AL QUDS: One of Israel's chief rabbis revealed on Tuesday that he had travelled to India to examine the possibility of allowing thousands of members of a tribe which claims to be Jewish to immigrate to the Jewish state.

Shlomo Amar, head of the country's Sephardic Jews and the leading authority on conversions, said more information was needed about the Bnei Mannasse tribe before a decision is made on whether to grant them "aliyah", the right of all Jews to immigrate to Israel.

"It is not easy to decide who is Jewish," the rabbi told army radio after returning from his trip last week to the northeastern Indian states of Manipur and Mizoram, where he was accompanied by a delegation of other rabbis.

Amar added that it was possible that the tribal members would be given "the benefit of the doubt" and declared Jewish. The tribal members had told the delegation of rabbis that they are the descendants of one of 10 lost tribes of Israel.

Rabbi Eliahou Birenbaum, who accompanied Amar to India, said that "there was no doubt that they are part of the Jewish people." "Their oral tradition, their customs dating back for centuries, the way in which they celebrate Shabbat (the Jewish day of rest), their synagogues as well as the written testimony of other Indians living around them, prove without doubt that they are of Jewish descendance."

Ten of the 12 tribes who lived in the kingdom of Israel in Biblical times were dispersed after the invasion of the Assyrians in 721 BC. -AFP