While the Lev Tahor cult is operating outside of Israel, Justice Rivka Mekias of a Magistrate Court ruled it is a “harmful cult”, addressing a petition from Attorney General and family members of minors who joined the cult.
According to estimates, there are between 50 and 60 families with 200 children. The justice ruled it is a harmful cult that is having a profound negative impact on the community’s children.
“We are dealing with a community in which there is a very serious injury that borders on the extent of abuse, the details of it in general, and the minors in it in particular,” the judge writes, referring to the children of the extremist community.
“It has been proven to me that the members of the adult community are also exposed to severe corporal punishment, taanis dibur and regular fasting, for months as a punishment for conduct that is not in accordance with the instructions of the community leaders, contact with the outside world, the intervention of the head of the community in marriage and divorce of members of the community, so that it determines who will marry whom and who will divorce from whom, economic control of the head of the community members of the community, cut off from the outside world and from the families of origin and prevent the community leaving the community at will, Because a member of a community that wishes to leave must deport his wife and leave his children”, the court added.
The court concluded Lev Tahor is not another chassidic kehilla, but a dangerous cult. The court was acting at the behest of the attorney general.
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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13 Responses
A Zionist court has as much credibility on this as a North Korean court has in condemning America for nuclear aggression.
This group is NOT Judaism; they do not follow Halacha and the normal standards of Judaism.
This is the same court system that finds shmiras shabbos to be a harmful anachronism.
#3 so that means that lev tahor is safe?
They were exposed in the mishpacha as a cult, and in a number of documentaries since then.
A tiny snapshot of what this cult practices:
* The marry off very young girls, learn only the “torah” of their cult leader to the exclusion of all other learning,
* are brainwashed that their kashrus is unique they may eat at no other yidden in the world,
* they’re told that only burka-wearing women will merit moshiach and the rest of us won’t
* they may not speak to other yidden (except when one of their spokesmen is present), and certainly not with anyone that has left the cult
* if they leave the cult they will have no contact with their mishpochoh including their own children ever again
* They are prescribed drugs by the cult leaders – nominally vitamins but actually anti-depressants etc. as found by the Qubecian authorities
* They have been forced to move around the globe to escape being rightly shut down and now live in Guatemala. With now third-generation Lev Tohor men (not heard to achieve when you marry of girls in early teens) they now have a whole generation of indoctrinated familes who cannot be oved hashem as yidden should.
As reported in the mishpacha 2 years ago, when some of their children were forcibly fostered into heimish chassidish homes by the Canadian authorities their heimish frum foster carers saw clear signs of dangerous neglect and took ages to convince them they are allowed to eat their food.
it is a cult, not because of meshuga frumkeiten but because it smells, looks, acts like, and is one. You may not leave, you are not taught normal Torah yiddishkeit or chassidus, and your entire life is controlled by Helbrans and his cult leaders.
That Lev Tahor still exists and our brothers are enslaved to this cult is a busha and a cherpa for all of yahadus. I’m embarassed that funds were raised for them in Stamford Hill, my hometown.
Even a secular court can be eight sometimes.
Wait a minute eli, hold on here.
Upon reading this article, and without considering everything else that is known and proven about this toxic clan, you feel that the greater threat is the court system?
You would be fine sending your children there?
Yes, Lev Tahor is safe,
There is so much false propaganda against them, with false witnesses having their own agenda, and secular slanderers not wanting to tread the good peaceful path.
Dangerous cult like the IDF?
Lev Tahor? more like Moach Sattum!
What agenda – frum yidden who are terrified by other yiddishe neshomos living a life that’s not with any mesorah whatsoever and unhealthly and unsafe?
Why would the frum yidden who have encountered this cult be prepared to report them to the authorities as a dangerous count, if they’re not exactly that?
Find me one person who has left this vicious cult who thinks it’s safe?
1) Where are they now, still in Guatemala? 2) Where is this court? 3) What practical implications does this ruling have if the “cult” members are in a different jurisdiction from the court?
In response to #4 and #7: I have no idea whether Lev Tahor is a group of holy perushim or a group of nutty and dangerous cultists.
But the fact that a secular Israeli court pronounced judgment on them brings me no closer to the truth.