(RNS) — Last year, Jeremiah Hnamte closed the family’s manufacturing business in the city of Aizawl, in northeastern India. The family moved into a rented apartment and sold their land and possessions, all in preparation for moving to Israel in the near future.
The Hnamtes are members of the Bnei Menashe community, a few thousand people concentrated mostly in two hilly northeastern India states, Mizoram and Manipur, near the Myanmar border, who believe they’re descendants of a 2,700-year-old biblical lost tribe.
Making aliyah, Hebrew for migrating to Israel, has been the Bnei Menashe’s dream for decades, but they do not qualify under the Israeli law of return, which requires people to have at least one Jewish grandparent in order to be considered for citizenship. Since 1989, though, through special government permissions, about 4,000 Bnei Menashe have been able to make aliyah, but just as many people have spent years, in some cases generations, attempting to move to Israel.
In November this year, however, the Israeli government announced that the entire Bnei Menashe community — estimated to be 5,800 people — would be allowed to immigrate by 2030. The new immigrants will be settled in Nof HaGalil and other northe …