[VIDEOS IN EXTENDED ARTICLE]

Seventy-two members of the Indian Bnei Menashe Jewish community arrived at Tel Aviv’s Ben-Gurion Airport last week. A total of 102 members of the Bnei Menashe were brought on Aliyah last week by Shavei Israel, a Jerusalem-based nonprofit that aims to strengthen ties between the Jewish people and descendants of Jews around the world.

The new immigrants all hail from the northeastern Indian state of Mizoram, which borders Burma and Bangladesh and is home to the second-largest concentration of Bnei Menashe in India after that of the state of Manipur. This marks the first time since Jan. 2014 that Bnei Menashe are making Aliyah from Mizoram. The first 30 of this week’s 102 new immigrants arrived in Israel on Tuesday, Feb. 14. They all plan to settle in Nazareth Illit, Israel, which already has a flourishing Bnei Menashe community.

The Bnei Menashe claim that they are descendants of the tribe of Manasseh, exiled from Eretz Yisroel more than 2,700 years ago, by the Assyrian empire. So far, some 3,000 Bnei Menashe have made Aliyah thanks to Shavei Israel, including more than 1,100 in the past four years. Some 7,000 Bnei Menashe remain in India waiting for the chance to return home to Israel.

(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem/Photo credit: Laura Ben-David. Video credits: Rachel Kachlon)