Kaifeng, China, April 7 – Nearly 100 members of the ancient Jewish community of Kaifeng, China, are expected to attend a first-of-its-kind traditional Passover Seder that will take place next Monday, April 14, at the start of the holiday in Kaifeng. The Seder, which is being sponsored by the Jerusalem-based Shavei Israel organization, will be conducted for the first time by 28-year-old Tzuri (Heng) Shi, who made Aliyah from Kaifeng a few years ago with the help of Shavei Israel and completed his formal return to Judaism last year.

As part of the preparation for the upcoming Seder, Tzuri was sent to Kaifeng by the Shavei Israel organization with all of the traditional Passover items including: Kosher Matzah packages from Israel, Kosher for Passover wine, Passover Haggadahs, which were prepared especially in Hebrew and Chinese, Kosher for Passover cakes, traditional red horseradish, and traditional Charoset.

“We are proud and excited to organize this historic event,” said Shavei Israel Chairman and Founder Michael Freund. “Kaifeng’s Jewish descendants are a living link between China and the Jewish people, and it is very moving to see the remnants of this community returning to their Jewish roots as they prepare for Passover,” he added.

Scholars believe the first Jews settled in Kaifeng, which was one of China’s imperial capitals, during the 8th or 9th Century. They are said to have been Sephardic Jewish merchants from Persia or Iraq who made their way eastward along the Silk Route and established themselves in the city with the blessing of the Chinese emperor.

In 1163, Kaifeng’s Jews built a large and beautiful synagogue, which was subsequently renovated and rebuilt on numerous occasions throughout the centuries. At its peak, during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), the Kaifeng Jewish community may have numbered as many as 5,000 people. But widespread intermarriage and assimilation, as well as the death of the community’s last rabbi, brought about its demise by the middle of the 19th century.

Nevertheless, many of the families sought to preserve their Jewish identity and pass it down to their descendants, who continued to observe various Jewish customs. Currently, there are estimated to be approximately 1,000 Jewish descendants in Kaifeng.

“In recent years, many members of the community have begun to explore their heritage – thanks in part to the Internet, which opened up new worlds for them and provided access to information about Judaism and Israel that was previously inaccessible to them,” Freund noted.

Shavei Israel is a non-profit organization founded by Michael Freund, who immigrated to Israel from the United States, with the aim of strengthening the ties between the Jewish people, the State of Israel and the descendants of Jews around the world. The organization is currently active in nine countries and provides assistance to a variety of different communities such as the Bnei Menashe of India, the Bnei Anousim (referred to as the derogatory “Marranos” by historians) in Spain, Portugal and South America, the Subbotnik Jews of Russia, the Jewish community of Kaifeng in China, descendants of Jews living in Poland, and others.

Watch the video of the Kaifeng community preparing for Pesach, being led in v’hi sh’amda by Ram, a chazan from the Kaifeng Jewish community.

Immigrants to Israel from seven countries will light Hanukkah candles Tuesday night simultaneously with Jews in seven other countries in a ceremony organized by the Ministry of Immigration and Absorption and The Jewish Agency for Israel.

The candle lighting in Israel will take place at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center in Jerusalem, where 300 young olim  from France, Ethiopia, the United States, Yemen, Latvia, Latin America, and the Bnei Menashe community of India will be joined by Jews lighting at the same time in Paris, London, Moscow, Kiev, Tashkent and Budapest.

The event will be broadcast live  here at 3:30 p.m. Israel time (8:30 a.m. EST).

Israel’s government approved the immigration of the Bnei Menashe, an Indian tribe that claims Jewish ancestry.

The approval comes after a five-year gap since the last group of Bnei Menashe arrived in Israel.

Members of the group, who claim descent from the lost tribe of Menashe, must undergo a conversion process even though it is accepted as fact that they have Jewish roots.

The Cabinet on Oct. 25 voted to restart the tribe’s aliyah. A flight of more than 270 Bnei Menashe reportedly will arrive in the coming weeks, according to Army Radio.

The new immigration reportedly will be funded and facilitated by Shavei Israel, a non-governmental organization that helps locate and reconnect to Judaism and Israel the descendants of Jews.

Some 1,700 Bnei Menashe are living in Israel, and as many as 9,000 remain in India and Burma, according to the Times of Israel.

Just as the prophets foretold, Manasseh’s children are at last coming home. Let’s welcome them with open arms.

Michael Freund is a former adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He is the founder and chairman of Shavei Israel (www.shavei.org), a Jerusalem-based organization which assists the Bnei Menashe and other “lost Jews” to return to the Jewish people.

But the time has come to bring this 2,700 year-long saga of dispersion to an end.  The time has come to bring Manasseh’s children home. The time has come to bring the Bnei Menashe to Israel.

Michael Freund is chairman of Shavei Israel (www.shavei.org), a Jerusalem-based organization that reaches out and assists “lost Jews” seeking to return to the Jewish people. His Jewish Press-exclusive column appears the third week of each month.

Hamas and other Palestinian terror organizations in the Gaza Strip used American and international weaponry to attack Israel this week, top terror leaders told this column.

The weapons were seized in June when Hamas took control of Gaza and overran U.S.-backed security compounds of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah organization.

“The American weapons and Western weapons that reached Fatah before Hamas took over Gaza [are] being used by the Palestinian resistance, including in our aerial attack yesterday,” said Muhammad Abdel-El, spokesperson for the Hamas-allied Popular Resistance Committees.

“[Sunday] was not the first time we used these American weapons against the [Israeli] occupation. The resistance will keep using all weapons at our disposal for the liberation of Palestine,” Abdel-El said.

Abdel-El’s Committees and members of Hamas’s so-called resistance department said they used heavy machine guns they obtained from Fatah compounds in June to fire at an Israeli Defense Forces helicopter this past Sunday. The helicopter had ventured into the central Gaza Strip near the territory’s Nuseirat refugee camp.

The U.S. in recent years reportedly transferred large quantities of weaponry to build up Fatah forces in the Gaza Strip and West Bank against rival Hamas. The State Department recently announced a multimillion dollar program to train Fatah militants in the West Bank.

Abdel-El vowed to obtain more of the American weaponry shipped to Abbas: “America and Israel can keep financing and supplying Fatah’s militias, but at the end of the day all available resistance movements, including large numbers in Fatah, will do everything so these weapons will reach the good hands of those who fight for Islam, Allah and the liberation of Palestine, and not those who are only carrying out an American and Zionist policy such as the Fayyad-Abbas government.”

A group of 174 people from among thousands in India who believe they are one of the 10 “lost tribes” landed in Israel this week, fulfilling for many a life-long dream of returning to what they consider their homeland.

Shavei Israel, a Jerusalem-based organization led by American Michael Freund, hopes to bring to the Jewish state the remaining 7,000 Indian citizens who believe they are the Bnei Menashe, the descendants of Manasseh, one of biblical patriarch Joseph’s two sons and a grandson of Jacob.

The tribe lives in the two Indian states of Mizoram and Manipur, to which they claim to have been exiled from Israel more than 2,700 years ago by the Assyrian empire.

According to Bnei Menashe oral tradition, the tribe was exiled from Israel and pushed eastward, eventually settling in the border regions of China and India, where most remain today. Most kept customs similar to Jewish tradition, including observing Shabbat, keeping the laws of kosher, practicing circumcision on the eighth day of a baby boy’s life and observing laws of family purity.

In the 1950′s, several thousand Bnei Menashe say they set out on foot for Israel but were quickly halted by Indian authorities. Undeterred, many began practicing Orthodox Judaism and pledged to make it to Israel. They now attend community centers established by Shavei Israel to teach the Bnei Menashe Jewish tradition and modern Hebrew.

Freund said he hopes the arrival this week of more Bnei Menashe would “jump-start the process of bringing back the rest of the 7,000 Bnei Menashe who are in India yearning to return home.”

Hamas and members of the so-called military wing of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah organization took responsibility for an attack against the Israeli army this week, stating that a recently formed new terror group will be used to conduct joint operations against the Jewish state.

Last week, this column broke the story that Hamas and Fatah had formed a new organization called the Fire Belt to jointly attack Israel. On Sunday, the new Fire Belt terror group took responsibility for a grenade attack against Israeli forces operating in the vicinity of the Balata refugee camp in the northern West Bank city of Nablus.

According to Abu Nasser, a leader of Fatah’s Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades in Nablus and a self-declared top commander of the Fire Belt group, among the terrorists that attacked the jeep Sunday was a member of the Brigades who is on Israel’s official list of amnesty.

In July Israeli Prime Minister Olmert granted amnesty to 178 Fatah fighters, purportedly as a gesture to Abbas and to bolster the Palestinian leader against Hamas. The amnesty was offered on condition that the Fatah gunmen refrain from attacks against Israel.

The information about a Hamas-Fatah group follows the recent announcement of large sums of U.S. aid to Fatah, with military training programs for West Bank Fatah militias – again purportedly to back Abbas’s group against Hamas and to isolate Hamas in the Gaza Strip and West Bank.

A top leader of the so-called military wing of Abbas’s Fatah party vowed that his terror group would continue firing rockets from the Gaza Strip at nearby Jewish communities regardless of peace negotiations reportedly taking place between Abbas and Olmert.

“No matter what happens in negotiations, the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades will keep shooting these rockets at the Zionists,” Abu Lel Muntasser, chief of the Brigades in the southern Gaza Strip, told WorldNetDaily.

Muntasser claimed the Brigades has a new rocket in Gaza that can travel further than those previously fired from the territory, and took credit for a Kassam rocket attack this week that scored a direct hit on a house in the Israeli city of Sderot, injuring two.

Aaron Klein is Jerusalem bureau chief  for WorldNetDaily.com. He appears throughout the week on leading U.S. radio programs.