Officials in Guatemala are dealing with a strange situation. They have seized about 140 children from Lev Tahor, a fringe Jewish sect that has long faced charges of child abuse. The group claims merely to be strictly Orthodox, but in reality resembles a personality cult; former members have claimed that core Jewish texts are not studied, just the writings of its deceased founder, Shlomo Helbrans. The sect has been wandering the world since Helbrans founded it in Israel in the late 1980s. Most of its members are citizens of Canada, the United States, Guatemala or Israel. The seizure of children in Guatemala is Lev Tahor’s most dramatic encounter yet with state power, and has thrown the sect’s future into question.
Outside a children’s shelter in Guatemala City Lev Tahor mothers, wearing garments resembling burqas, lie on the street in protest. “We are just victims,” says a Lev Tahor woman in her 20s, who claims that officials took her breastfeeding baby.
Nancy Lorena Paiz, who heads the anti-human-trafficking unit of the Guatemalan prosecutors’ office, maintains otherwise. She says the parents knew about the alleged abuse, which includes the marriage of girls as young as 12, forced pregnancy and physical punishment. “They didn’t protect their children,” says Ms Paiz.
For years, officials all over the world have fielded complaints about Lev Tahor (“Pure Heart”). The sect is thought to have 300 members and has been called a cult by Israel’s government. Several of its leaders are in prison in the United States. On December 20th, after four Lev Tahor children came forward with testimony, Guatemalan police raided the sect’s compound in a rural area a two-hour drive from Guatemala City, and took the rest of the children to a shelter. Authorities have arrested several Lev Tahor men for human trafficking.
Up to now, Lev Tahor has mostly managed to dodge child-protection agencies. Helbrans (who died in 2017) left Israel shortly after founding the sect. His adherents followed him to New York in the 1990s and in the 2000s to Canada, where child-welfare authorities eventually investigated the community. Lev Tahor fled to Guatemala in 2014, and around early 2022 some families crossed over into Mexico. A police raid there took several children into custody, but, aided by Lev Tahor adults, they overpowered guards and escaped.
Guatemalan officials avoided similar embarrassment. Two days after the raid in December, officials in the shelter heard a commotion. The children had escaped, but they were soon caught and returned.
Mothers were initially allowed inside the shelter, but after they refused to identify themselves or their children a judge ordered their separation. Julio Saavedra, the government’s most senior legal adviser, says there was a “credible threat” of mass suicide. Marvin Rabanales, Guatemala’s social-welfare secretary, acknowledges that family separations are traumatic. Sixty-five of the children are between two and nine years old; 15 are younger than two. Mothers of the infants must get permission from a judge to breastfeed. Officials have identified many of the children. Several have been reunited with parents who have left Lev Tahor.
Lev Tahor says it is a victim of religious persecution—driven by Israel—due to its rejection of Zionism. “Their decision is to destroy the community,” says Uriel Goldman, a sect spokesperson. He says former members are bribed to speak ill of it.
Hasidic Jews have condemned Lev Tahor. A delegation of rabbis, led by David Weis, a prominent rabbi from Antwerp (who belongs to the Hasidic Satmar group, which is also anti-Zionist), recently visited Guatemala. They met members of Lev Tahor, which one rabbi had labelled a “terrorist cult”, and praised the Guatemalan officials for their work.
In New York, rabbis have been discussing ways to help Lev Tahor children. People who have tried for years to extricate family members are waiting anxiously. Some have court-approved guardianship of sect children. Shie Blum, a rabbi whose sister has several children in the sect, has flown to Guatemala multiple times since the raid. “It is now or never,” he says. ■
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