Three members of the infamous 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.”

The kidnapping occurred on a Shabbos in December 2018, when Lev Tahor cultists 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 current (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.

With Wednesday’s verdict, all nine Lev Tahor leaders and operatives charged for these heinous crimes have been held to account, and will spend decades in prison for their evil acts. The three Weingartens join the monsters who ran the lev Tahor cult, Nachman Helbrans and Mayer Rosner, who were sentenced in 2022 to twelve years in prison.

Editor’s Note: YWN has been at the forefront of fighting the Lev Tahor cult for more than 15 years, with dozens of articles published over the years. YWN has spoken to many victims of the Lev Tahor cult who managed to escape. To say they were terribly abused sexually, suffering constant violent beatings, forced starvation and other horrific abuse, understates the atrocities they endured. The world is a safer place now that these monsters are behind bars. Our hope is that the rest of the leadership in charge of this cult are arrested and thrown behind bars.

YWN has received many, many emails and phone calls from desperate parents and siblings of cult members who were unfortunately sucked into this nightmare and have lost contact with their loved ones. Most importantly, all possible efforts should be made to save children who are being dragged around the world now as this cult is on the run. Rescuing these children is literally Pikuach Nefashos.

Lev Tahor was founded and led by Shlomo Helbrans, from the 1980s until his drowning death 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. Thankfully, they are all on prison.

In 2014, YWN ran an article titled “Cults and the War of the Jewish Magazines” in response to Mishpacha and Ami magazines running articles on Lev Tahor. Mishpacha Magazine had run a fifteen page “expose” on the group, essentially describing Lev Tahor as a cult that has some serious issues involving medicating children, and behaviors that resemble child abuse. Rabbi Yitzchok Frankfurter of Ami Magazine claimed the exact opposite – and ran the following sentence below their headline, “The unjust persecution of a group of pious Jews, and the unsettling silence of the Jewish community.”

We hope and pray that these convictions settle the debate once and for all, demonstrating beyond a shadow of doubt that Lev Tahor and its leaders is a demonic and evil cult.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)