Gone But Not Forgotten: Haredi Cult Expelled From Small Guatemalan Town

After fleeing Canada amid allegations of child abuse, about 230 members of the ultraorthodox Jewish group Lev Tahor have now been expelled from the Guatemalan village where they had reassembled their reclusive community.

 

 

Above and above right: Lev Tahor expelled from small Guatemalan town, 8-29-2014 (Reuters)

The Toronto Star reports:

After fleeing Canada amid allegations of child abuse, about 230 members of the ultraorthodox Jewish group Lev Tahor have now been expelled from the Guatemalan village where they had reassembled their reclusive community.

An edict from a group of indigenous elders in the town of San Juan La Laguna, 150 kilometres west of Guatemala City, said that the Lev Tahor members were no longer welcome in the lakeside town.

It was the culmination of a dispute with the local community that escalated in recent days with some Lev Tahor families having their water supply cut off and being threatened with violence, Nachman Helbrans, the son of the group's spiritual leader, Rabbi Shlomo Helbrans, told the Star.

The move was denounced by another prominent Jewish leader in Guatemala. Rabbi Shalom Pelman, who leads the Chabad Lubavitch congregation in Guatemala's capital city, said it is the type of activity that brings to mind the treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany.

“This is not typical in the world I live in. Even in Iran, Jews are not expelled,” he told the Star in a telephone interview.

Locals said a bus full of Lev Tahor families left for Guatemala City on Thursday and a second bus departed San Juan La Laguna on Friday morning.

The edict to leave was delivered Wednesday after Lev Tahor and the Council of Indigenous Elders, representing the majority Christian population, were unable to negotiate a solution to their clash of civilizations.

Lev Tahor, a radical strain of Hassidic Judaism, was founded by Rabbi Shlomo Helbrans in Israel and flourished after he moved the group to the U.S. in the early 1990s. While living in New York, Helbrans was jailed for kidnapping a young follower. He was deported to Israel after serving a portion of his prison sentence. In the early 2000s, he moved his group to the Quebec town of Ste-Agathe-des-Monts.

Problems began several years ago when encounters with Quebec's child protection authorities led to suspicions the group was carrying out underage marriages, forcing members to take powerful and unnecessary psychiatric medication and raising their children with no access to doctors or proper education. That prompted a raid in August 2013 and proceedings to have more than a dozen children taken into foster care.

The community fled to Chatham-Kent in November 2013. After investigators from local Children's Aid Society, the Canada Border Service Agency and Quebec provincial police followed up on the original Quebec child-welfare probe, Lev Tahor members started fleeing the country.

Nachman Helbrans said that two children remain in foster care in Chatham-Kent and a number of families are still fighting in Ontario court to overturn a ban on obtaining Canadian passports so that children can be reunited with their parents. In some cases, those parents have fled the country or been deported for immigration violations.

But the majority of Lev Tahor members have reconstituted their community in the tourist town on the shores of Lake Atitlán.

Their arrival last spring did not sit well with locals, said tour guide Luis Cholotio, a lifelong resident of San Juan La Laguna.

“They want to be on their own, they don't believe in the schools, the educational systems here, so they do their own things,” he said in an interview. “So the leaders talked about the future of the community and said they can live in Guatemala, we don't care, but they should live in a separate place, not inside a community.”

A spokesman for the indigenous council, Miguel Vasquez, said the decision was made to protect the culture of the local population.

“We act in self-defence and to respect our rights as indigenous people,” he told Agence France-Presse.

Cholotio also said there were concerns about the oft-repeated accusation that Lev Tahor children are forced to marry as early as 13 years old. Lev Tahor has repeatedly denied this claim, and says the community always abides by the laws of the place in which they reside.

With files from Jane Gerster

The claim that Lev Tahor "always abides by the laws of the place in which they reside" is clearly not true. The group has a long history of defying secular law, including in Canada, and the Toronto Star knows it.

At the least, the Star should have pointed out not only the child abuse allegations against the cult, but the multiple documented violations of court orders that have taken place, even when the individual or the group's leaders promised to obey.

The Daily Mail adds some important information about what upset locals about Lev Tahor, and has the decency to note that some people condemn Lev Tahor as a "cult-like sect":

…Miguel Vasquez Cholotio, a member of the elders' council, said the villagers decided to expel the group because they refused to greet or have physical contact with the community.

'We felt intimidated by them in the streets. We thought they wanted to change our religion and customs,' he said.

Antonio Ixtamer, who lives in the community, said that several members of the group had upset residents because of their 'arrogant' attitude.

He said they would go into stores and pay whatever they wanted for the products rather than the marked price and that they bothered tourists.

'On one occasion there was a tourist taking pictures of a hill and the Jews thought he was taking photos of them and they clashed,' Ixtamer said.…

Related Posts:

Video: Rural Guatemala Village Expels Haredi Cults.

Guatemalan Town Allegedly Expels Haredi Cult.

Except For 6 Families, Haredi Lev Tahor Cult Relocated To Rural Guatemala.

All Lev Tahor Posts.

All Rabbi Shlomo Helbrans Posts.

Comments

[yoni FFB]

This whole international massive chilul hashem is getting worse and worse, perhaps international rabbonim should write the UN that these individuals are NOTHING to do with orthodox Jewry, and other then helping/saving their children they should not be accepted or assisted in any way even temporarily.
Helbrans is just another BT that doesn't know his place. He should have been ostracized way way back! Helbrans is a BT who decided that he knows better and can guide others. BT you are a newcomer to our society, even if you've been here 30 years, you joined late. You are a guest here, you belong in the back benches watching us learning from us, sit in the spectators gallery with your eyes open and your mouth shut. Get guidance, don't try and give guidance. Your lack of culture in our society will always be a fact. No shiurim, courses, seminars, books, DVDs, weekends, speeches etc. will give you what we got from our frum upbringing. No I'm not blaming you for being born not frum, yes I do admire your strength of change, but know your place!. If you can comprehend this and internalize it then your children stand a chance. If you don't like this then go home. We have enough issues to deal with from within, we don't need to import more krankeiten into our society.

[jancsibacsi]

yoni FFB---"We have enough issues to deal with from within, we don't need to import more krankeiten into our society."
Here i agree with you one thousand per cent that you have enough krankeiten in your own neck of the woods,with all those molestations by heilige rebbes and abuse no need for outside degenerates.

[dh]

They have interesting deficiencies such that they cannot understand, learn or even form any desire to learn laws or abide by them. International warrants should issue and they should be thrown in penitentiary forever and fed buggy bread and water. I know it's just a pipe dream, but I'd like to see one of them get the same sentence he bestowed on his own children.When they drop dead, their brains should be studied.

Their children should be kept together and slowly integrated into kind society after full and ongoing medical work-ups. Jancsi should be their Zeyde.

[jf]

First of all, I’m not Jew, I’m a Guatemalan Catholic and we respect other religions. Stating that, I do understand some journalist concern and rushing thoughts of labeling my country as a religious intolerant or hostile toward foreigners and some say its an executor of “Nazi inspired tactics”. But I do believe that is not true, here in Guatemala you can practice your religion freely. (Ex. In Guatemala city, the Muslims and Jews community even have their prayer centers from meters away and they don’t attack each other).

Guatemala has always been a Jewish friendly country. Netanyahu recently described Guatemala as “one of Israel oldest friends… we will always remember that you stood with us on the formative days of Israel´s Independence and the votes on the international recognition.” Guatemalan vote was incisive, some say determinant to Israel´s international recognition. Since 1947 Guatemala and Israel have been nurturing positive relationships and building strong bonds seeking cooperation and intercultural exchange.

In relation to the Lev Tahor incident in San Juan La Laguna, there are a couple of facts that you may not know.

That Jewish community has been living in San Juan La Laguna for six years, (that means the locals gave them opportunity to settle and live in peace between them, if they were racist they would not accepted them since the beginning.)

This recent expelled is due not to a religious topic, the critical conflicts have its roots in two terms: economical and social aspects. In economical terms, locals argue this ultraorthodox community of not paying the price of their products, they pay less than expected in the market, and some say they are not friendly to the tourists. (San Juan´s source of income depends mainly on tourism).

In social terms, this is not a racist attitude, its lack of dialogue and understanding set of values between each other.
If you come from a different country, and you are living from its resources you have to respect the social and cultural norms, regardless of your religion or your ethnic race. If you are not “mind open”, maybe you should stay at your home country.

When I was living in Israel, a guy scream at me because I left water jet open, and the water was wasting. Although I did not understand why he was mad because for me the water was not a serious issue, but for Israel it is, because it’s a scarce resource. Since then I decided to save water and use it consciously, although I didn’t like it, but I learned some social matters and basic coexistence principles.

Nevertheless, I agree with tolerance topic, but the practice of this value should be on both sides. I think that indigenous community, should practice more tolerance and more dialogue, and a Jewish ultra orthodox community accept some of their demands, like being friendlier and reciprocal with indigenous community.

Guatemalans just want to preserve its culture and their resources, just as the Israelis are fighting for their set of values in which they were born and the assets they created.

I hope the word tolerance and coexistence is turn into a human practice, and not abstracts concepts from the dictionary.

ברוכים הבאים גואטמלה, חברים יהודים

[nachos]

Jf
Well stated!