Ottawa, Canada – Sources close to the ultra-Orthodox Jewish sect Lev Tahor, including an Israeli man with immediate family members still inside the sect, say they believe a migration is underway to move the entire sect from Canada to Guatemala.
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MONTREALGAZETTE.com (http://bit.ly/SOKl7P) reports that the Israeli man, known simply as K, says he spent a month in Guatemala beginning in March attempting to track down his sister who was part of the original group of eight Lev Tahor members who fled Canada in early March to avoid child-custody court hearings in Chatham-Kent, Ontario.
According to sources, the sect was granted 90-days refuge by Guatemala in early March.
K said he finally located his sister in the village of San Juan de Laguna about two hours outside Guatemala City.
K described the sect’s living conditions as deplorable, saying that about 30 sect members, including Lev Tahor leaders Yoil Weingarten, Mayer Rosner and Uriel Goldman, were sharing a two-room shack with dirt floors and no running water.
K said that he was only allowed to speak with his sister after making several unsuccessful trips to the shack and that while he was there Rosener’s teenaged daughter gave birth on the dirt floor of the shack with no assistance from a medical professional.
K said he also met briefly with his young nephew who appeared hungry and covered with insect bites.
Leaders of Lev Tahor have been silent surrounding the alleged move to Guatemala, but a lawyer for the sect, Guidy Mamann, said the sect feels unwelcome in Canada and is actively researching alternatives.
“They have an opportunity to find somewhere where they can go,” Mamann said. “I’m sure the group is discussing a number of possibilities. Guatemala is one of them.”
THIS IS UNFORTUNATE. the more i hear about this story the more i feel bad for the children…i was upset to read this story in the ami magazine. i was upset how the editor of the ami magazine was covering up for them. i thought that was extreme and insensitive….although the magazine is a great read and a fantastic magazine…i found the editors view are hard core and with a agenda…
Poor, poor kids. Now they will have NO way out!
This IS a cult. Cult leaders make sure to isolate their members from society so they can control them. People sometimes compare this group to Chassidus because Chassidim listen to their Rebbes without question. However, there are vast differences between “Hell”branz’s group and Chassidus.
1. Rebbes do not run away with their Chassisdim to isolate and control them, to cut them off from their families. Chassidim live WITHIN society, with other Chassidim and Chareidim and work within the secular society as well.
2.Rebbes don’t demand that chedarim teach only Chumash without Rashi together with the seforim they wrote- they don’t micro-control what is taught. Helbran’s in a video mock prays like a Christian and refers to Jeses C—-. That together with teaching only Chumash sends alarm bells off in my head.
3. Having their memebers live in dire conditions, completely divorcing from materialism is not tje Jewish way. The Jewish way is using materialism with moderation and elevating it so that it becomes holy. There way of life reminds me of a Jewish sect that broke away at the time of the Second Bais Hamikdosh and eventually became veered of the Jewish path and became the group became the foundation of the Christian religion.
Rejecting metirialism to the extreme and going back “to the good old days” is living in fastasy land and is not conducive to rational thinking which is dangerous in the lomg run.
5. “Hell”brans ABSOLUTE
Cont. from previous post
5. “Hell”brans ABSOLUTELY controls every little move of his members . If someone does something against his desire they are severely punished. These are the facts that are told by ex-members. People cannot leave out of their own free will, people are told what jobs they HAVE to do within the community, they are told whom to marry and when.
They don’t do that in front of the cameras, they know what to say and what to hide, especially Hellbrans and his spokesperson Goldstein.
I feel terrible for the families that have a family member caught within this cult.
If you are so naive to think that they are simply living their own way of life and there is nothing wrong with that then just for a minute think how you would feel if a member of YOUR family, perhaps your daughter or son, joined that group.
Protect those kids now! If what was going on before wasn’t enough- this is!! No running water? No indoor toilets then either. Teenagers giving birth on the dirt floor without medical help???
We, as a world, spend millions each year helping people (especially children) who grow up in such poverty and filth in 3rd world countries. And these people are fleeing a developed country (that has flushing toilets) to go there- that’s child abuse!!
Wandering who Mr. or Mrs. K is! Writing all these facts as if they are facts,,, Maybe they are facts. Who knows. We have a lot of self hating jews. Even between us Chareidim, the chasidisha & litvisha think they have the right jewish way of life and the Modern orthodox are partially off the derech. The modern orthodox look at us chasidim as ULTRA orthodox fanatics .
Previous articles mentioned eye witness accounts from non frum, anti frum, zionist, family members which i found something like an oxymoron. Just a picture of a frum person makes their blood boil, let alone a family member becoming one of them and they are the eye witnesses being quoted with all the facts.
Not sure what this Lev Tahor group is all about,, but i don’t these articles at face value.
I hope they stay there forever
We need Michelle OBama to reach out to this group and get them back to normalcy.
Let them stop their mishugas and come back to the camp of amcha ,cant they see that they are not following the halacha as all other Jews
Please……….is there some askan out there to interfere on behalf of these poor young mothers, children…and even middle age woman there. They are being brainwashed, drugged to abide by their “torturer” who confiscates every decent thing and uses it for himself. This is a very disturbed man leading the pack. Please have rachmunis on all the members there. They don’t know they are taken for a ride….they are so deep in doo doo…..
If the famous Reb Nuchem Rozenberg would go to investigate this Hell Brantz leader with the weingarten co-workers, I am sure he will be busy for the next 100 years with Alarming stories of Abuse etc. etc.