the observance dietary laws and other Jewish customs and traditions which they learned from books in the early 1960s. They had no connections with other Jewish groups in either the diaspora or Israel. On 31 May 1972, some Messianic communities founded the Manipur Jewish Organization (later renamed the United Jews Organization, NEI), the first Jewish organization in northeast India. After these people established contacts with other Jewish religious groups in Israel and other countries, they began to practice more traditional rabbinic Judaism in the 1980s and 1990s. Rabbi Eliyahu Avichail is the founder of Amishav, an organization which is dedicated to finding the Lost Tribes and facilitating their aliyah. He investigated this group's claims of Jewish descent in the 1980s. He named the group as the Bnei Menashe. In the late 20th century, many of the Bnei Menashe started to study normative Judaism. Hundreds of them emigrated to Israel, some of them completed the formal conversion requirements there because they wanted to be accepted as Jews. Critics believed that the government's policy of settling the Bnei Menashe immigrants in the unstable Judea, Samaria and Gaza Strip was part of a recruiting campaign to help increase the size of Israel's Jewish population. Others considered these people economic migrants rather than true Jews. In 2005, the Chief Rabbinate of Israel accepted them as Jews due to the devotion displayed by their practice through the decades, but still required individuals to undergo formal ritual conversion to be accepted as Jews. Later that year, Israel began to refuse to issue visas to these peoples after India objected to Israeli teams entering the northeast states to perform mass conversions and arrange aliyah. History of the Chin-Kuki-Mizo people Prior to their conversion to Christianity in the 19th century, the Chin-Kuki-Mizo practiced animism; ritual headhunting of enemies was part of their culture. Depending upon their affiliations, each tribe identifies primarily as Kuki, Mizo/Hmar, or Chin. The people identify most closely with their subtribes in the villages, each of which has its own distinct dialect and identity. They are indigenous peoples, who had migrated in waves from East Asia and settled in what is now northeastern India. They have no written history but their legends refer to a beloved homeland that they had to leave, called Sinlung/Chinlung. The various tribes speak languages that are branches of indigenous Tibeto-Burman. Influence of revivalism During the first Welsh missionary-led Christian Revivalism