NEW YORK (VINnews) — Three more members of the Lev Tahor cult – Yoel Weingarten, Yakov Weingarten, and Shmiel Weingarten – have been found guilty of kidnapping a 12-year-old boy and a 14-year-old girl, and then spiriting the girl outside the United States to continue an illegal and forced marriage with her adult “husband.”
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The kidnapping occurred on a Shabbos in December 2018, when Lev Tahor members kidnapped two children from the Teller family, who had escaped the clutches of the cult and traveled to the United States just a month earlier, and were spending Shabbos in Woodridge, NY. Their mother, Mrs. Sara Feiga Teller, is a sister of (now jailed) Lev Tahor leader, Nachman Helbrans. She is married to Aron Aryeh Teller, rosh yeshivah of Lev Tahor.
Yaakov and Shmiel Weingarten were extradited to the United States in 2022 to face charges over the kidnapping.
“The defendants’ conduct — which included forced child marriages, physical beatings, and family separations — is unthinkable and has caused irreparable harm to children in their formative years,” said U.S. Attorney Damian Williams, who prosecuted the case. “Whether in the name of religion or any other belief system, subjecting children to physical, sexual, or emotional abuse will never be tolerated by this Office.”
The verdict means that all of the nine Lev Tahor leaders who were charged by the US authorities for their crimes have been found guilty and will be jailed for long periods for their crimes. Previously Helbrans and Mayer Rosner, another leader of the cult, were sentenced to 12 years in prison.
Lev Tahor was founded and led by Shlomo Helbrans, from the 1980s until he drowned in Mexico in 2017. Since then, the leadership has moved into the hands of his son Nachman Helbrans, along with Mayer Rosner, and Yankel and Yoel Weingarten – who are even more radical and aggressive than the late founder. All the leaders are now in prison.
It was also reported Wednesday that a former leader of Lev Tahor, a Jerusalem resident, has been killed in a mysterious accident in Guatemala after he returned to the cult for unspecified reasons. The Israeli foreign ministry and consul in Guatemala are dealing with the transfer of the victim’s body to Israel.
When extremists twist religion to satisfy their own taavos.
What this cult pushes is an agenda that is not only not Torah value, but it is everything opposite. I won’t waste time enumerating so many ways in which LT is anti-Torah. I will, however, continue to daven that all such missionaries be kept away from our community, and that Hashem should protect us from such resho’im. Anything that sidelines these kooks is welcome. I hope they rot in prison.
Man when they get to prison they are going to draxx them sklounst.
So with the leadership gone will it continue/be able to exist?
Or will a new leader stepup?
Or will it collapse from lack of direction (& possibly lack of funds as well)?
I know when this is how it will go when they are out on the street:
Sign your cast?
Billy’s the name.
You want some Jenkem?
It’ll make you all better.
Sure, it’s a natural remedy!
Huff on this!
What’s in it?
My body waste, silly.
Huff on it, now.
Whoa, hey, hey,
don’t huff it all now.
We’s sharing.
I’m thinking about pulling a job.
A rob job.
Yeah…!
We do this job.
One last jobber.
And then we’re out
of the game for good.
I means it.
One… final…
jobber.
I know just the place.
A fake rock!
This world never ceases
to amaze and inspire me!
Shh.
Grab that lamp.
It’s a real Schtibly.
A Schtoobly?
No, a Schtibly.
A Schtibly!
Wow-wow!
Intruders!
Shh.
Antisemitism