Drowning of Lev Tahor Leader Raises Fears over Ultra-orthodox Sect's Future

By Graeme Hamilton
National Post
July 11, 2017

http://nationalpost.com/g00/news/world/drowning-of-lev-tahor-leader-leaves-future-of-ultra-orthodox-sect-in-doubt/wcm/10b05e70-ff94-4385-bf60-fa27917ebe4b?i10c.referrer=

Lev Tahor leader Shlomo Helbrans drowned recently in Mexico at age 55.Shay Fogelman

To the roughly 200 Lev Tahor adherents who followed their charismatic rabbi from country to country, Shlomo Helbrans knew the path to eternal truth. To his numerous detractors, he was a dangerous charlatan who deserved to be locked up.

Now, after Helbrans drowned last week in Mexico at age 55, the future of the cult-like group has been cast into doubt, and a path that has jumped from Israel to the United States, Canada, Guatemala and Mexico looks less clear than ever.

“There is now a power vacuum,” said Marci Hamilton, a professor of religion at the University of Pennsylvania who has been watching the ultra-Orthodox Jewish sect for about a decade.

She said it would be hard for anyone to replace Helbrans, particularly when his death was so sudden. “The attachment to a charismatic leader in a very isolated group that engages in illegal practices is so strong,” she said.

Helbrans and his followers had arrived in Mexico’s southern Chiapas province recently 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.

Helbrans founded Lev Tahor – Hebrew for Pure Heart – in Israel in the mid-1980s. The group moved to New York in 1991, fleeing the Armageddon Helbrans believed would come with the first Gulf War.

A criminal conviction for kidnapping a boy brought to him for religious instruction led to his deportation to Israel after he served a prison sentence, but in 2000 he arrived in Canada. He was eventually granted asylum from what he claimed was Israeli government persecution for his anti-Zionist views.

The strict rules Helbrans imposed led Israelis to nickname the cult-like group the Jewish Taliban, because female members wear burka-like robes beginning at age three and are confined to household tasks.

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, Ont. 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.