Lev Tahor crumbling with leaders in jail, opponents say, as raid deals cult new blow

New York — On the seventh night of Hanukkah in 2018, three men parked a rental car outside a home in the town of Woodridge in upstate New York. At 2:56 a.m., one of the men made a phone call and two children exited the house and got into the car. The group drove to an airport in Pennsylvania, donned disguises, and boarded a flight, fleeing the US for Mexico.

The boy and girl were the grandchildren of Shlomo Helbrans, the founder of Lev Tahor, an extremist Jewish cult. The kidnapping of the pair that night would end up sending most of the group’s leadership to prison and help unravel the tight-knit community’s infrastructure. Last week’s seizure of children from the group’s compound by authorities in Guatemala, where most Lev Tahor adherents live, over allegations of child abuse, served as yet another blow to the disintegrating group.

“Most of the leadership are not there, so the cult is missing the main ingredient of a cult, which is that charismatic leader,” a member of an opposition group called Lev Tahor Survivors told The Times of Israel this week.

A spokesperson for Lev Tahor denied allegations of abuse to the Times of Israel on Thursday and claimed the group was the victim of religious persecution orchestrated by Israel. He acknowledged the group was struggling, but contested it had little to do with the prosecution of its leaders.

Founded by Helbrans in Jerusalem in the 1980s, Lev Tahor has been dogged by allegations of child abuse for years. The group jumped borders for years, under scrutiny from authorities, with members seeking refuge at various times in Canada, Iran, Bosnia, and Morocco, among other locations.

They landed in Guatemala in the mid-2010s, setting up a closed compound near the town of Oratorio, close to the border with El Salvador.

‘Pure heart’?

Lev Tahor’s name translates to “pure heart,” but its moves, machinations, and plans are all murky and in 2017, an Israeli court described the group as a “dangerous cult.”

The group adheres to an extreme, idiosyncratic interpretation of Judaism and kosher dietary laws that largely shield members from the outside world. The men spend most of their days in prayer and studying specific portions of the Torah, and women and girls are required to dress in black robes that completely cover their bodies.

In 2017, Helbrans drowned in a Mexican river near the Guatemalan border, and his son Nachman took the reins of the group.

After the takeover, Nachman Helbrans’s sister fled Lev Tahor with her children, and won custody in a New York court. The sister, who was not named in court documents because she was a victim, said Nachman Helbrans was more extreme than his father, that she had spoken out against growing extremism in the group, and had fled for her children’s safety, according to documents later filed by US federal prosecutors. The US attorney for the Southern District of New York court said Helbrans and his associates had “embraced several extreme practices, including child marriages and underage sex.”

Nachman Helbrans orchestrated the children’s kidnapping to reunite his niece, then 14 years old, with her 20-year-old “husband,” the US attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York said. The pair had been wedded two years prior.

US prosecutors later said that Lev Tahor leadership regularly married underage girls to adult men in marriages that were not legally recognized, characterizing the relationships as “child sexual exploitation.” The young brides were required to have sex with their husbands, to lie to outsiders about their marriages and their ages, and to deliver babies at home to conceal their ages, prosecutors said.

A former member of the group, Mendy Levy, in a 2021 interview, described forced marriages between children and other abuses, including beatings, by the group’s leadership. Levy said he fled Lev Tahor as a teenager because the leaders arranged a marriage between him and his 12-year-old cousin that both opposed. He said he had been beaten with a belt and that the group’s leaders had denied his father medical care, leading to his death.

A member of the group confirmed to local media this week that there were mothers in the group as young as 14 or 15.

After kidnapping the children in 2018, Helbrans and his accomplices spirited them across the US to Mexico, where they were located weeks later, in a massive law enforcement operation.

Helbrans and others were sentenced to lengthy prison terms in New York’s federal Southern District Court after drawn-out legal proceedings. The case wrapped up earlier this year with the imprisonment of three relatives, extradited from Guatemala, who were part of the group’s “hanhala,” or management, prosecutors said.

A former member of the group, Mendy Levy, in a 2021 interview, described forced marriages between children and other abuses, including beatings, by the group’s leadership. Levy said he fled Lev Tahor as a teenager because the leaders arranged a marriage between him and his 12-year-old cousin that both opposed. He said he had been beaten with a belt and that the group’s leaders had denied his father medical care, leading to his death.

A member of the group confirmed to local media this week that there were mothers in the group as young as 14 or 15.

After kidnapping the children in 2018, Helbrans and his accomplices spirited them across the US to Mexico, where they were located weeks later, in a massive law enforcement operation.

Helbrans and others were sentenced to lengthy prison terms in New York’s federal Southern District Court after drawn-out legal proceedings. The case wrapped up earlier this year with the imprisonment of three relatives, extradited from Guatemala, who were part of the group’s “hanhala,” or management, prosecutors said.

Fleeing is difficult

According to Lev Tahor Survivors, a New York-based group made up of former cult members and some volunteers assisting in their efforts to monitor the sect and help escapees, dozens have left Lev Tahor in the past year. The group cited the jailing of Lev Tahor’s leaders for playing a role in the cult’s deterioration.

“They definitely are weakened in a big way because a large part of the strong leadership, the ones that were actually smart and calculating and strategic, are in prison,” said Ezzie Schaffran, an activist with Lev Tahor Survivors, which has quietly worked against the cult for years. “The people that took over are really bottom of the barrel.”

Fleeing the cult is difficult because of family bonds within the group, for instance, a husband wanting to leave while his wife does not.

Demonstrating the fraught nature of ties within the cult, at Nachman Helbrans’ sentencing in 2022, the same sister whose children had been kidnapped pleaded with the judge for leniency.

Still, the exodus has accelerated in recent months. Schaffran estimated that between 20 and 30 members have fled in the past year or so, usually leaving some family members behind. Officials in Guatemala estimated that the community is currently made up of roughly 50 families.

Authorities move in

Some of those leaving the cult seemingly helped prompt the latest crackdown by authorities in Guatemala.

Last month, four minors escaped from the community and alerted authorities to alleged human trafficking, according to The New York Times.

On December 20, hundreds of police, soldiers, and other authorities raided Lev Tahor’s compound near Oratorio to remove the children and seize electronics for evidence. A police chief was also arrested for leaking confidential information to the group, possibly allowing them to prepare for previous police raids.

Prosecutors said they were considering charges such as human trafficking, rape, and mistreatment of minors. The skeleton of a minor was found during the raid, the Prosecutor’s Office said.

A spokesperson for Lev Tahor denied allegations of abuse to the Times of Israel on Thursday and claimed the group was the victim of religious persecution orchestrated by Israel. He acknowledged the group was struggling, but contested it had little to do with the prosecution of its leaders.

Founded by Helbrans in Jerusalem in the 1980s, Lev Tahor has been dogged by allegations of child abuse for years. The group jumped borders for years, under scrutiny from authorities, with members seeking refuge at various times in Canada, Iran, Bosnia, and Morocco, among other locations.

After the raid, local media showed a chaotic situation on the ground, with medics treating Lev Tahor members on the street, men from the group scuffling with armed police and blocking police vehicles, and locals providing food and blankets to members of the group gathered outside a shelter where the children and some women were being housed.

Local officials said the children were refusing to speak with investigators and footage showed them struggling with authorities.

Yaakov Flitchkin, who helped a family flee the cult around six years ago, went to Guatemala this week to aid the children who were taken into custody.

He translated Yiddish for Guatemalan authorities at the scene and brought the children food that complies with their strict diet, such as vegetables and matzah, he said in an interview. The local Jewish community is also pitching in, he said.

They landed in Guatemala in the mid-2010s, setting up a closed compound near the town of Oratorio, close to the border with El Salvador.

“I’m not here to break the cult. I’m here to save kids and victims,” he said.

While the children were in custody, adults from Lev Tahor screamed instructions to them in Yiddish, telling the children to punch and bite the authorities who were holding them, Flitchkin said.

A member of Lev Tahor Survivors said the children are “trained not to say a word and to just scream.” He spoke on the condition of anonymity, due to sensitivities dealing with the extremist group.

“It would take a lot of detox to get them to start opening up to talk about what’s going on, to kind of reprogram them from the cult,” he said. “They’re in a highly toxic situation and living and breathing manipulation, so they just need some time to get down to sanity.”

The adults also used knives to slash the tires of a bus that was used to transport the children. One of the cult members punched Flitchkin in the face, in an incident that was caught on video.

Guatemala’s attorney general’s office initially said it had taken custody of 160 children and adolescents. Local media and a Lev Tahor spokesperson put the figure at around 200 and showed footage of children wearing the group’s black robes being loaded onto buses. Authorities later said cult members had managed to break some kids out of the compound, though most were recovered.

It is unclear what will happen to the children; some have relatives outside of Lev Tahor who may take them in.

“There are quite a number of families outside the cult that are trying to get an update about family members in the cult and they’re willing to take them in,” Schaffran said.

Members of the group are citizens of different countries, including the US and Israel. The Israeli embassy in Guatemala said the raid on the compound had been the initiative of local authorities, who notified the embassy afterward.

The embassy gave the Guatemalan authorities full support, called on Lev Tahor to refrain from violence and said the well-being of children was the top priority. The US embassy also gave the investigation its full support.

The local Jewish community publicly distanced itself from the group, saying Lev Tahor “acts in complete opposition to our traditions and values.”

‘Religious persecution’

A Lev Tahor spokesperson, Uriel Goldman, told The Times of Israel on Thursday that the group was the target of religious and political persecution orchestrated by the Israeli government. He claimed Lev Tahor had angered Israel by seeking refugee status as an anti-Zionist group in Canada more than a decade ago, which hurt Israel’s image, he alleged.

Goldman said the group’s members in custody were being held in “concentration camp” conditions without proper shelter, sharing a video of members of the group breaking out of custody.

‘Pure heart’?
Lev Tahor’s name translates to “pure heart,” but its moves, machinations, and plans are all murky and in 2017, an Israeli court described the group as a “dangerous cult.”

The group adheres to an extreme, idiosyncratic interpretation of Judaism and kosher dietary laws that largely shield members from the outside world. The men spend most of their days in prayer and studying specific portions of the Torah, and women and girls are required to dress in black robes that completely cover their bodies.

Goldman said authorities had repeatedly raided the compound, but had not found evidence of abuse, that the skeleton in the compound was part of a cemetery, and that the four members who complained of human trafficking to authorities had been bribed to lie. He acknowledged that children in the community married at a very young age, but said the marriages were legal and consensual.

“We want justice. We’re not running away from justice. This is a lie. This is religious persecution and we know the State of Israel is behind it,” he said.

He denied the imprisonment of the group’s leaders was behind Lev Tahor’s travails.

“We are struggling because of persecution. We cannot work normally, we cannot have a normal life,” Goldman said.

The group has mounted a campaign in local media and online to push its persecution claims. The group has posted videos on X portraying the government raid as a crackdown on “religious freedom and human rights.”

Lev Tahor Survivors characterized the social media campaign as propaganda, warning that it had managed to generate some support in Guatemala.

“They’ve actually had some luck in getting Guatemalan locals [to cry out] to the government that they should stop this,” a member of the group said. “There’s a lot of pressure now on the government because people are buying into their propaganda.”

He expressed worries that the crackdown would backfire, noting that the detention of the children could “help their narrative of ‘the non-Jews are out to get us,'” he said.

“This is amazing if [the authorities] do it right. If they do it wrong it could backfire and make [the cult] more resolved and make them stronger,” he said.