CultNEWS101 Articles: 1/12/2022 (LDS, Covid, Lev Tahor, Guatemala, Legal, Swami Vishnudevananda, Abuse, Yoga Teacher Training)

LDS, Covid, Lev Tahor, Guatemala, Legal, Swami Vishnudevananda, Abuse, Yoga Teacher Training

RNS: COVID outbreak reported at Mormon missionary training center

All 588 missionaries at the Provo, Utah missionary training center were tested and a total of 91 tested positive.

An outbreak of COVID-19 has been reported at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints' main training center for missionaries in Provo, Utah, church officials said Thursday.

The Provo Missionary Training Center, which resumed in-person training in June, requires all missionaries to be fully vaccinated and also conducts COVID-19 testing.

Face coverings will now be required in all indoor spaces and missionaries will not travel to their assigned missions unless they have tested negative for COVID-19 or have completed any necessary quarantine periods, said church spokesperson Sam Penrod.

 

Times of Israel: Man who escaped anti-Zionist Jewish cult returned to Guatemala in search of his son

"As Lev Tahor leadership sought to transport group to Iran, Israel Amir and team of ex-Shin Bet agents traveled across globe to search for 2-year-old boy.

A 22-year-old survivor of an ultra-Orthodox, anti-Zionist cult in Guatemala is in the midst of a years-long struggle to extract his two-year-old son from the hands of the leadership of the extremist group.

Israel Amir managed to escape the Lev Tahor cult while holed up in a Guatemala forest compound two years ago.

The group has been described as a cult and as the "Jewish Taliban," as women and girls older than three are required to dress in long black robes covering their entire body, leaving only their faces exposed. The men spend most of their days in prayer and studying specific portions of the Torah. The group adheres to an extreme, idiosyncratic reading of kosher dietary laws.

Lev Tahor was founded by Rabbi Shlomo Helbrans in Jerusalem in the 1980s. The group fled to Canada and then to Guatemala in 2014 after coming under intense scrutiny by Canadian authorities for alleged child abuse and child marriage.

In November, two top leaders of the group, Nachman Helbrans and Mayer Rosner, were convicted by a federal court in New York of child sexual exploitation and kidnapping in a case involving a family that escaped from the cult.

Before leaving the cult, Amir filmed a video during which he described the brutality of the leaders, the lack of food and the extreme conditions at the compound. He sent the video to his cousins in Israel who flew to Guatemala and helped him leave. He has since been re-acclimating to life back in Israel, far away from the cult."

Conspirituality: Bonus Sample: The Inventor of Yoga Teacher Training Was a Rapist Obsessed with UFOs

"In 1969, Swami Vishnudevananda pioneered what has become a life transition ritual for the GenX and Millennial precariat: the Yoga Teacher Training (YTT) Programme. He was a cult leader rapist who thought yoga would help the world stare down a UFO invasion. Not exactly confidence-inspiring.

Not every YTT programme is bad—today's bonus host Matthew has worked in some good ones for over a decade. But on the whole, we're talking about an industry that has graduated up to 500K ppl over 50 years through a pseudo-educational process that has greased the epistemological pipeline towards conspirituality.

YTTs are unregulated by any academic or professional consensus. They are driven by the anxious charisma of urban yoga studio entrepreneurs who need to sell big-ticket products to counter the rising overheads of the gentrification they're helping to drive. Their curricula offers a pastiche of uncited resources. They pad contact hours with sermons and meditation sessions.

The typical YTT training manual is an unironic postmodern meat-grinder in which Iron Age philosophy and high school anatomy are blended with quotes from Carl Jung and Rumi. As an example, Matthew looks at a Jivamukti Yoga School manual from a 2007 training hosted at Omega Institute."

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CultNEWS101 Articles: 11/3/2021 (Brazil, Indigenous, Lev Tahor, Guatemala, Satanic Organization, Religious Freedom, Witchcraft)

Brazil, Indigenous, Lev Tahor, Guatemala, Satanic Organization, Religious Freedom, Witchcraft

Mongabay: Brazil court upholds ban on missionaries trying to contact isolated Indigenous

Brazil's highest court has upheld a ban on missionaries entering reserves that are home to isolated and recently contacted Indigenous people during the pandemic.

The decision comes in response to a lawsuit filed by Indigenous organizations against a law passed in July 2020 that allowed missionaries to remain inside these reserves despite the pandemic, in violation of Brazil's official policy in place since 1987.

According to Indigenous organizations, it's crucial to reaffirm the non-contact policy under the administration of President Jair Bolsonaro that has pushed to "integrate" Indigenous people into society, and has been cozy with the evangelical movement.

Besides the risk of disease spread, the presence of missionaries in these reserves undermines traditional cultures and social cohesion, and compels these nomadic communities to settle down, making the land more vulnerable to invasions by illegal ranchers and loggers, activists say.

Jerusalem Post: Extradition of senior Lev Tahor leaders to US from Guatemala approved

"A court in Guatemala has approved the extradition to the US of two senior leaders of the Lev Tahor ultra-Orthodox cult – brothers Yaakov Weingarten and Shmuel "Shmiel" Weingarten – where they face child exploitation offenses.

The Third Criminal Sentencing Court in Guatemala authorized the extradition of the two men on Thursday and Friday, after they were charged in April this year by the US attorney for the Southern District of New York for the kidnap of a 14-year old girl and for smuggling her across the US-Mexico border to reunite her with her adult husband.

According to media in Guatemala where the Lev Tahor cult is currently located, the court has verified that there are currently no legal proceedings against the Weingarten brothers and that the Guatemalan Foreign Ministry is therefore authorized to begin extradition proceedings.

It was reported the brothers intend to appeal the decision, with an attorney for the two describing the legal process against them as "persecution."

There have, however, been numerous charges and allegations against members of the cult for kidnapping, forced underage marriage, and various forms of child abuse.

Yaakov Weingarten was arrested in March this year during a police raid on the Lev Tahor compound, while Yoel and Shmuel Weingarten were arrested in a separate raid in April, all due to the charges against them in the Southern District of New York.

The extradition case against Yoel Weingarten has yet to be brought to court since the US authorities have reportedly not yet sent the relevant documents to their Guatemalan counterparts.

The cult has recently tried to move to Iran on several occasions to avoid its legal problems tied up in its child abuse and other criminal activities, but have been unsuccessful so far.

Relatives in Israel of children in the group have lobbied Israeli authorities to help prevent the group reaching Iran, where it would be harder to extract children from the cult."

WPVI: SATANISTS CONVINCE DELAWARE COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA SCHOOL DISTRICT TO ALTER DRESS CODE

"A local Satanic organization has convinced a school district in Delaware County that its dress code was discriminatory against Satanists.

Joseph Rose, the founder of a local organization called Satanic Delco, says fellow Satanists with children attending schools within the Rose Tree Media School District made him aware of the verbiage in the dress code banning any clothing or gear that are "satanic in nature."

"The idea that a public school would allow religious expression in school, but choose to single out and prohibit the expression of one specific religion obviously seemed like a problem for us," Rose said."

USA Today: 'We're in the middle of a witch moment': Hip witchcraft is on the rise in the US

"On Halloween night, Charlene Dzielak will light candles and incense in front of an altar and invite her departed loved ones to join her in a "dumb supper," a feast eaten in silence out of reverence for the dead who can't speak.  

After a yearlong hiatus because of COVID-19, Dzielak is reuniting with her coven — or congregation of witches — in Old Bridge, New Jersey, to celebrate Samhain, an ancient Celtic festival marking the end of the harvest season and beginning of winter. Pronounced "sow-in," Samhain, which is believed to have been the precursor to Halloween, literally means "summer's end" in Gaelic."

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Extradition of senior Lev Tahor leaders to US from Guatemala approved

The cult has recently tried to move to Iran on several occasions to avoid its legal problems tied up in its child abuse and other criminal activities, but have been unsuccessful so far.


JEREMY SHARON
Jerusalem Post
OCTOBER 31, 2021

A court in Guatemala has approved the extradition to the US of two senior leaders of the Lev Tahor ultra-Orthodox cult – brothers Yaakov Weingarten and Shmuel “Shmiel” Weingarten – where they face child exploitation offenses.

The Third Criminal Sentencing Court in Guatemala authorized the extradition of the two men on Thursday and Friday, after they were charged in April this year by the US attorney for the Southern District of New York for the kidnap of a 14-year old girl and for smuggling her across the US-Mexico border to reunite her with her adult husband.

According to media in Guatemala where the Lev Tahor cult is currently located, the court has verified that there are currently no legal proceedings against the Weingarten brothers and that the Guatemalan Foreign Ministry is therefore authorized to begin extradition proceedings.

It was reported the brothers intend to appeal the decision, with an attorney for the two describing the legal process against them as “persecution.”

There have, however, been numerous charges and allegations against members of the cult for kidnapping, forced underage marriage, and various forms of child abuse.

Yaakov Weingarten was arrested in March this year during a police raid on the Lev Tahor compound, while Yoel and Shmuel Weingarten were arrested in a separate raid in April, all due to the charges against them in the Southern District of New York.

The extradition case against Yoel Weingarten has yet to be brought to court since the US authorities have reportedly not yet sent the relevant documents to their Guatemalan counterparts.

The cult has recently tried to move to Iran on several occasions to avoid its legal problems tied up in its child abuse and other criminal activities, but have been unsuccessful so far.

Relatives in Israel of children in the group have lobbied Israeli authorities to help prevent the group reaching Iran, where it would be harder to extract children from the cult.

The group numbers some 250 people, around 100 are adults and 150 are children, many of whom are Israeli citizens.

Last week, The Jerusalem Post reported that the Israeli State Attorney’s Office is yet to request an Interpol arrest warrant for Elazar Rumpler who was indicted in Israel for child abuse and put on trial, but who managed to flee the country and return to Guatemala.

Rumpler was indicted for the severe physical and mental abuse of children under his care as a principal in a school in Canada where the cult resided for several years before moving to Guatemala in 2014 to avoid legal problems.



https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/extradition-of-senior-lev-tahor-leaders-to-us-from-guatemala-approved-683635

Guatemala blocks extremist ultra-Orthodox sect heading to Iran through Mexico

Two busloads of Lev Tahor members prevented from crossing border with the intention of flying to Kurdistan

Times of Israel
October 18, 2021

Guatemalan authorities stopped two buses carrying members of an extremist Jewish ultra-Orthodox sect from traveling across the border into Mexico, from where they were reportedly planning to reach Iran to seek asylum, Hebrew media reported Monday.

At the request of Israeli and US officials, who fear the Lev Tahor community could be used as a bargaining chip by Tehran, Guatemala has already prevented members from flying out of the country as they tried to head to the Islamic Republic.

The buses were stopped Sunday on their way to Mexico, where the passengers were apparently planning to board a plane to Kurdistan as a steppingstone to their final destination in Iran, the B’Hadrei Haredim website reported.

Video published by the website, which caters to the ultra-Orthodox community, showed women and children on one of the buses, which appeared to have been stopped on a main highway.

Members of the Lev Tahor group, which is anti-Zionist, applied for political asylum in Iran in 2018. Documents presented at a US federal court in 2019 showed that leaders of the fringe Hasidic cult requested asylum from the Islamic Republic and swore allegiance to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Last week it was reported that concerns were building that hundreds of members of the group, mainly based in Guatemala, could be trying to move to Iran after dozens of families were spotted at the airport in Guatemala, apparently on their way to the Kurdistan-Iran border.

An advance party of community leaders is reportedly already in Kurdistan, waiting for the rest of the group to arrive.

Relatives of the Israeli cult members had contacted the Foreign Ministry and Justice Ministry and asked them to urgently contact their Guatemalan counterparts to prevent the families from leaving. Relatives of American members were making similar requests to the US State Department, the Ynet website reported.

According to the report, the Guatemalan authorities have already detained a number of the cult members who hold US citizenship and were allegedly on their way to Iran in recent days, after a request from American authorities.

The report said the cult was initially planning on moving to the Erbil region of Iraq, which borders Iran and which they believe to be biblical Babylon.

Relatives are additionally concerned about Islamic State activity in the region.

The Lev Tahor sect was founded in Jerusalem by Rabbi Shlomo Helbrans in the 1980s. The group fled to Canada and then to Guatemala in 2014 after coming under intense scrutiny by Canadian authorities for alleged child abuse and child marriage.

The group has been described as a cult and as the “Jewish Taliban,” as women and girls older than 3 are required to dress in long black robes covering their entire body, leaving only their faces exposed. The men spend most of their days in prayer and studying specific portions of the Torah.

“Marriages” between minors and older members are common.

Earlier this year, Guatemalan and US police targeted the sect in a joint raid in the Central American nation, arresting two of its leaders on suspicion of abusing and kidnapping children.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/guatemala-blocks-extremist-ultra-orthodox-sect-heading-to-iran-through-mexico/

CultNEWS101 Articles: 7/14/2021

Lev Tahor, Guatemala, Legal, Abuse, Buddhism, Benjamin Creme, Russia, Legal, Grigory Grabovoi

Jerusalem Post: US, Guatemalan forces raid extremist haredi Lev Tahor cult compound

"US and local Guatemalan police have begun raiding the compound of the extremist ultra-Orthodox (haredi) cult, Lev Tahor, arresting at least three top officials in the cult, Globes reported on Tuesday evening.

Another reporter for Globes reported that cult-members Yoel and Shmuel Weingarten have been arrested.

US and Guatemalan forces have performed several raids on the cult's leaders and members in recent years, mainly for kidnapping and child abuse charges, arresting their leader Yaakov Weinstein last March. In 2019, four members were indicted for kidnapping two children whose mother had taken them, wanting to return the children to Lev Tahor.

The sect has been accused of forcing girls as young as 12 years old into marriages with much older men within the sect."

Medium: The Goodness of a Cult Comes from Those it Abuses

That ideal façade is often built by people trying to survive

"When I report on institutional abuse in yoga and Buddhism I always discover that survivors were stripped of time, security, money, earning potential, educational opportunities, social status, family bonds, bodily autonomy and inner dignity. I hear stories of endless hours of unpaid labour, undertaken with the promise of salvation. I hear from members who were raped by leaders who told them it was for their spiritual good. They describe being silenced by enablers.

These details constitute the cultic crime scene. An organization has exploited its members, and left human wreckage. Their stories can be told, corroborated, fact-checked, and published. Innocent and earnest members of the organization will hope that accountability is possible, so that what they remember being good and wholesome about the organization can be salvaged.

But a bitter irony curdles this desire. So much of what an earnest group member will be nostalgic for — the beautiful singing, the communal meals, the tidy accommodations and lovely gardens — came from the organization's encouragement and exploitation of the skills of those it abused.

This organizational capital isn't limited to songs and salad greens and sandwiches. In many cases, it also informs the core content of the group. In the two cults I survived, it was unpaid cult members who transcribed, edited, published, and distributed all of the cult literature."

Mathew Remski: The Edgelord Lama

"To understand how a worldly and sophisticated 60 year-old Bhutan-born Buddhist lama starts shitposting about #metoo, we need some background and nuance. Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche isn't your typical 4chan troll. He's on a mission to defend a global spiritual industry that's crumbling under the weight of its abuse revelations. Somehow, he believes that cloaking the presumption of ancient spiritual superiority in victim-blaming jokes and memes is a good strategy."

Medium: Growing up as a child in Benjamin Creme's Maitreya Cult

"I would like to explain my mother's background to understand why she joined a cult, and why, as her only child, this was my upbringing. My mother was born in 1946 and grew up in a tiny apartment block near the centre of communist Budapest. She and her parents were crowded together in one room, living in poverty. They would argue daily. Her mother beat her physically every day and her father had become chronically ill after my grandmother had been hiding him in a damp cellar so he could avoid the persecution of the Nazis (since he was Jewish). When my mother was only 17, her mother married her off to a French man, so she would be able to leave the communist-controlled country. She lived in great poverty in Paris, barely having enough to eat, and then divorced him. At one point, she moved to London, where she has stayed ever since, eventually marrying my father.

My father was born to a middle-class family with both parents who had fought in World War II. They were also relatively dysfunctional as a family, in that his father was always very cold with his two boys. My father is a good man, but he is 'damaged' in that, in his own words, he is 'unable to feel joy.' My father's mother had become a numbed-out alcoholic since she was in an unhappy marriage (she overcame this in her old age after my grandfather died). For this older generation, divorce was frowned upon, and alcoholism would have been the only escape.

During the cult happy 1970s, it is of no surprise then that my parents, along with the rest of their generation, were desperate to find a better way of life. Some of them were trying to create utopias and communes under the guidance of various charismatic cult leaders. So, when my mother saw Benjamin Crème's advert in the newspaper that 'Maitreya is now in the world', for her, it was a call that spoke to a deep sense of a need to belong and to feel as if there is a purpose for being here. This was felt by many of her generation who joined spiritual cults, as they were searching for something radically different from the war-torn misery of their parent's generation. Looking back had I not known what I know now, and had I been in their shoes, I might have joined in also! Who, I wonder, is not consciously or unconsciously looking for 'belonging' and the love we seem to have lost?

His group was harmless in an outward way, but for me, unfortunately, it was not harmless. It was harmless outwardly in that there was no physical abuse, because I can tell you that Benjamin Creme absolutely believed everything he was saying and his intentions were good towards all groups of people inclusively. He really wanted to help save the world for all people equally. Cults become harmful outwardly when the leader is doing what he is doing for self-interest — and that was not Ben.

Yahoo News: A cult leader was imprisoned in Russia for promising mothers he could resurrect their massacred children. 13 years later, his 'cheat codes for the universe' became a TikTok obsession.

"@kai.metal.billy said he turned a $700 crypto investment into $25,000 within two days. @victoriagross said her dad transferred her more money than expected. @soulfulxistence said she found $20 in her car.

It looked like everyone was getting lucky. But they weren't calling it luck.
Like thousands of TikTokers, they were putting their good fortune down to Grabovoi codes, or Grabovoi numbers - a pseudoscience based around seemingly random strings of numbers.
Some called them "cheat codes for the universe."

The sequences supposedly "create a frequency at the vibratory and energetic level to positively affect situations and structures that are part of our lives," Edilma Angel Moyano, a self-styled Grabovoi follower, said in a 2018 book about the codes. The science behind this is - to say the least - unclear.

There are codes for "unexpected money" (5207418898, per Moyano), good skin (55942833), weight loss (55942833), and even a formula for protection from mosquitoes (55942833 combined with 694713). And yes, there's one for eternal life.

Like many TikTok trends, it's fun, and costs nothing to try. But it's the brainchild of a man with a dark history.
Who is Grigory Grabovoi?

Grigory Grabovoi is a Kazakh faith healer who rose to prominence amid the complex politics of post-Cold War Russia.

Some 17 years before his "codes" became a TikTok trend, Grabovoi and his followers were, prosecutors said, promising grieving mothers he could resurrect their children for a fee of $1,200. (Grabovoi denied charging money, reported Rapsi, a Russian legal news site.)

According to his website, Grabovoi graduated as a mathematician in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, in 1986, and quickly put together a busy résumé. It included selling services in "extrasensory diagnostics" to Uzbekistan's national airline, where he claimed to correctly predict the engineering issues of 360 flights.

This appeared impressive in Boris Yeltsin's Russia. There were press reports of the then-president charging Grabovoi with keeping his plane in the air through telekinesis by the late 1990s, Eduard Kruglyakov, the head of the country's Commission on Pseudoscience, told the Regnum news agency in 2005."

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Intervention101.com to help families and friends understand and effectively respond to the complexity of a loved one's cult involvement.

CultRecovery101.com assists group members and their families make the sometimes difficult transition from coercion to renewed individual choice.

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CultNEWS101 Articles: 7/15/2021

Podcasts, Children of God, Stockholm Syndrome, Haredi, Lev Tahor, Legal Guatemala

Distractions: 21 BEST PODCASTS ABOUT CULTS FOR ANY KIND OF ENTHUSIAST

" ... IndoctriNation host Rachel Bernstein is a licensed marriage family therapist (LMFT), and has worked with victims of cults and emotional abusers for over 25 years. Because of her professional background, Rachel brings an expertise to the table that many of these other podcasts about cults just don't have. This is especially true when examining the psychology behind members and leaders.

But don't worry, despite her vast professional knowledge on cults, IndoctriNation is totally accessible to everyone. And it is meant to be, as one intent of the podcast is to teach people about systems of control so that they can avoid them.

Many episodes impart practical steps and advice, such as the episode on QAnon where she gives advice on speaking to and coping with friends and family 'lost' to QAnon. In other episodes, Rachel interviews other cult experts and former members in order to give the full picture of why people join cults, and the emotional fallout for those who get out."

The Guardian: Guardian journalist helped me see a way out, ex-cult member recalls

Former Children of God member says a simple question put to her by Walter Schwarz was life-changing.

"It was a simple question to a child, one routinely asked by adults: what do you want to be when you grow up? But for 11-year-old Bexy Cameron, who had never known anything but the strict religious cult she was born into, it was life-changing.

Her brief encounter with the Guardian journalist Walter Schwarz in the 1990s led to her escaping the Children of God cult at the age of 15, leaving behind her parents and siblings. Now she has written a memoir, Cult Following, about growing up in a movement founded by a controlling sexual predator. The last line of her acknowledgments reads: "Eternal gratitude to Walter Schwarz (RIP). Who knows what would have happened without that 'one simple question'?"

Cameron, 38, and her 11 siblings knew only a life dominated by Bible readings, exorcisms, physical and psychological punishments when Schwarz became the first journalist to be permitted access to the cult. Children of God had been founded in California in 1968 by the self-proclaimed prophet David Berg, who was known as Moses."

Oxygen: What Exactly Is Stockholm Syndrome? Psychologists Breaks It Down

Why do kidnap victims stay with their captors? The reasons are varied and the psychology is complex.

"Abducted while hitchhiking in 1977 and imprisoned for seven years, Colleen Stan's story drops jaws even nearly 45 years later. 

"Snapped Notorious: The Girl In The Box," a two-hour special airing Saturday, July 17 at 9/8c on Oxygen, dives into the case, featuring a remarkable interview with survivor Stan, now 64 and a grandmother, about her ordeal and the question she constantly confronts. 

"People always say, 'Well, why didn't you run away?'" Stan told producers. "I just felt that it wasn't an option at that time .... I really felt that I'd be hurt, and other people would be hurt if I went against them." 

Stan's captors, Cameron and Janice Hooker, had convinced her of that. Obedience was key to survival for Stan, who was shackled by "invisible chains," criminal behavioral analyst Laura Richards told "Snapped Notorious." "Oftentimes victims will do anything to survive, and the threat of someone else being harmed that they care about can keep them controlled." 

Stan's case of long-term captivity and survival is a uniquely brutal one, but it brings to mind other cases in which victims stayed with abductors. One possible reason often cited is Stockholm syndrome. The term reportedly came up during court proceedings for the Stan case, although it doesn't seem to fit with why Stan didn't leave her imprisonment earlier.

Stockholm syndrome describes a psychological phenomena in which hostages bond with their captors and develop feelings of trust or closeness. The syndrome has also been associated with victims of abuse as well as cults."

Latin Post: Two Leaders of Extremist Haredi Lev Tahor Cult Arrested in Guatemala by Local and U.S. Forces

" ... Based on local reports, the operation started last week when an FBI agent, along with two PNC or National Civil Police agents, infiltrated the compound of the cult on a farm. The said compound was located in the village of El Amatillo, in Oratorio, Santa Rosa.

The raid included 100 police officers and 40 police cars. The authorities deployed the large troop out of fears that the cult members would riot to open an escape route for the suspects.

Meanwhile, the cult's spokesman shared to the local media that the raid was illegal and that the detainees were Guatemalan citizens. The senior official whose name was not mentioned stated that the FBI has no authority to operate in Guatemala.

Kikar Hashabbat stated that there were also unconfirmed reports of an exchange of gunfire between members of the cult and law enforcement."

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US, Guatemalan forces raid extremist haredi Lev Tahor cult compound

The sect has been accused of forcing girls as young as 12 years old into marriages with much older men within the sect.


JERUSALEM POST STAFF
JULY 6, 2021



US and local Guatemalan police have begun raiding the compound of the extremist ultra-Orthodox (haredi) cult, Lev Tahor, arresting at least three top officials in the cult, Globes reported on Tuesday evening.

Another reporter for Globes reported that cult-members Yoel and Shmuel Weingarten have been arrested.

US and Guatemalan forces have performed several raids on the cult's leaders and members in recent years, mainly for kidnapping and child abuse charges, arresting their leader Yaakov Weinstein last March. In 2019, four members were indicted for kidnapping two children whose mother had taken them, wanting to return the children to Lev Tahor.

The sect has been accused of forcing girls as young as 12 years old into marriages with much older men within the sect.

Founded in New York in the late 80's, Lev Tahor settled in Canada in 2003. The group's founder Slomo Helbrans was convicted for kidnapping a child he was tutoring in the early 90's in New York, but released after only two years in prison.

After being deported to Israel in 2000, Helbrans took his movement to Canada in 2003 where the cult remained for 10 years before rousing the interest of Canadian authorities, after which they collectively fled to Guatemala.

Shlomo Helbrans drowned in Mexico in 2017, leaving control of the group in the hands of his son Nachman and some associates who are believed to be even more extremist.

https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/us-guatemalan-forces-raid-extremist-haredi-lev-tahor-cult-compound-673068

MANDEL: Could Ontario have rescued child brides of extremist Jewish sect?

Michele Mandel
Toronto Sun
April 20, 2021

An Ontario judge may have missed a chance to rescue a future child bride and others like her when the “Jewish Taliban” case came before her court seven years ago.

Instead, after winning their court case that prevented the return of their children to Quebec where they’d been deemed in need of protection, Lev Tahor parents were able to leave Chatham for Guatemala. It was at their compound there in 2018 that “Minor 1” — the victim at the centre of an FBI criminal case — was allegedly forcibly married off at 13.

The U.S. Department of Justice announced new child exploitation charges Monday against senior leaders of the 250-member Jewish extremist sect who are accused of kidnapping the teen bride and her younger brother after their mom fled the cult for New York State in November 2018.

The goal of their brazen kidnapping of the 14-year-old girl “was to reunite her with her adult ‘husband’ outside the United States for purposes of continuing their sexual relationship,” prosecutors alleged.

“Lev Tahor leadership, including the defendants, required young brides to have sex with their husbands, to tell people outside Lev Tahor that they were not married, to pretend to be older, and to deliver babies inside their homes instead of at a hospital, partially to conceal from the public the mothers’ young ages.”

The first alleged kidnapping plot was both devious and successful.

Six weeks after she arrived in New York, Lev Tahor allegedly sent the child bride a gift of honey, coffee, and a cellphone to communicate with the plotters. In the middle of the night, leader Nachman Helbrans is charged with taking Minor 1 and her brother from their home to the Scranton airport. Disguised in secular clothing — including a Superman hat for the 12-year-old boy — they were allegedly flown to Mexico using the passports of Helbrans’ own children.

According to the indictment, the victims’ next flight may have been on to Tehran if they hadn’t been rescued. At the time of the kidnapping, the anti-Zionist sect was actually seeking asylum in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

After a three-week international manhunt, the sister and brother were located in a Mexican City hotel and returned to their mother. Helbrans, Mayer Rosner and son Jacob Rosner, the 20-year-old “husband,” were extradited from Mexico to New York where they were charged with kidnapping.

Despite the arrests, Lev Tahor apparently wasn’t deterred.

Three months later, they allegedly tried to kidnap Minor 1 again. Her mother was allegedly told that Lev Tahor would not stop until her children were back in the fold.

Just last month, came a third kidnapping attempt. A member of the group is accused of approaching the children in New York with bus tickets to Georgia and fake IDs.

Would it have come to this if Canadian authorities had done more to protect these children?

Founded in Israel by Helbrans’ father, the late Rabbi Shlomo Helbrans, Lev Tahor moved to Brooklyn where their leader was later convicted of kidnapping a student.

Released after two years, the senior Helbrans was deported to Israel but soon took his followers to Ste. Agathe, Que.

Quebec child workers accused Lev Tahor of medicating children with melatonin to control their behaviour, depriving them of even the most basic secular education, and arranging marriages at 13. A Quebec judge ordered temporary foster care because they were in imminent psychological and physical danger.

Before authorities could act, the group fled to Chatham. A lower court judge in Ontario agreed the children should be returned to Quebec but Superior Court Justice Lynda Templeton reversed the move on appeal.

“To create further upheaval and instability in their lives would most surely have disastrous emotional and psychological ramifications for them,” she wrote.

Another court would reach a different conclusion.

In 2017, an Israeli judge called Lev Tahor “a dangerous cult that severely damages the physical and emotional well-being of the children of this community.”

But by then, Lev Tahor had long fled Canada for Guatemala where Minor 1 was allegedly being taken to her marital bed at just 13.

mmandel@postmedia.com
https://torontosun.com/news/local-news/mandel-could-ontario-have-rescued-child-brides-of-extremist-jewish-sect

Lev Tahor Cult Leader Arrested By Guatemalan Police On 1st Day Of Pesach

Yeshiva World News
March 30, 2021

Yaakov Weingarten, one of the leaders of the Lev Tahor cult who is suspected of kidnapping and child abuse, was arrested by Guatemalan security forces on the first day of Pesach, YWN has confirmed.

Many of the other cult leaders have already been arrested for kidnapping and child abuse and are already serving prison sentences. The leaders’ cruel practice was to kidnap children from their parents on Shabbos to make it more difficult for them to be pursued.

Weingarten’s case will be heard in a Guatemalan court on Wednesday, according to local media reports.

Kikar Shabbos reports that due to the Guatemalan authorities’ pursuit of the cult leaders, they have decided that they have no other choice but to flee to Iran. “We already tried in the past to flee there,” one of the Lev Tahor members reportedly said. “This time we have no other choice and we’ll have to do everything we can to move to Iran.”

There are currently multiple Lev Tahor cult leaders in Federal prison awaiting trials. Among them are Nachman Helbrans, 36; Mayer Rosner, 42, and his son Jacob Rosner, 20; Aron Rosner, 45, of Brooklyn, Mayer Rosner’s brother. A fifth man, Lev Tahor member Matityau Malka, and Mordechai Yoel Malka.

YWN has been at the forefront for more than 10 years fighting the Lev Tahor cult – with dozens of articles over the years. Violent beatings, abuse, rampant pedophelia were and are still common in the cult that currently remains in Guatemala.

They were facing various charges including kidnapping, identity theft, (use of fake passports) conspiracy to defraud the United States and international parental kidnapping. Four are being held without bond (due to flight risks). Aron Rosner was released on a $10 million bond to home confinement and electronic monitoring.

Former members of Lev Tahor (who either escaped or were otherwise expelled) do not recall learning Mishnayos or Gemara, nor any Mitzvos Bein Adam LeChaveiro. They spend the majority of the day in deep prayer and are only allowed to study certain sections of the Chumash, with Lev Tahor commentary.

Lev Tahor practices include women and girls wearing black head-to-toe coverings day and night, arranged marriages between teenagers, and a violent form of Malkos. Lev Tahor only permits certain fruits and vegetables to be eaten, as well as whole wheat flour made into bread with a stone press.

Nachman Helbrantz (L.) who is currently in jail, Weingarten (C.), and askan Yanki Flitskein, who was asked by Rabbanim to attempt to rescue the children from the cult.

Reports indicate cult leaders have suggested death as better alternative than life outside the cult.

Lev Tahor was founded and led by Shlomo Helbrans, from the 1980s until his drowning death in Mexico in 2017. Since then, the leadership has moved into the hands of his son Nachman Helbrans, along with Mayer Rosner, Yankel and Yoel Weingarten, who are even more radical and aggressive than the late founder.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)

 

https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/headlines-breaking-stories/1961185/lev-tahor-cult-leader-arrested-by-guatemalan-police-on-1st-day-of-pesach.html

 

4 arrested in slaying of Mayan spiritual guide in Guatemala

ASSOCIATED PRESS

June 09, 2020

GUATEMALA CITY — Four people have been arrested in connection with the killing of a well-known Mayan spiritual guide and natural medicine expert, Guatemala's National Civilian Police said Tuesday.

Authorities said the suspects went to the home of the victim, Domingo Choc Ché, on Saturday because they believed he had been performing witchcraft at a relative's gravesite. They beat him for hours and on Sunday doused him with gasoline and set him on fire, officials alleged.

Choc Ché, known as "Grandfather Domingo," had participated in a number of scientific research projects on Mayan natural medicine that yielded papers and books in collaboration with universities in England and Switzerland. He was an "ajilonel," a Mayan medical specialist, a type of expert therapist in natural medicine.

Among those arrested was a 24-year-old who allegedly told relatives that Choc Ché had sent him to the grave to deposit dirt for witchcraft. Also arrested were two brothers and a cousin. All four were charged with murder, police said.

The incident occurred in Chimay, San Luis Petén, north of the capital.

https://m.startribune.com/4-arrested-in-slaying-of-mayan-spiritual-guide-in-guatemala/571138082/

LEV TAHOR HORROR: Tales of Beatings and Torture Emerge From Excommunicated Cult Members

Yeshiva World News
November 4, 2018

The horror stories involving the Lev Tahor cult, currently located in Guatemala, continue following the death of its leader Shlomo Helbrans in Mexico in 2017. Since then, the leadership has moved into the hands of his brother Nachman Helbrans, along with Mayer Rosner, Yankel and Yoel Weingarten, who are even more radical and aggressive than the late founder.

Earlier this week, YWN reported on a mother who was ex-communicated by the cult, and was attacked with knives, rocks and gunfire when she returned to try rescuing her children, including a 13-year-old daughter who is in a forced marriage and a mother of a young child.

Other horror stories involving the cult have emerged, from young members who were banished for one reason or another. One, a 17-year-old boy, was expelled for listening to music, which has been outlawed by the cult leaders. Another, a 15-year-old boy, was expelled for refusing a forced marriage to a 12-year-old girl.

According to the boy, his mother and Lev Tahor members drove him to Guatemala City – about 4 hours from where the cult is located – on the pretext of getting a passport. His mother dropped him at a hotel promising to pick him up in the morning. The next day, no one came to get him. Stranded and in a panic, he called his mother but no one answered. He tried reaching other members of Lev Tahor but his calls were ignored. As a last resort, he turned to the small community of ex-Lev Tahor members in Guatemala City, and they took him in.

According to the boys, cult leader Yoel Weingarten was once leading a four-hour prayer service when a 14-year-old boy giggled. After a severe beating, they threw him in an old, broken commercial freezer. The imprisonment in the confined space with no change of clothing or bathroom lasted three months. Weingarten reportedly told a group of boys that “he was a sinner and if he dies then that’s what he deserves.”

When the boy was released, Weingarten allegedly took a wooden chair and broke it over his head. He collapsed in pain. “Now you’ve done your Teshuvah,” he reportedly announced.

The boys spoke of the squalid conditions in the Lev Tahor grounds. Until recently the only area for bathroom use was the local river, which was also used as a Mikvah and had separate bathroom times for men and women. Members live under the hot Guatemalan sun in metal containers and tarp-covered tents. The only ones living in luxury are the Hanhala, who have air conditioning and other comforts.

They related that a young man under 40 years of age recently contracted a minor infection. Hanhalah refused to pay for treatment and sent him to a local hospital. He left in a body bag, leaving numerous children behind.

They also described the system for Malkos (lashes), dished out to adults and children alike. Malkos is a big event. A day before the ceremony, posters are placed announcing that at this and this time this person will be publicly flogged. Lev Tahor members are required to attend. Victims are then reportedly stripped to their underwear and whipped in front of men, women and children. One boy recalled that he couldn’t sit for three days after receiving Malkos from the swelling.

This description of Malkos was corroborated by a public Facebook post written by Rafi King (Refoel Koenig), who had received this punishment, and managed to escape the cult several years ago. In several voice notes that were made public, Rafi relates his experiences and the terrible abuse he witnessed and suffered under the hands of Mayer Rosner.

A 12-year-old girl was thrown out of the cult, and sent to Montreal, Canada where a family was willinjg to take her in. Lev Tahor only permits certain fruits and vegetables to be eaten, as well as whole wheat flour made into bread with a stone press. Proteins are not part of their diet. As such, the girl refused to eat food served in her foster parent’s home. After much discussion, the girl finally agreed to have a little vegetable salad on dishes and utensils that were kashered in front of her.

Every night, the girl tried calling her mother, who only picked up the phone once to tell her to call the “Hanhalah”. After numerous phone calls, she finally reached Yoel Weingarten who forbade her from speaking to her mother. He also refused to “authorize” her to eat food she served.

YWN has reported extensively on the Lev Tahor cult – with dozens of articles over the years.

Internal documents of Lev Tahor show that Shlomo Helbrans made his followers swear and sign to uphold the following principles among others.

(1) Everyone must negate his or her mind and mind thoroughly and completely, to the leader of Lev Tahor.

2) They must subjugate soul, spirit, and will.

3) Each man accepts upon his descendants and descendant’s descendants until the end of all generations to be subjugated under the will of Lev Tahor’s leader.. this should be said openly to the leader himself.

4) Everyone must be ready at any time and moment of 24 hours of the day, whether on the Shabbath and Yom Tov, summer and winter, healthy or sick, to do the will of the leader.

5) Whether the person is a young man or an old man, virgins and women they must accept to do the will of the leader.

6) They must agree to throw away all his physical needs, including eating sleep and rest until he fulfills the desires the leader.

7) It is the obligation of each of them at the beginning of the morning prayers to recite and accept upon themselves all of the above with full mouth and supreme joy.

Lev Tahor practices include women and girls wearing black head-to-toe coverings day and night, arranged marriages between teenagers, and a violent form of Malkos.

Former members of Lev Tahor (who either escaped or were otherwise expelled) do not recall learning Mishnah or Gemara, nor any Mitzvos Bein Adam LeChaveiro. They spend the majority of the day in deep prayer and are only allowed to study certain sections of the Chumash, with Lev Tahor commentary.

Some observers have written that these are signs of a cult. Indeed, this was the position of an author of an article that appeared in Mishpacha Magazine. Others, however, claim that there is nothing cult-like about the movement. Rabbi Yitzchok Frankfurter of Ami Magazine met with Helbrans and assured his readership that it was not a cult, even though a previous Ami article stated that it was.

In 2014 YWN ran an article titled “Cults and the War of the Jewish Magazines” in response to Mishpacha and Ami magazines running articles on Lev Tahor. Mishpacha Magzaine had run a fifteen page “expose” on the group, essentially describing Lev Tahor as a cult that has some serious issues involving medicating children, and behaviors that resemble child abuse. Ami Magazing claimed the exact opposite – and ran the following sentence below their headline “The unjust persecution of a group of pious Jews, and the unsettling silence of the Jewish community.”

Originally a citizen of Israel, cult leader Shlomo Helbrans went to the United States where he was convicted for kidnapping in 1994 and served a two-year prison term before being deported to Israel in 2000. He then settled in Canada.

In 1994 he was convicted in Brooklyn for the 1992 kidnapping of 13-year-old Shai Fhima Reuven, a Bar Mitzvah boy he was tutoring, and served a two-year prison term in the U.S. He was originally sentenced to four to 12 years in prison, but in June 1996 an appeals court reduced the sentence to two to six years. Three days later, he was placed in the work release program for prisoners less than two years away from the possibility of parole, where inmates are freed from prison if they have a job. After protests, he was moved back to prison.

The high-profile case drew much attention in the U.S., and gained further attention when Helbrans successfully convinced New York prison authorities to waive their requirement that all prisoners be shaved for a photograph upon entering prison, and to accept a computer-generated image of what he would have looked like clean-shaven instead. After the State Parole Board decided in November 1996 to release Helbrans after two years in prison, the case rose to near scandal with suspicions that the Pataki administration was providing him special treatment.

After his release from prison, Helbrans ran a yeshiva in Monsey, N.Y., and was deported to Israel in 2000. He then settled in Canada, where in 2003 he was granted refugee status, claiming his life was being threatened in Israel.

Helbrans and his followers had arrived in Mexico’s southern Chiapas province after spending three years in Guatemala. They had travelled to Guatemala from Canada, where child-protection authorities were moving to seize children allegedly suffering from neglect.

The group had been established on the outskirts of Sainte-Agathe-des-Monts, north of Montreal, for more than a decade before Quebec authorities began paying close attention. As they prepared to move in to protect children in the sect in late 2013, community members left en masse overnight for Chatham, Ontario. Before the next summer, they had moved on to Guatemala.

Court documents used by Quebec police to obtain warrants alleged that Lev Tahor girls as young as 13 and 14 in the community were routinely married off to much older men. The allegations in the documents, which became public after the sect had fled and were never proven in court, included sexual and physical abuse of children.

https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/general/1615196/lev-tahor-horror-tales-of-beatings-and-torture-emerge-from-ex-communicated-cult-members.html