The children’s mother said she fled the Jewish sect after being ostracized for objecting to her 13-year-old daughter being married to an older man
U. S. authorities have charged a Brooklyn, N.Y., man in the elaborate kidnapping of two grandchildren of Shlomo Helbrans, the late founder of the fundamentalist Jewish Lev Tahor sect that worried Canadian child protection authorities for years.
An FBI agent claimed in a December 24 court filing that the two children, a 14-year-old girl and 12-year-old boy, were kidnapped December 8 from a home in Woodridge in upstate New York and taken to Scranton, Pennsylvania. Disguised in typical children’s clothing — unlike the black garb usually worn by Lev Tahor members — they were put on a flight and a few days later observed at a hotel in Mexico City, in the company of Lev Tahor members.
The Associated Press named the children as Yante and Chaim Teller. The court filing does not name the children or their mother, but it describes her as the daughter of the controversial founder and former leader, Helbrans. The New York Post identified her as Sara Helbrans, 32, Shlomo’s daughter, and said she decided to flee after she was ostracized for objecting to her 13-year-old daughter being married to an older man.
The Times of Israel reported Shlomo’s son Nachman was among five Lev Tahor leaders arrested last week in Mexico.
Helbrans founded Lev Tahor, Hebrew for “Pure Heart,” in Israel in the mid-1980s. The group moved to New York in 1991, fleeing the Armageddon Helbrans believed would come with the first Gulf War.
He was convicted in 1994 of kidnapping a 13 year old boy who had been sent to him for religious instruction. He served his sentence, and was deported to Israel. He was in Canada by 2000, granted asylum against persecution for his anti-Zionist beliefs in Israel, where the group was colloquially known as the Jewish Taliban, in part for the dress code imposed on women and girls.
