerusalem to welcome the arrivals and offer them encouragement as they set out to begin their new lives here in Israel.

 

Click here to read about the emotional arrival and see pictures of this special event.

 

Get involved in sponsoring the next flights that will be arriving later this year. Visit our Support page and make your donation! 

 

The Jewish Voice newspaper in the U.S. profiled Shavei Israel Founder and Chairman Michael Freund last week. We have the article for you here. 

 

For the past 15 years, Michael Freund has been leading a quiet and unflagging revolution, one that is transforming how the Jewish world relates to descendants of the people of Israel.

 

A former New Yorker who made aliyah in 1995, Freund's peripatetic adventures have taken him from the jungles of northeastern India to the Peruvian Amazon rainforest to small villages in the southern Italian countryside, driven by a remarkable sense of mission: to reconnect lost tribes and hidden Jewish communities with their roots.

 

"Some people travel the world to see beautiful vistas or breathtaking scenery," Freund says, "but I go to search for Jews."

 

Click here to read why The Jewish Voice called Michael Freund "the Indiana Jones of 'lost Jews.'"