Geula Tautang, 19, raced frantically around the Ben Gurion airport arrivals area on Monday afternoon, her gaze fixed on the automatic sliding doors. Geula hadn’t seen her mother in almost six years, and she was about to walk through those doors.
The Tautang family is from the Bnei Menashe, a tribe of nearly 9,000 people from the Manipur district in northeastern India, near the Myanmar and Bangladesh borders, who believe they are descended from the Israelite tribe of Menashe, who were exiled from the Kingdom of Israel in the eighth century BCE. They want to convert to Judaism and return to their old homeland in what is now Israel.
Geula arrived in Israel in 2006 with her older brother as part of a group of 218 people. Another 53 members of the tribe came on Monday, including Geula’s mother, as part of a group of 274 who are due to be in Israel by January 4. Geula was one of the dozens of relatives who had come to greet them after their aliyah, which was the outcome of a huge shift in Israeli government policy.
Source: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/lost-indian-jews-come-home
