Chicago Lawyer Takes Torah to "Lost Tribe" in India; Members Seek Official Conversion to Judaism

May 7, 2004

Source: The Houston Chronicle

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/religion/2556308

On May 7, 2004 The Houston Chronicle ran an article from the Chicago Tribune that reported, "Rabbis have branded a biblical tribe in northeast India heretical, even though its members chant songs from their mud-walled synagogues about returning to Zion. And Israel's interior minister has banned them from the country. But Sam Pfeffer, a retired Chicago lawyer, is not deterred: If the tribe can't enter Israel to get religion, he will take Judaism to them. Pfeffer recently boarded a plane with a hand-copied Torah he bought for $12,000 from a Chicago bookseller and headed for the Indian states of Manipur and Mizoram. There, members of the Bnei Menashe, who believe they are descendants of an Israelite tribe driven from the Holy Land some 2,700 years ago, will receive Pfeffer's help in their efforts to convert officially to Judaism. 'They don't have a Torah, which is the most important thing to have in Judaism,' said Pfeffer, 78. 'That's why I am bringing them one.' Believed to be crafted in the 1950s by a Jewish scribe, the Torah was recently restored, and Pfeffer was especially drawn to it because an image of the Western Wall is embroidered on the front. 'Now the Torah goes on its long journey to the Bnei Menashe, and with God's help, once they are absorbed into Israel, the Torah will go back to Israel, where I think it belongs,' said Avrom Fox, owner of Rosenblum's World of Judaica bookshop, who sold the Torah to Pfeffer. 'I hope Israel will open its doors to these people, as they did to Jews from the former Soviet Union,' Fox said."