"Jewish Lev Tahor has shown Muslims a path of Tahoor (Taharah)."

Religious Jews’ Migration from Quebec: A Lesson for Ontario Muslims.

Posted by Editor on Dec 30th, 2013

By JAWED ANWAR

RELIGIOUS Jews of Lev Tahor (“Pure Heart”) community of Quebec had not been sending their children since long to secular public schools that corrupted the heart, mind and soul of the children. Their children had been unschooled, and parents had been homeschooling them with the help of independent teachers, tutors, and moral educators.

These Jews are doing same thing as 3 million Americans are doing: un-schooling; i.e. managing your children’s education by quitting the school.

Watch the importance of Un-schooling by John Taylor Gatto (Part 1 and Part 2)

Quebec government recently ordered the homeschoolers to teach the secular curriculum in home schooling. This was the good reason and compulsion for these Jews to make hijrah (migration) from the province.

On Monday, November 18th, morning moonlight at 1 a.m., 40 families comprising 200 people boarded a convoy of the buses to flee from their homes. New destination of these families was Chatham-Kent, a town in Southwestern Ontario.

Nacham Helbrans, the son of Shlomo Helbrans, the group’s leader and a rabbi, told the Toronto Star that they were forced out of Quebec over a clash with education authorities regarding the secular curriculum they were being ordered to teach their home-schooled children. Failure to comply could have led to children being placed in foster care —an unthinkable outcome for them, Nacham Helbrans said. The problems began when another of Shlomo Helbrans’ five children, Nathan, reportedly fled the community after a dispute in which he was forcibly separated from his children, and the brood was farmed out to live with other families, according to the Times of Israel. Nathan complained to Quebec’s child protection services.

“To go to the Director of Youth Protection against your own wife, against your own children, just to show that you are the stronger one is not welcomed in our community,” Nacham Helbrans said.

With that threat over their heads for the last six months, they evaluated moves to various provinces across Canada but opted finally for Ontario, whose relative liberty for faith-based schooling and home schooling has been an enticement for other religious communities in Quebec, including Mennonites. In 2007, Mennonite deacon’s small community was locked in a year-old fight with Quebec’s education ministry over their desire to teach their children according to their faith. More than 30 of the group’s women and school-aged children have gone into self-imposed exile in Alexandria, Ont., just over the Quebec-Ontario border, to ensure they can do so.

Lev Tahor sect began in Israel, where Shlomo Helbrans founded his anti-Zionist movement in the 1980s. After the first Gulf War, Helbrans moved his community to New York, where he was convicted of second-degree kidnapping after a young follower fled from his parents.

Upon his release from prison, he eventually re-established his community in Canada.

The men and boys are indistinguishable from other orthodox Jews, women and girls who, from the age of 3, are shrouded head to toe in black robes, showing only their faces, a complete Hijab exactly what Muslim women wear.

The resemblance to the group’s Muslim counterparts is what inspired the “Jewish Taliban” tag, but it is not one that the adherents of Lev Tahor shy away from.

“We are not ashamed of this name,” said Nacham Helbrans, 31. “Just as orthodox is a name for non-Jews beating up on the Jewish path of religion, they do the same thing today with the Taliban.”

However, I feel ashamed when I see the approach of Muslims of Ontario including pure religious and Islamic community who are in post Bill 13 (new Accepting Education Act) era still debating of “disadvantage” of not sending to their children to the public schools. Several Imams and leaders argued in favor of the public schools and fooled Muslims about the Liberal agenda (several of them are members, party paid workers, and liberal gate keepers in the Islamic organizations) of brainwashing the children of public schools from KG.

This is the situation for which a great poet of Islam Allama Muhammad Iqbal by criticizing once said, “Ye who Musalamn hain jinhen dekh ke Sharmayen Yahood” (Jews will be ashamed by seeing these Muslims).

Ontario Public Schools are now perfectly fit not only to change the heart and mind but gender of your children. Watch the Video.

In this scenario Jewish Lev Tahor has shown Muslims a path of Tahoor (Taharah).

It may be surprising for many but that is the fact.

Jawed Anwar can be reached at jawed@seerahwest.com

Lev Tahor: Holding on to Hot Coals.

The Messenger of Allaah (صلى الله عليه و سلم) said:
There will come a time when holding on to your Eemaan (belief)
will be like holding on to hot coals.


Professor Yakov Rabkin: Zionism is a Revolt Against Judaism Uploaded by ZAIDYATRISK

Some Lev Tahor members, including their Grand Rabbi Shlomo Helbrans, are featured from 2:00 - 2:24 in this video.

University Expert Opinion: Fearing Children Might Be Taken Away, Anti-Zionist Hasidim Flee Quebec.

Universite de Montreal | Released:12/10/2013 8:00 AM EST

Media Resource: Fearing children might be taken away, Anti-Zionist Hasidim flee Quebec

MONTREAL, December 10 2013 – For ten years, University of Montreal Professor Yakov Rabkin has been studying the Hasidic anti-Zionist group Lev Tahor. The group fled Quebec on November 19 in order to avoid a youth court hearing to have children removed from their families.

The Toronto Star reported on Dec 8 2013: “On November 27, a Quebec youth court judge gave the order to seize the children, who range in age from 2 months to 16 years. The judge ruled there was a ‘serious risk of harm’ to the children. To date, the order has not been carried out by the Chatham-Kent Children’s Aid Society.

The following Q&A is free of copyright and has been prepared to assist the media. Journalists are welcome to use the provided questions and answers in part or in whole. For interviews and further information (including the original French text of this document,) please contact media relations at the University of Montreal (w.raillant-clark@umontreal.ca).

The University of Montreal is officially known as Université de Montréal (www.umontreal.ca).

Further information about Professor Yakov Rabkin and his expertise is available at www.yakovrabkin.ca

Question: How are Lev Tahor members different from other Hasidic Jews?

Y.R.: The main difference is that they almost all grew up in an irreligious environment. It was not until adulthood that they drew closer to Judaism and began practicing religion. While most of Lev Tahor children were born in Quebec, the majority of adult members, about 50 persons, came from Israel where they had been raised with the ideology of Zionism. Some are former officers of the Israeli army who embraced Hasidic Judaism, left the army, and then the State of Israel. Lev Tahor stands out by its unusually strict practice of Judaic law regarding food, clothing, and prayer.

Question: Are the children in danger?

Y.R.: I don't know whether or not there has been abuse, but the times I went to visit the community, sometimes without notice, I didn't see any violence. The boys appeared similar to other Hasidic boys. However, in recent years, the girls and women started to wear veils and came to look different from women in other Hasidic communities A few years ago in the framework of a film project, I videotaped interviews with several members of the community, both men and women - unveiled - about their background and their motivations to join Lev Tahor, but I didn’t talk with the children. To avoid controls stipulated in the Quebec Public Education Act, they began planning a move to Ontario several months ago. They spoke to me about this when I visited them last summer with a PhD student in anthropology from Brazil.

Question: Some argue that members of Lev Tahor are backward. Are they?

Y.R.: Their opposition to Zionism led them to learn Yiddish, spoken by Hasidic Jews, so they would no longer use modern Hebrew, even though it is the mother tongue for most of them. They deliberately reversed the Zionist project, the efforts Zionist pioneers made more than a century ago when they abandoned Russia, their homeland, and settled in Palestine. They also rejected Yiddish, their mother tongue, and desacralized Hebrew, the language of prayer and Torah study, turning it into a vernacular.

While some consider Hasidic Jews ignorant of the modern world, members of Lev Tahor used to be immersed in secular Israeli society. This is why their rejection of Zionism is more of a provocation than that of other Hasidic Jews, who have inherited anti-Zionism, along with other values, from their ancestors.

Not surprisingly, Zionists in Israel and elsewhere are very upset with Lev Tahor. In a television report,an Israeli parliamentarian accused them of wanting to kill all nonbelievers in Israel. A reporter from Haaretz, a daily often considered to be anti-religious, spent a few days among the Lev Tahor. His informative articles are available online.

Question: How do you explain the attention given to Lev Tahor?

Y.R.: I understand the antagonism Lev Tahor generates in Israel. The relatives of those who joined Lev Tahor are almost all secular Zionists. They are horrified by the new lifestyle of their children and by the education given to their grandchildren. Based on the testimonies of those who rebelled against Lev Tahor, including a son of the group's leader, Rabbi Shlomo Helbrans, these relatives alleged child abuse. They protested outside the Canadian Embassy in Tel Aviv and mobilized Israeli authorities, which put pressure on child protection agencies in Canada. Hence the recent attention of the Quebec Directorate of Youth Protection to the Hasidim of Sainte- Agathe. For several months children were checked for signs of beatings, and homes, including refrigerators, were inspected almost daily. Last week, Lev Tahor was discussed by an Israeli parliamentary commission for the protection of children. So far the testimony before the commission came from critics of this Hasidic group. I suppose Lev Tahor members will be heard in the future even though the commission must have many other priorities: in Israel, one in four children lives below the poverty line.