Indians accepted as ancient Jews
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 

Big News Network.com     Friday 1st April, 2005  (UPI)

A chief rabbi in Israel has determined members of India's Bnei Menashe community are descendants of the ancient Israelites.

Sephardi Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar has dispatched a team of rabbinical judges to formally convert them to Orthodox Jewry so they can immigrate to Israel under the Law of Return, Israel's Haaretz newspaper reported Friday.

The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, a group that raises money among evangelical Christians for Jewish causes, will finance the process of converting the Menashe and bringing them to Israel.

The community consists of nearly 7,000 members of the Kuki-Chin-Mizo tribe, which lives in northeast India near the border of Myanmar (formally Burma).

For generations they kept Jewish traditions, claiming to be descended from the tribe of Menashe, one of the 10 lost Israeli tribes exiled by the Assyrians in the eighth century B.C.E.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the tribe's members converted to Christianity, but about 30 years ago, some of them returned to Judaism.
 

http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/?sid=d3c7f3a6c265390e
http://israelnews.net/
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/559673.html