There has been some action in Canada involving the Lev Tahor cult as members of the group were planning to fly to Iran but were intercepted before they could leave.

According to limited information from Canada, the group numbers 40 families and they feared social services may attempt to take their children from them, prompting their decision to leave the country. The families feared losing their children amid reports of violence in the community, which is described as an “ascetic cult”. Pressure from family members in Israel was a contributory factor to the intervention by Canadian officials. Canadian officials are probing the legal status of families. It is believed many if not most of the families are in Canada illegally.

As a result of the situation, the families decided it was best to leave, setting their sights on Iran. On Tuesday 16 Kislev 5774 about 200 people traveled to Ontario in three buses, renting rooms in that city.

Police managed to take control of some of the group, reporting the members confirmed plans to travel to Iran. Shlomo Helbrans is the community leader and according to statements from members of the community that have since fled, he would routinely hit them and abuse them.

Originally a citizen of Israel, 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, where he currently is the head of the Lev Tahor settlement with an estimated 45 families in Sainte-Agathe-des-Monts in the Laurentian mountains in Quebec.

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.

(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)