Shlomo Helbrans
Long dogged by accusations of severe child abuse and neglect,
the 40 families of insular hassidic group Lev Tahor fled their homes Tuesday in
Ste. Agathe, Quebec, fearing imminent removal of the children by Canadian
welfare authorities.
According to Oded Twik, an Israeli whose sister and eight
children have lived with Lev Tahor for the last eight years, the Israeli
Foreign Ministry and police worked through the night Tuesday to get information
about the safety of the children.
About 200 people traveled in three hired buses to Ontario,
where they rented a small number of hotel rooms. “The Canadian police have
confirmed that the group planned to go to Iran,” said Twik.
Lev Tahor is led by charismatic convicted kidnapper Shlomo
Helbrans. The group, mainly native Israelis and their Canadian-born children,
lived in the resort town of Ste. Agathe-du-Mont, Quebec. Only five members have
legal status in Canada and the children do not hold passports.
Born to a secular family as Erez Albaranes, the Lev Tahor
leader currently calls himself Shlomo Helbrans, the Admor (hasidic rebbe) of
Riminov.
He studied in Jerusalem yeshivas in his youth. In the
mid-1980s, despite lacking rabbinic ordination, he opened the Lev Tahor yeshiva
in Jerusalem at age 23.
In 1990, after an Israeli investigation for ties with what
was then the Islamic Movement in Israel, Helbrans fled to the United States
with about 20 followers.
In 1994 Helbrans was imprisoned for two years in the US for
kidnapping Shai Fima, whose secular parents had sent him to Helbrans for bar
mitzvah lessons.
Post-release, Helbrans and his followers moved to Ste.
Agathe, about 100 kilometers north of Montreal. There, Helbrans successfully
petitioned the Canadian government for refugee status, claiming persecution in
Israel for his anti-Zionist opinions.
Oded Twik has urged the Canadian authorities to remove all
137 children from the community. Dozens of family members and supporters
attended a demonstration outside the Canadian Embassy in Tel Aviv on October
14. Many family members have not communicated with their relatives for eight
years.
In a similar case, earlier this year, Canadian Child and
Family Services removed all 40 children of a Mennonite community in Manitoba
from their homes in response to allegations of corporal punishment, withholding
food, and moving children between families. The parents are cooperating with
authorities and a few children have since been returned to their homes.
Reports of the neglect and abuse of the Lev Tahor children
have circulated for years. The Israeli Center for Victims of Cults regularly
sends testimony to the Canadian authorities.
Members who have left the group described a diet of dough,
goose eggs and goat’s milk, but no fruits and vegetable.
There are regular
beatings, long prayers, and for the girls, dark clothing covering all but the
face, and household servitude. Children, including babies and toddlers, are
removed from their parents to live with other families, often repeatedly. Girls
are routinely married off at 14, in some cases to men more than twice their
age.
In October, 2011, two girls aged 13 and 15 from Beit Shemesh
attempted to travel to join the Lev Tahor community via Jordan. The girls’
aunt, Orit Cohen, filed a petition via the family court, and the girls were
intercepted at the Montreal airport and returned to Israel.
According to Twik, children in Lev Tahor get moved from
family to family as punishment for their parents’ violation of Helbrans’s
rules.
Tahor’s written regulations describe women as disgusting and
deserving of isolation and a subsistence diet. A husband may hit his wife for
disobeying the “rebbe’s” teachings.
According to Cohen, “Women who have grown up in Lev Tahor
believe that constant humiliation and punishment is necessary for their own
education. Even those who have left see themselves, their thoughts, and opinions
as worthless.”
The girls get the barest minimum of education.
Helbrans’s son Nathan recently fled Lev Tahor after a
dispute with his father, leaving his wife and children behind.
According to Twik and others familiar with the case,
Nathan’s split with the group began as a small child when he witnessed his
father’s disciples beating up Nathan’s mother, Malka, in her bedroom.
In January, 2012, Nathan bought a tape of Hasidic music for
one of his sons who had trouble falling asleep. As punishment, Helbrans ordered
that Nathan’s four children be housed with other families. The children would
live with twenty different families over the course of two years.
When Nathan refused to accept this decision, Helbrans
ordered him beaten up by two disciples who threw him into the snow and twisted
his legs until they broke. Nathan lay in bed for four months, remaining loyal
to Lev Tahor. He lied to the hospital about the cause of his injuries and
refused an operation, for fear it would lead to an investigation.
But in April 2012, Nathan left the community and returned to
Israel in June after death threats by Helbrans and his followers. He returned
to Montreal and reported the abuse of his children to Canadian authorities with
the support of Ometz (“Bravery” in Hebrew), a Montreal Jewish social services
agency.
In early October, the Canadian authorities, accompanied by
the police, removed the five children including an infant born while Nathan was
in Israel. The children were placed in the Montreal home of an Orthodox social
worker and his wife.
The Canadian Director of Youth Protection has since ruled
that the children would not be returned to Lev Tahor. Lev Tahor appealed,
claiming the evidence heard by the court is not reliable.
The situation of the children remaining in the group is
complex.
“Before intervening, the authorities need proof that the
children are at risk,” says Michael Kropveld, executive director of Info-Secte,
a Canadian organization that works with victims of fringe groups. Then they
have to ensure that a plan is in place that will benefit the children, with the
added difficulty of finding the families to house them.
“Ideally, says Kropveld, “the authorities will work with the
parents to improve the conditions so that the children can stay in the home.”
According to Kropveld, the worst-case scenario is a poorly
planned removal. Not only could people get hurt, a failed attempt could
ultimately make the leader stronger.
“People who have doubts will see a failed attempt as further
proof of the leader’s powers,” he says.
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