More about the Lev Tahor Cult.
When Mexican police raided a self-styled Jewish sect, former members hoped it would spell the end of the group, which has been accused of crimes against children. Instead, the case collapsed and the sect recovered - but not before details about the cloistered community were exposed, including its plans for mass slaughter if outside authorities intervened. One former member, who recently fled, spoke to the BBC about his ordeal.
Warning: This story contains details of physical and sexual abuse
When Yisrael Amir got married, he and his bride stood under the chupah, the traditional Jewish wedding canopy, surrounded by members of their community. But what should be a couple's happiest day was for them a nightmare. Yisrael and his wife, Malke (not her real name), were both 16 and had met there and then for the first time. The marriage had been organised by leaders of the group which they had been brought into as children. The group is Lev Tahor, Hebrew for Pure Heart, which claims to follow a fundamentalist version of Judaism. Former members though, along with an Israeli court among others, say it is nothing but a cult.
"We had no choice," Yisrael, now 22, tells me as we sit and talk in the back yard of his aunt's house, just south of Tel Aviv. "The rabbi called me into his office and said, 'Next week you're getting married. If you refuse you get punished'. My sister was 13 and they forced her to marry a 19-year-old. She was crying. She cried so much they punished her by banning her from speaking for a year. She could not say a word - not ask for food, not ask for the toilet, nothing." ...
But, according to Yisrael, there was much worse.
"I saw every day Shlomo Helbrans [the founder of Lev Tahor] and another leader take boys in their room, boys as young as eight, then afterwards he sent them to the mikveh [ritual bath used for purification]. I didn't understand what he did with them. Now I know."
Yisrael says boys and girls told him they were sexually abused - and raped.
The BBC tried to speak to alleged child victims of rape who have left the group, but none were willing to talk. A US-based support group, Lev Tahor Survivors (LTS), told the BBC there are child rape victims among its members, while a source involved in an official investigation says Central American authorities have sworn statements from ex-members that rapes were committed. ...
This is what happened to Yisrael. At the age of 12, he was taken from their home in Israel, along with his six siblings, to join the group in Guatemala City by their father, Shaul. Yisrael says Lev Tahor had falsely promised his family that life in Guatemala would be paradise, with animals for the children to play with.
Instead "it was a complete shock," he says. "Everyone was separated from each other. Children had to sleep on stone floors. We were woken up about 3am every day, then prayers all day long, no food, no water, no talking to other children. If the rabbi [Helbrans] lectured us, it would go on for hours. Sometimes I would fall asleep standing up. Every single thing was controlled. You could only go to the toilet when they said you could. We had no education. We did not even study Torah [holiest books of the Jewish Bible] or Talmud [a principal Jewish book of laws] because that would have opened our minds - just Helbrans' writings, which we had to learn by heart. We did not go to sleep until 11pm." ...
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-63942615
