Rabbi Shlomo Helbrans
T-JEROME, QUE.―From apocalyptic visions of an armed
invasion, to a bogus diagnosis of psychological problems to corporal
punishment, there were many signs to a former member of the radical Jewish
group Lev Tahor that something was not right.
But it was not until he was called upon to fight allegations
that the reclusive community was a cult led by Shlomo Helbrans, a
self-proclaimed rabbi, that he was convinced to make a dramatic midnight escape
from the group, the ex-member told a Quebec court.
The testimony, heard on Nov. 27, was protected by a
publication ban based on fears that the 40 Lev Tahor families and their many
children would carry out a collective suicide pact because of perceived
persecution based on their religious beliefs. That publication ban was lifted
Thursday after an appeal by various media organizations.
The former member cannot be named, but the tale of his
experiences living with Lev Tahor between 2009 and 2011 can be now be made
public. They helped convince the Quebec family court judge to rule that 14
children from the community should be taken into foster care.
A week prior to the hearing, though, about 200 members of
the group fled Quebec for a new life in Chatham-Kent, Ont., where child
protection workers are now fighting in court to enforce the Quebec judge’s
order.
The ex-member was asked in the spring of 2011 to defend Lev
Tahor’s reputation after two teenage girls from Israel were seized at the
Montreal airport and prevented from joining the group because of perceived
dangers to their welfare.
Nachman Helbrans, the son of Lev Tahor’s leader, Rabbi
Shlomo Helbrans, sought out the ex-member because of his mastery of the English
language and asked him to prepare a defence to claims Lev Tahor was a cult. He
obliged, mainly because he had fallen out of favour for having tried to leave
the community with his pregnant teenage wife.
As punishment, the couple had
been forcibly separated for two weeks, his wife had been pressured to divorce
him and Rabbi Shlomo Helbrans had diagnosed him with borderline personality
disorder.
“I looked up the definition of a cult,” the ex-member told
the court. “Based on various checklists I told Nachman Helbrans that we are a
cult.”
The testimony is one of just a few instances in which a
renegade former member of the Lev Tahor sect has come forward to denounce their
activities over the years. The former member’s concerns about the group’s
conduct and practices also answer many of the questions about why Quebec’s
child protection authorities seem so determined to take the 14 children into
protective custody.
He testified that in the two years he lived in
Ste-Agathe-des-Monts, Que., he personally knew of seven marriages arranged by
Rabbi Helbrans that involved youth under the age of 16, which is the minimum
age under Canadian law.
“It was common when I was there,” he testified. “It was the
stated goal of the community to perform marriages at the age of 13.”
The ex-member, who now lives in Montreal, was himself in his
mid 20s when he was called into Rabbi Helbrans’ office to learn about the girl
who would become his wife. She was almost 16 — the minimum age at which one can
be married in Canada — and described as an “A-minus girl from a respectable
family.”
He only learned her name the next evening when he viewed the
marriage contract at an engagement party.
He didn’t lay eyes on her for the
first time until the day of their wedding, two months later.
The ex-member normally worked in the Lev Tahor office, but
occasionally he filled in as a substitute teacher at the boy’s school. The
classrooms were filled with prayerbooks rather than textbooks and a wooden
stick for discipline. He said he was instructed by one community member on how
to enforce good behaviour in class.
“I was told first to warn them, then slap them in the face
with an open hand if they would speak in class without permission or
misbehave,” he said, adding that he used physical punishment three times on
boys between the ages of eight and 13.
A girl’s education consisted of some English and
mathematics. Lev Tahor’s boys were taught prayers, bible study and some Hebrew
reading skills.
“The goal of these studies was to enable them to understand
the rabbi’s teachings,” the ex-member said. “The belief is that boys should be
busy with holy studies and girls run the house.”
The community is run with totalitarian discipline and in
many cases, people are terrified to break ranks.
Quebec child-welfare investigators have documented how women
are obliged to shroud themselves in head-to-toe black robes even when they are
in the hospital to give birth, according to a nurse who was interviewed in the
course of the probe. They often seek the express permission of Rabbi Helbrans
before accepting pain medication such as an epidural, child-protection workers
testified.
In person, Rabbi Helbrans can reportedly be quite charming.
He speaks with a disarming lisp and a stutter.
In a recording released on the Lev Tahor website of a
conversation with Quebec child-protection workers after the group fled to
Ontario, Rabbi Helbrans can be heard explaining: “The people in this group are
not my slaves, they are not my servants. I’m just a rabbi. It’s spiritual. I
have a big influence over people, but not everybody follows everything that I
say.”
But the ex-member countered that impression with the court.
On one occasion, shortly after the U.S. navy Seal raid that
killed Osama bin Laden in May 2011, Rabbi Helbrans confided in him, he said, a
vision of the near future that involved Lev Tahor members fending off
full-scale assault by the Canadian and American militaries at the group’s compound
in Ste-Agathe-des-Monts.
“He described how they would come over the mountain ridges
to Ste-Agathe and will shoot everything they have at this community,” the
ex-member testified, adding that the scenario had been written out in a
document explaining that the overwhelming force would be repelled when the
group’s members joined hands in meditation.
“I didn’t believe it. It seems that people were afraid of
this happening but they were hopeful,” he testified.
On other occasions, Rabbi Helbrans would use reverse
psychology to strengthen his emotional hold over the group, the man testified.
He would threaten to leave Lev Tahor, which would render the group leaderless.
While he locked himself away in his home, the community would go into a panic.
“People would ask his forgiveness. They would sleep outside
the doors of his apartment because they were afraid of losing him,” the
ex-member said.
By this point, he was beyond disillusionment. After his
first attempt to leave the community, Rabbi Helbrans diagnosed him with
borderline personality disorder, a psychological condition marked by unstable
emotions, behaviour or sense of identity.
“The main point was that I would observe positive things and
interpret them in a negative way,” he explained, adding that he was one of
three or four people who had received the rabbi’s diagnosis. “There were no
symptoms (except) them claiming the falsehood of my criticism.”
He was not seen by a doctor nor prescribed medication, but
was put on a regulated diet and made to undergo telephone counselling with an
Orthodox Jew in New York and adjust his life accordingly.
The ex-member began plotting a dramatic escape.
He secretly purchased a computer for his home with an
Internet connection. Then he began feigning sickness and exhaustion, using the
time at home to build trust and plot with his teenage wife who was born to a
Lev Tahor family and knew nothing of the outside world.
Eventually, he made contact with an Orthodox rabbi in the
town and started using his excursions into town to stash his family’s essential
belongings at a girls’ school run by the Orthodox rabbi.
His family sent him money and the final step came when the
young couple purchased airplane tickets. He had his wife, who was by this time
six months’ pregnant, push the button on the computer, to ensure she was fully
onside with the plan.
On the night of the escape, the local rabbi arranged for a
car to take them to the airport.
“Everything was timed and planned so that it would be dark
and no one would be around,” he testified. “We went through the bushes and into
the waiting car.”
He testified that he has had no threats or further contact
with Lev Tahor since leaving two years ago, but suggests that may be because he
made copies of internal documents “that would be very problematic for the
community if they were made public.”
“I figured that’s why they wouldn’t even dare to threaten
me.”
By: Allan Woods -The Toronto Star
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