Guatemala is grappling with a globetrotting Jewish “cult”

Officials in Guatemala are dealing with a strange situation. They have seized about 140 children from Lev Tahor, a fringe Jewish sect that has long faced charges of child abuse. The group claims merely to be strictly Orthodox, but in reality resembles a personality cult; former members have claimed that core Jewish texts are not studied, just the writings of its deceased founder, Shlomo Helbrans. The sect has been wandering the world since Helbrans founded it in Israel in the late 1980s. Most of its members are citizens of Canada, the United States, Guatemala or Israel. The seizure of children in Guatemala is Lev Tahor’s most dramatic encounter yet with state power, and has thrown the sect’s future into question.