Six weeks after fleeing Guatemala with their mother, 14-year-old Yante Teller and her brother Chaim Teller, 12, stepped away from the house where they were staying in Woodridge,a small Catskill Mountains hamlet about 130 kilometres northwest of New York City. It was just before 3 a.m. on Dec. 8, 2018. A car was waiting to hurry them away.
Their strict practices have put them in conflict with authorities in four countries, prompting the members to hop the globe for safe haven. Recent court documents allege children in the group have been the targets of “physical, sexual and emotional abuse.” According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the country’s press has dubbed Lev Tahor the “Jewish Taliban.”
The Lev Tahor — which translates as “pure heart” and stems from a passage from Psalms — was created by founder Shlomo Helbrans in the late 1980s in Jerusalem. Born to secular Jews, he eventually embraced a strict interpretation of Orthodox faith that, according to Haaretz, “aspires to attain the utmost purity by shedding the corrupting influences that, [Helbrans] says, pollute mainstream ultra-Orthodox groups, let alone other forms of Judaism.
From there, Helbrans and Lev Tahor relocated to Canada. Again, the group was plagued by legal problems after allegations of child abuse and child marriage were leveled against the followers.“Of course I support marriage at as early an age as possible,” he told a Haaretz reporter in 2012 when Lev Tahor was located in Canada. “According to the Halakha [Jewish law], if the two young people are ready, they can marry as early as age 13.
“Based on the conduct of the sect toward minors, it’s sufficient to call this group a dangerous cult that severely damages the physical and emotional well-being of the children of this community,” Judge Rivka Makayes wrote in her ruling issued in April 2017.