Several Lev Tahor Members To Be Deported From Canada

While some Lev Tahor cult members were in a rural Ontario court, fighting to get back some of their children seized over allegations of child abuse, three others appeared at a detention review in Toronto Friday where the Immigration and Refugee Board ordered them held in custody until they can be deported Israel.

Unidentified Lev Tahor women and girls (credit: 16x9)

The Toronto Sun reports:

They operate as a world unto their own, travelling the world for sanctuary, but for at least three members of the Lev Tahor ultra orthodox Jewish sect, Canada will harbour them no more.

While their friends were in a Chatham court, fighting to get back some of their children seized over allegations of child abuse, three others appeared at a detention review in Toronto Friday where the Immigration and Refugee Board ordered them held in custody until they can be deported back to Israel.

Lev Tahor (which means pure heart) give true meaning to the adage about wandering Jews.

Founded in Israel by charismatic Rabbi Shlomo Helbrans, the extremist community is shunned by mainstream Judaism for its anti-Zionism (they believe the state of Israel can’t exist until the Messiah comes) and harsh interpretation of the Torah.

Its members moved with their leader to Brooklyn where Helbrans was convicted of kidnapping in 1994 after one of his students, a secular 13-year-old boy, disappeared for two years after the rabbi refused to return him to his mother, “the devil.”

Released on parole after serving two years, Helbrans was deported to Israel in 2000 but soon took his followers back across the world, this time to Ste. Agathe, Que.

They lived quietly in the small Laurentian town, their community easily identifiable by the women dressed head to toe in black with only their faces and hands showing and the men with long sideburns and shaved heads. But they fled in the middle of the night last November amid a child-welfare investigation involving allegations of abuse and neglect, including forced marriages of girls as young as 14.

The sect has repeatedly denied the allegations.

They set up camp near Chatham. But when Ontario child welfare moved in to enforce the Quebec order to seize 14 children deemed in need of protection, some of the families fled again, this time to Trinidad and Guatemala.

All but six of the children have been returned to Canada where their fate will be decided by an Ontario judge next week.

Unrelated to the custody case, Canada border security agents raided their Chatham compound Wednesday and arrested six Lev Tahor members without legal status to be here. The three Israeli citizens remaining in custody had all been issued deportation orders in the past and had resolutely ignored them. Border security was just catching up to them now.

So it was hardly surprising that after hearing their cases, IRB member Andrew Laut refused a request by lawyer Guidy Mamann to release them pending their removal from Canada — he saw nothing to suggest they would now show up as required.

From the hearing it was clear that Lev Tahor may be an insular sect but they certainly know their way around the ever lenient Canadian immigration system.

Avraham Kabaz Kashani, 39, was ordered out of Canada in July 2007 after exhausting years of appeals, including a failed refugee bid. The father of 10 children didn’t report for his removal and remained here illegally until this week’s arrest seven years later.

“I didn’t run, I didn’t hide. I stayed in the same house. I didn’t change my name. We said if they want to take us, they will take us,” he told the hearing.

Unconvinced he’d suddenly now obey a directive and show up at the airport, Laut ordered him held in custody until his passport is retrieved and he’s put on a plane for Israel.

Odel Malka, covered in a black robe resembling a burka, was also told she must remain in detention. The 30-year-old failed refugee claimant and mother of nine was first ordered to leave in 2002, but didn’t board her plane until March 2012. Ten months later, Malka had slipped back in, claiming now that she used a passport bearing a different name, though it has no entry stamp and there’s no record of her crossing the border. “She did not have consent to return to Canada,” Laut said.

Malka still has one avenue of appeal.

A 19-year-old man and already the father of three, was also detained and given a removal date of April 10. He can still apply for a stay.

But the writing’s on the wall. Canada is no longer a haven for Lev Tahor. The question is where the group will turn up next.

The detained Lev Tahor members plus their children add up to about 10% of the haredi cult's Canadian membership.

Add in the members who fled to Guatemala and the children who will likely be ordered into foster care Tuesday, and about 17% of the cult will be separated from their leader.

Will the remaining Lev Tahor members flee Canada? If they do so, where will they go?

We'll likely get the answers to those questions in the coming weeks – perhaps even before Passover.

Comments

[Eli R]

Is conundrum the right word. One one hand the Canadian authorities are stretching their arms out into other countries trying to get the kids back INTO canada.. and at the same time trying to kick them OUT of canada.
What a country

[Yehuda hirsh]

Is Kabaz Kashani even a Jewish name?
Odel Malka is also an interesting name.
How old was the 19-year-old man and already the father of three when he had his first.

[David]

As Yehuda said, how old was the 19 yr old when he started making babies?

[mickee]

Helbrans is a Baal Tesuva Sephardic Jew.
Originally Erez Shlomo Elbarnes. Most of the members of his cult are baale teshuva sephardim. I just found out that I personally know 3 of the members from the Syrian community.
Helbrans is classic narcissist. He is extremely charming and manipulative while showing absolutely no regard for those under his control.
He is an evil man.

[RWisler]

Mickee,
Is "Helbrans" a Sephardic name? What part of the Middle East does it come from?

[mickee]

His original name was Elbarnes. Helbrans is an Ashkenaized version of his original name.
My guess is that Elbarnes is originally spanish. El means "the" in spanish "Bar" son of in Aramaic and "Nes" miracle in hebrew. So if I were to guess I would say the name means "The son of miracles". His family traces their lineage to Tunisia.
He changed his name to be accepted amongst the Ashkenazi world and build for himself a sect but all he was able to attract were some forlorn souls who needed someone to think for them.
The man is an absolute monster. He has no compunctions about beating or starving people and using mind control.
If I wasn't concerned about spending my life behind bars I would put a bullet between his eyes.

[Robert J. Barron, Attorney-at-Law]

@Mickee ------> "If I wasn't concerned about spending my life behind bars I would put a bullet between his eyes."

Yah, I would not advocate that course of action....I didn't have many clients go down (esp. since I didn't do criminal defense for a long time) but as concerns my clients who did go down, I've never heard a good word about jail or prison food...LOL LOL LOL

[Barry]

Mickee, - Helbrans is no worse and no better than most Hareidi rebbes in the last 200 years (including your beloved Avigdor Miller).

He just cannot get away with what these rebbes could back then in Europe or what Satmar get away with in NYC or the Eida Haredit in Jerusalem.

[plus.google.com/105365650738687784925]

> the extremist community is shunned by mainstream Judaism for its anti-Zionism

I thought it was because they're Talibanistic nutbars.

At any rate, an order to deport by Canada is a guarantee they'll never leave the country. They'll be allowed infinite appeals to deportation orders all the while being housed and supported by the welfare system. they have nothing to fear.

[RWisler]

Warning to all who post here.... As Mr. Barron inferred, do NOT post anything on any public bulletin board that could constitute a threat or bodily harm to anyone. Remember that these bulletin boards are public and even if you have an emotional hatred of an evil person, keep it to yourself. You never know who is reading this bulletin board!

[anchell]

Shmarya . . . i was thinking that you or rather the Toronto Sun did a good job of reporting in this article. I didn't get a sense of overt bias in reading it. . . however, it has occurred to me that, maybe like so many of us, the Lev Tahor members are seriously misplaced in time.

Here in southern Ontario the Amish have parcelled out a small community where they seem free to follow their beliefs as their customs dictate. But without the unending recent scrutiny of the Lev Tahor membership.

This curious moment should be enscribed in our history more for our complicity in not wanting to see that not everyone is willing to embrace this new era, for it proposed excitement and promise. But rather are prepared to dedicate their stay on earth for the purposes of spiritual discipline garnered through religious training.
By not allowing those whose wishes it is to complete their learnings, we will be ushering in en mass conflicted souls in what has quickly become an ethically conflicted time.
I am at a want to believe that we all, at our core, desire to be free to live our lives unencumbered and as peacefully as possible. Yet I can only hope that the Lev Tahor's ultimate demise as strict and devoted religious followers will not close the door to an admirable and disciplined vision towards "Guided" self determination.
If only because, as a society we are now fully complicit in allowing those who choose conscionable non secular life styles, to be pushed around as if they don't belong anywhere.