In 1986, the Israeli embassy inKathmandu organized a Passover celebration as a service to the 7,000 Israelis who visit Nepal annually. The celebration was taken over in 1999 by theChabad (/ħabad/) movement, aHassidic Jewish movement that specializes in outreach to nonobservant Jews. Prior to 1986, there was no organized practice ofJudaism in Nepal, and there is no native Jewish community.[1]
The Nepalese Chabad center has achieved notability for thePassover celebration which is noted to be the largest such celebration in the world, with 1500 participants. The couple who run the center were models for a television series in Israel.
The Jerusalem-based NGOTevel B'Tzedek ('The world with Justice'), under its orthodox head Micha Odenheimer has organized many Israeli youths to travel to Nepalese villages and provide help to handle modernization, teaching efficient forms of irrigation and agriculture to outlying villages. The organization maintains a local staff of 50 Nepalese.[2]
In 1986, the Israeli embassy in theThamel section ofKathmandu started the tradition of holding aPassover Seder for Israeli travelers.[3][4][5][6] In 1999, theChabad house took over the event.
By 2006, the annual Passover seder sponsored by Chabad hosted 1,500 participants. It has been called the "world's largest seder",[7] requiring 1,100 pounds ofMatzo, the ritual unleavened bread of the festival.[8] By 2014 the event drew 1,700 attendees, though the ceremony was threatened by a strike that delayed a shipment of Matzo.[9]
The Chabad movement maintains houses throughout the world, to provide services to the local Jewish communities and to Jewish travellers. The Chabad house in Kathmandu was opened in 2000 by RabbiChezki Lifshitz and his wife Chani.
According to Chani, the movement had difficulty findingshlichim (emissaries) to go to Nepal. "They couldn’t find shluchim [emissaries] willing to go to such a third-world country,” she said in an interview. “We were the crazy couple willing to do it."[10]
The house was a success, and the movement opened two satellite houses in Nepal, one in the city ofPokhara in November 2007, and a third inManang in April 2010.[11]
In May 2012, the Israeli television networkReshet launched the miniseriesKathmandu, starring Israeli actorMichael ("Moni") Moshonov, based on true events from Chabad house Nepal. The series ran for 13 episodes.[12]
Besides being the model for the television series, Chabad house has often made news. In October 2013, Rabbi Lifshitz prevented the cremation of a religious Jewish woman from Australia who was killed in a traffic accident.[13] Cremation, customary in Nepal, is forbidden by orthodox Judaism. The organization was also involved in recovery of the remains of a New Jersey woman killed in a plane crash in the Himalayas.[14] The house has been featured in numerous magazines, includingThe Atlantic,[15] theJerusalem Post,[10] and other media.
According to the Nepal Ministry of Tourism, 7,151 Israelis visited Nepal in 2012, staying an average of 16 days.[16] Although Israelis comprise only about one percent of total tourism in Nepal, their mark is noticeable. "Any visitor to Nepal is guaranteed to hear Hebrew being spoken in the streets and to see Hebrew signs and T-shirts in the main tourist locations," writes Rabbi Ben in his travel blog "The Travelling Rabbi".[17]
Jewish religious leaders have expressed concern that many Israeli and American Jews visit Nepal in a spiritual quest that distances them from their Jewish roots. "The antipathy to religious ritual that many Israeli Jews have inherited from that early generation of foundingZionists, leads many of them to search for spiritual fulfillment in Nepal or India...," writes RabbiDaniel Gordis.[18] "Ashrams in Nepal and India are filled with young Jewish people, mostly American and Israeli."[19] In fact, however, very few Israelis go to Nepal for spiritual reasons – 62 in 2012, or less than one percent of all Israeli visitors to the country, and far below the average of 14 percent for all nationalities.[16] It is unknown how many Americans of Jewish extraction visit Nepal for spiritual reasons.
The French Jewish scholarSylvain Lévi visited Nepal in 1898 and published a three-volume historical study (Le Népal: Étude historique d’un royaume hindou, 1905–1908), considered the authoritative Western account of the country for most of the 20th century.[20] Lévi later wrote a comparative study of the Jewish and Hindu religions, based on his Nepalese researches[21]
The Hong Kong–based JewishKadoorie family has been involved with philanthropy in Nepal (as elsewhere in Asia), particularly servingGurkha communities, andHorace Kadoorie was awarded theOrder of Gorkha Dakshina Bahu (First Class) by the Nepalese government.[22][23]
TheU.S. State Department has found antisemitism to be "not an issue of any significance" in Nepal,[24] and has reported no antisemitic acts in annual reports on the country.[25]
Haaretz reported in 2013 that an Iranian suspected of planning terror attack on the Israeli embassy was arrested by embassy security personnel and handed over to the police in Kathmandu, Nepal.[26]
The Times of India reported in 2014 that Indian security forces had foiled a plot by theIndian Mujahideen to kidnap Jewish tourists in Nepal to be used in exchange for the female Pakistani scientistAafia Siddiqui held in a US jail, and that the organization had rented a hiding place in the hills of Nepal to hold their hostages captive.[27][28]
Israel–Nepal relations, established on 1 June 1960, are the relations betweenIsrael andNepal. This makes Nepal one of the first Asian countries to have diplomatic ties with Israel.[29][30][31]
 Immigration to Nepal | |
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