Ultra-Orthodox Jewish sect accused of human trafficking and sexual abuse in Mexico
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Members of Lev Tahor practice an extreme version of ultra-orthodox Judaism
The operation by the Mexican police that rescued a group of children and adolescents from the Lev Tahor camp in the middle of the jungle in the state of Chiapas has again raised serious doubts about this ultra-orthodox Jewish sect, whose members have been called “Taliban Jews” because their women wear black clothes from head to toe.
However, the controversies surrounding this religious group, based in Latin American countries such as Mexico and Guatemala, go far beyond their ultra-conservative clothing.
A federal judge in Mexico ordered the arrest of several leaders of the group, whose camp is located about 17 km north of the city of Tapachula, on suspicion of involvement in child abuse cases, following an investigation by the Special Deputy Attorney General’s Office. in organized crime research.
As the BBC journalist Raffi Berg recalls, the case of the kidnapping of two minors in 2018 — who were taken by their mother to New York after they escaped from a Guatemalan community — ended with the indictment of nine members of Lev Tahor, among them four — including the son of the cult’s founder and the current leader Nachman Helbrans — in prison.
The minors, abducted in the United States, were rescued in January 2019 in Mexico. Nachman Helbrans is the children’s mother’s brother.
On that occasion, BBC News Mundo, the BBC’s Spanish service, got exclusive access to this community in Guatemala, and one of its members spoke for the first time about this and other cases in which they were involved, stating that Lev Tahor is suffering “persecution by politicians, because of his ideals”.
“The community was accused of kidnapping, but at no point was it real,” said Guatemalan doctor Obadia Guzmán, speaking on behalf of 350 people living in Santa Rosa, in the southeastern part of the Central American country.
But as BBC News Mundo reporter Ana Gabriela Rojas pointed out, since its creation in the 1980s in Israel, “this ultra-Orthodox Jewish group has passed through the United States, Canada, Mexico and Guatemala, and its passage through these countries has been marked by kidnappings, child marriages or child abuse scandals”.
Ultra-orthodox and anti-Zionists
Lev Tahor, whose name means “pure heart” in Hebrew, was founded by Rabbi Shlomo Helbrans in Jerusalem in the 1980s. It is estimated to have between 250 and 500 members.
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Some Israeli media compared Lev Tahor to the Taliban because the women wear black clothes from head to toe.
The group practices many of the customs of Hasidism, the orthodox and mystical side of Judaism, but is even stricter in its application.
As, for example, regarding their clothing: women must be dressed in black clothing, revealing only the face, and men must be dressed in black, cover their heads with a hat and never shave their beards.
Your diet follows the laws of kashrut, a set of biblical rules that determine what foods are appropriate (kosher) for practitioners of Judaism.
However, they also follow a more extreme version. Most of their meals are homemade, from natural, unprocessed ingredients.
They do not eat chickens or chicken eggs, since they are genetically manipulated. Instead they eat geese and their eggs. They also don’t eat rice, chives or leafy greens for fear they contain insects.
With other vegetables and fruits, the peel is always removed before consumption, including tomatoes.
As for drinks, they only drink milk from cows that they can milk themselves and make their own wine.
Children, on the other hand, cannot eat store-bought sweets. Therefore, limit your sweets to the consumption of homemade chocolate or fruits, nuts and seeds.
Their relationship with technology is also extremely limited, as they avoid the use of electronic devices, including television and computers.
On the other hand, despite being a Jewish religious group, its political stance is against Zionism, for fear that the Jewish faith will be replaced by secular nationalism in the State of Israel.
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Members of Lev Tahor follow very restrictive rules in their daily lives
Despite their extreme positions, the members of this sect believe that they operate entirely within the framework of Jewish religious traditions and norms and that in reality there is nothing new or different in what they do.
“They see themselves as the only ones following the true path, as guardians of the walls, as defenders of the last remaining flame in the Jewish world. They despise other branches of Hasidism that they consider too compromised and categorize them as contemptible and degenerate,” wrote Shay Fogelman, a Haaretz journalist who had the rare opportunity to spend five days with members of Lev Tahor in 2012.]
“The basic requirement asked of the members of Lev Tahor is simple: to worship and serve God at all times, with all the heart and soul. Their libraries have only Jewish books. There are no televisions, radios or computers in their homes. Concepts such as Free time, expanding horizons or seeking personal development, in a strictly Western sense, do not exist here.”
“There are no decorations on the walls of their homes; there are no pictures, amulets, photos of rabbis. In most cases, the only decorations are candlesticks with menorahs or silver religious objects, and everything is kept in a glass case,” he added.
In addition to this description of the sect’s strict religious life, several accusations have surfaced in recent years of the use of extreme and violent forms of control over its members, including the use of corporal punishment of minors and the forced marriage of underage women to older men.
These complaints were made by former cult members and their families.
“The community has also been accused of promoting marriage between minors. But we never did. This is a personal matter. The right to desire marriage cannot be prohibited,” Obadia Guzmán told BBC News Mundo.
Controversies and expulsions
In 1990, Rabbi Shlomo Helbrans moved the group to the United States, where he founded a Jewish school in Brooklyn, New York.
Credit, NY Police
Chaim and Yante Teller were rescued in a small town south of Mexico City
A few years later, Lev Tahor will face his first legal problems.
In 1993, Helbrans was arrested in New York and accused of kidnapping a teenager who studied with him to prepare for his bar mitzvaha religious ritual that marks the beginning of the transition to adulthood in Judaism.
The boy’s parents accused Helbrans of trying to “brainwash” their son, while the rabbi accused them of abusing the boy.
Helbrans was eventually convicted of kidnapping and spent two years in prison before being released on parole in 1996.
In 2000, the rabbi was deported to Israel, where he did not stay long, because he decided to settle with his community in the Canadian province of Quebec.
The sect then settled in Sainte-Agathe, a town of about 10,000 inhabitants, located about two hours’ drive from Montreal.
But there were also new complaints against the group, which was accused by social services of child neglect in 2013.
As local press reported at the time, Canadian authorities were concerned about the minors’ health and hygiene, as well as their education, because – apparently – these home-schooled children were not acquiring basic math skills.
Soon after, members of the sect left the country and settled in San Juan La Laguna, Guatemala, a town inhabited mostly by the indigenous Mayan population.
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Members of Lev Tahor settled in three different places in Guatemala
But they were not well received. After several months of disagreements, the San Juan Council of Elders decided to expel the group, claiming that its members were rejecting the local population, refusing to greet, socialize, and even talk to citizens.
“We feel intimidated by them on the streets. We think they want to change our religion and our customs,” Miguel Vásquez Cholotio, a member of the council of elders, told the Reuters news agency at the time.
In order to force them to leave, the local authorities gave them an ultimatum and threatened to cut off their access to public services.
The sect decided to move to Guatemala City, where its headquarters were later raided by prosecutors from the Ministry of Public Law who were investigating whether there had been cases of child abuse.
In 2016, they moved again, to El Amatillo, in the municipality of Oratorio, about 80 km from Guatemala City.
A year later, the Israeli press published information about Helbrans’ death, which allegedly occurred while performing a religious ceremony on a river in Chiapas, Mexico. Then it became known that there were alleged plans by the sect to try again to change the country.
However, after the death of the founder and the arrest of the new leader for kidnapping children, Lev Tahor’s future became even darker.
A recent operation ordered by Mexican authorities in the state of Chiapas shows that the scandals surrounding this ultra-Orthodox group show no signs of ending.
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