CHURACHANDPUR, India — Abel and Sharon Hangsingh and their children and grandchildren all waited for the sun to set over the rusting steel roofs of their modest Buelah Lane colony. It is an early sunset, as always in the far northeastern states. They lit two white candles, and when they could distinguish the first few stars in the clear valley sky, they gathered in front of the flickering light on their small, folding Sabbath table and sang the weekly Shalom Aleicheim by heart, high childish voices mingling with faltering elderly ones in a language none could understand.

They are one of thousands of families in this overwhelmingly Christian region of India who, over the past three decades, have converted to a version of Orthodox Judaism. But the pressures of living in Manipur, a state ravaged by decades of ethnic conflict and stagnant development, has taken its toll on even the most devout converts.

Jeremiah Hangsingh, called “Pau” for short, is Abel Hangsingh’s eldest son. Like so many of his generation in this town that borders the opium-producing country of Myanmar, he developed a heroin addiction 20 years ago and struggles with it to this day. Still, he never misses Friday’s Shabbat prayer.

“My father always encouraged me to change my life,” Pau said. “He always told me, ‘We’ll make a passport and go to Israel.’”

Pau believes the move would represent the sort of life change he needs to kick his addiction.

The Bnei Menashe — as the Jewish members of the closely related Kuki-Mizo-Chin tribes of northeastern India call themselves — believe that they are descendants of the Menasseh tribe, which was lost when the Assyrians invaded Israel in the eighth century B.C. Until they make Aliyah — Hebrew for the journey to Israel — the Bnei Menashe are not technically Jewish; they are in the process of becoming Jewish and will engage in a conversion once they get there that lasts several months. There are now roughly 2,000 Bnei Menashe in Israel and 7,000 in India.

This year, 899 of the Bnei Menashe will be granted Israeli citizenship, thanks to an Israeli nonprofit organization called Shavei Israel, which has helped hundreds of Indian Jews immigrate to Israel in the past few years. One hundred sixty Jews from Mizoram, a state that borders Manipur, have landed in Jerusalem in the past month alone. The Manipuris are expected to travel there in the next few months. Their journey is complicated by skepticism over their claims among religious leaders and academics. They also face difficulty in adjusting from insular, inward-looking hamlets like Manipur to the larger world.

Manipur suffers from a perfect storm of hardships — decades of militancy, political corruption, a porous border with Burma leading to widespread heroin smuggling, and human rights violations at the hands of the armed forces dispatched to keep the region calm.

Among the more mundane yet fundamental results is a lack of jobs. A common complaint is that the only work available is low-level government positions with meager salaries. Several people interviewed for this article said that to get a job as a policeman or teacher, one must pay off politicians and bureaucrats, even selling family property in order to secure a future in the state. Widespread corruption and a lack of industry have helped create a class of young people with a certain degree of comfort, privilege and education, but nothing to do with their talents.