Adam Brudzewsky
MONTREAL - Television cameras rushed to capture Adam
Brudzewsky’s arrival at a Saint-Jérôme, Que., courthouse one snowy morning last
November, dressed in the distinctive orthodox Jewish outfit of wide-brimmed
black hat, black silk coat tied at the waist, bushy beard and payot, the curled
strand of hair flanking his face.
He was there for a hearing that would end eight hours later
with a judge’s order that 14 children from the radical Jewish sect Lev Tahor
should be taken into the care of foster families in Montreal despite 200
members of the group having fled a few days earlier to a new life in
Chatham-Kent, Ont.
Brudzewsky, who is in his late 20s, gave a nervous smile as
he passed the journalists.
“I’m one of the good ones,” he said.
Reporters had been on the lookout for the family of the
children alleged to have been mistreated, poorly educated and psychologically
abused, but none showed up.
Instead, the court listened to Brudzewsky recount a
disturbing tale of the two years he spent living with Lev Tahor, including his
arranged marriage to a 15-year-old girl, the forced removals of children from
their parents and a cult of personality surrounding the group’s spiritual
leader, Rabbi Shlomo Helbrans.
The testimony of the Danish-born Brudzewsky was intended to
emphasize the findings of child-protection workers who had been conducting a
three-month probe of Lev Tahor that was cut short when they fled Quebec for
Ontario.
More than two months later, it has also been cited in a
separate child-welfare probe in Ontario that led to two children, aged 4 and 1,
being removed from their homes. The pair were removed by Ontario child welfare
authorities over a suspected a bruise, but were later reunited with their
parents following another court hearing.
Brudzewsky has also been in regular contact with the Sûreté
du Québec, who are conducting a separate investigation. Details of that
investigation are expected to be released Friday.
That probe may also be the
reason Brudzewsky sent a mysterious email Sunday to the Star and other media
outlets that have been closely following the case.
“I am sorry to inform you that I must immediately cease
contact with all media for an unknown period, possibly indefinitely. Rest
assured that this is not done because of fault on the media’s sides, but
because of reasons that are beyond my control and that I cannot reveal,” he
wrote.
The radio silence from the former MENSA member, the
exclusive club for those with high IQs, is likely a cause of celebration for
Lev Tahor and its supporters — even if it comes on orders from police as they
progress in their criminal investigation of the group.
For a while the slight, unassuming father of two has been
cast by lawyers and child-protection workers as a whistleblower who escaped Lev
Tahor and is now intent on saving innocent children. But Brudzewsky’s
detractors see only a paranoiac intent on dragging the reclusive Jewish group
into an uncomfortable public spotlight.
“Before his anger is taken as truth, his assertions should
at least be investigated,” Harold Boss, who is the grandfather of Brudzewsky’s
wife, Leah, said from his home in Monroe, N.Y.
Boss is not a member of Lev Tahor, but his brother does live
with the group and his daughter is a former member. After Brudzewsky and his
wife fled Lev Tahor in 2011 for sanctuary in Denmark, they elected to settle in
Monroe’s large orthodox community, living with members of Leah’s family.
In a letter to the Ontario court hearing the case involving
the two children, Boss wrote that Brudzewsky began attending a school for
married orthodox men in nearby Monsey.
“After a brief period he told me that that school, too, was
becoming a cult, and thus he could no longer attend,” Boss said. “It became
obvious to both my wife and I that this young man displayed some significant
psychological problems, but we kept silent.”
Brudzewsky said the rabbi and followers at the synagogue
where he was studying in Monsey had “some similarities to Lev Tahor.”
Boss said in an interview with the Star that he has tried
not to take sides in a dispute that Lev Tahor leaders say has become a case of
religious persecution. But Brudzewsky’s description of a closed society living
in fear and unable to exercise free will stands in contrast to the experience
of his daughter. She decided on her own a few years ago that the rigours of
life in a group that strives to live in a 200-year-old model of Jewish life
were not for her.
“She was brought up here. She wanted her kids to go to
school here. There are some people for whom that kind of life is not
appealing,” Boss said. “She felt, I think, more isolated there. Not that it was
bad, but it wasn’t for her.”
When she made up her mind about Lev Tahor, he said, her
family packed up the car and left.
Boss claims to have spoken at length with Brudzewsky about
his experiences with Lev Tahor and now believes that his sole purpose in
joining the group was to find a wife something Brudzewsky has denied. But the
allegations of cult-like behaviour are evidence of a disturbing paranoia, Boss
said.
“His sickness is destroying too many innocent families.”
It’s not the first time Brudzewsky has been challenged. In
his court testimony, he recounted being told by Rabbi Helbrans that he suffered
from borderline personality disorder, characterized by seeing only negative
when there was so much that was positive about life in Lev Tahor.
Brudzewsky’s critics have also offered more evidence that he
is an unbalanced and troubled soul: a teenage suicide attempt. Brudzewsky says
the accusation stems from an “existential crisis” he went through at the age of
15 in which he challenged the need to eat and drink. It was quickly resolved,
he said, with the interventions of a doctor and a rabbi.
Far from the search for an ending to his life, the episode
marked the beginning of a philosophical search that led to his enrolment at an
applied philosophy program at Sweden’s Lund University.
“The problem of not having a reason to live (nor any reason
to die, or to do anything else for that matter) never rose again,” he said.
But Brudzewsky’s detractors keep popping up, even as the
allegations of corporal punishment, cult-like mind control, stunted education
routines and underage marriages are laid out in court documents.
The ongoing case against Lev Tahor prompted 10 of Montreal’s
leading orthodox rabbis to hold a special meeting on Jan. 7. Critics of the
group, some of whom were in attendance, said there was agreement among the rabbis
to help find Yiddish-speaking foster families for the 14 children ordered into
temporary custody.
They also said the rabbis issued an extraordinary edict that
orthodox Jews were not to provide financial assistance to Lev Tahor through its
charitable arm, the Society of Spiritual Development.
“They wanted to show that there is such a concept in Judaism
as profaning God’s name,” recounted one source who was present at the meeting
but asked not to be identified.
“If the non-Jews or other Jews see that God’s people do only
bad things, then God will get a bad name.”
But according to two of the rabbis who took part in the
meeting, no such firm conclusions were ever reached.
“The agenda wasn’t clear and it seemed like this Brudzewsky
wanted the rabbis to get together and got one of the rabbis to call the
others,” Grand Rabbi Dovid Meisels, the leader of Montreal’s Satmar Hassidic
sect, told the Star.
“I can tell you one thing: This Mr. Brudzewsky is a real
liar.”
Brudzewsky stands by his allegations, undeterred by those
who attack his credibility. And despite the endless demands of police
investigators, child-welfare workers and lawyers, he claims no great discomfort
being the lynchpin in the ongoing prosecution of Lev Tahor.
“I challenge anyone to catch me in any lie whatsoever,” he
said.
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