The Devils Brood

Shlomo Erez Helbrans (b. Erez Shlomo Elbarnes), was a Jewish religious fanatic, and anti-zionist, aka Jewish ethnonationalism, on religious grounds ....

Evil Bastard

He founded his own cult, Lev Tahor, to propagate his own form of Judaism ... much like the James 'Jim' Jones did with his Peoples Temple cult in the 1970's.

Helbrans had a secular upbringing, but had a conversion and "found religion" during his teens, and left to study at a Yeshiva, where his views were formed. He died on the 7th of July 2017, drowning while performing a ritual immersion in a river in Mexico at the age of 54, as a probable suicide before evidence of his groups physical abuse was uncovered.

In a letter he wrote to his followers shortly before his death he said that he has 'no reason to live anymore since they had rejected him from serving as their Rebbe' - which frankly couldn't have happened to a better scumbag. 

The amount of harm this man inflicted on people who followed him, is almost beyond belief .... ignoring his sect members, he himself had been convicted in the US in 1994 for a child kidnapping, for which he served a derisory two years (originally sentenced to 4 to 12 years but reduced on appeal in 1996 to 2 to 6), in prison. 

He had claimed that Shay Fima - or Shay Reuven - had actually run away from his 'secular' mother, who had brought him to study at Helbrans Yeshiva for his bar mitzvah ... which makes little sense if she was truly 'secular' - the authorities and mother said that he had convinced aka 'brainwashed' the boy, to become ultra-Orthodox, and sever all ties with his family ... many considered that the light sentence and early release from prison, was because of the influence of the Jewish and ultra-Orthodox community of New York on politics, via both fund contributions and block voting, at that time.

The whole legal process around Helbrans stank, because just three days after the appeal decision, they placed him in a work release program on good faith, but as he had automatically lost his permanent resident status, and was therefore not allowed to work in the US, finally after protests of undue leniency, he was moved back to prison until the end of his two-year term. 

But he then somehow convinced New York prison authorities, to waive their requirement that all prisoners be shaved for a photograph upon entering prison, as he claimed it was a violation of strict Jewish law (hmm?), and to accept a computer-generated image of what he would have looked like clean-shaven instead ... so he didn't remove his beard, or shave his head.

He was released at the earliest possible date, and should have been deported to Israel in 1996.... but appeals meant he was free to run another Yeshiva in Monsey, New York, until he was finally deported in 2000 .... kidnap is a felony offence so he was blocked from returning ... so in 2001 he fled Israel to Canada, and falsely claimed refugee status .... which somehow was accepted, despite his federal offence in the USA. This refugee status was rescinded in 2004, and he was deported again ... ending up via Guatemala, in Mexico where he eventually killed himself ....

But the sins of his legacy lived on in his Lev Tahor group .... their abuses allegedly involved girls as young as 13 who were imprisoned in basements, and girls aged 14–15 who were married to older men in the group. One woman said she was struck with a belt and a coat hanger, and a pregnant 17-year-old girl said she was beaten by her brother, sexually abused by her father, and married by force to a 30-year-old man when she was 15 ... all under the auspices of his the dead mans son Nachman Helbrans.

In March 2022 Nachman Helbrans, and associate Mayer Rosner, were sentenced by a US court to 12 years in prison for child sexual exploitation and kidnapping. This after they kidnapped two boy grandchildren of Shlomo Helbrans, whose mother, Sarah Feige Teller, had fled the cult after she was ostracised, for objecting to her 13-year-old daughter being married to a much older man. In this she was echoing her mother, Malka Azulai, Shlomo's wife, who had also left the cult years earlier, and escaped to Israel, after she was severely beaten by community members after speaking out against the rampant child abuse within the community.

Sarah Teller's sister, Miriam Helbrans, had died of an allergic reaction to sesame seed after Nachman the current leader of Lev Tahor, had allegedly forced her to consume bread containing sesame. He knew she had the allergy to sesames seeds. Nachman is said to have attributed her death to a lack of faith in him. His motives for possibly causing her death remain unknown.

Mendy Levy, an escapee from the cult, said of her death, that a woman, who was allergic to sesame seeds, was told she had to eat them after to prove 'her faith' to the rabbi. 'Two hours later, she died,' he said. 'As she was suffering from the allergic reaction, they didn't let her call an ambulance. They don't allow doctors in Lev Tahor without the rabbi's permission. They told us to trust the rabbi.' .... he added that his own father had died, after also being refused medical help.

Mr Levy said that after Nachman Helbrans, took over leadership of the cult, life in the group got even worse.They have made the news again after being arrested in Mexico, but then escaping .... the rest have been released for lack of evidence .... The sect's leadership and other members are still in Guatemala, but have been at the centre of a kidnapping case since 2018, with nine of the sect's members being charged, and four of whom have so far been convicted.

Earlier, in 2017, the Petah Tikva Magistrate’s court in Israel ruled that the Lev Tahor ultra-Orthodox sect living in Guatemala is a “dangerous cult” that is abusing children. “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.

In 2024, New York authorities confirmed that leaders of the sect had been sentenced to 12 and 14 years in prison, for kidnapping and sex trafficking crimes, in a case that involved two Jewish children who disappeared from their home north of New York City.

In December 2024, the Guatemalan authorities conducted a raid on one of the Lev Tahor facilities in Oratorio, Santa Rosa, and removed 160 minors, after yet more claims of child abuse and trafficking. It took a group of nearly 480 police officers, soldiers, prosecutors and psychologists to carry out the raid on the gated community. Previous visits by officials had always obstructed in some way such as community members performing ceremonial dances and encircling the officials, to prevent them from moving around, and so they only saw the areas that the leaders allowed them to see. 

After the latest large raid, it was confirmed that officers had also found bodies (possibly of minors) that had been buried on the premises .... these would be investigated for possible further serious charges.