By Syed Jawed Anwar

Lev Tahor Jewish community in Niqab and beard-shares same religious culture of Muslims

RELEGIOUS 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.

Lev-Tahor Hijabi girls are playing.

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.

(Syed Jawed Anwar can be reached at jawed@seerahwest.com)