CANADA/GUATEMALA
National Post
Graeme Hamilton | July 3, 2014
MONTREAL — Following reports of anti-Jewish sentiment in the rural Guatemalan village where members of the ultra-orthodox sect Lev Tahor have settled, Jewish leaders in the Central American country are reaching out to their Canadian counterparts for help.
Just back from a trip to Guatemala, David Ouellette of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs’ Quebec office said the recent arrival from Canada of more than 100 Lev Tahor members is testing the longstanding good relations between Guatemala’s small Jewish community and its Christian majority.
“I think there is grounds for concern. There is tension in the village,” Mr. Ouellette said in an interview Thursday, referring to San Juan la Laguna, where the Lev Tahor members have settled.
Representatives of Guatemala’s Jewish community, which Mr. Ouellette said numbers just 800 people, contacted the CIJA last month following reports in the local press that the arrival of Lev Tahor families had sparked anti-Semitism.
The sect, founded by Rabbi Shlomo Helbrans in Jerusalem in the 1980s, spent more than a decade in Ste-Agathe-des-Monts, Que., before fleeing to Chatham, Ont., in the middle of the night last fall as Quebec child-protection authorities prepared to intervene.
Ultra-orthodox Jewish community distraught after seven members of sect arrested by Canada’s border services
The child-protection agency alleged that children were being denied a proper education, that girls were required to wear chadors from the age of three and that marriages were arranged for girls as young as 14.
With Canadian authorities scrutinizing the members’ immigration status (the adults were mostly born outside Canada) and Ontario children’s aid officials seeking protection orders, Lev Tahor leaders have decided they have no future in Canada.
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