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Last update - 12:43 11/04/2008 'If he said jump off the roof, you'd jump' By Uri Blau and Yair Ettinger Tags: Elior Chen, ultra-Orthodox  "There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter or a witch. Or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer" - Deuteronomy 18: 10-11 Elior Chen grew up in Jerusalem's Romema neighborhood, one of seven children of a mother who worked as the neighborhood's ritual-bath attendant and a father who was an employee of the city's religious council. His father, Yaakov, who had immigrated from Morocco, was a man of action, a fervent Zionist, who served in an elite army unit and been involved in daring operations. However, toward the end of the 1970s he was offered a modest position in the service of the chief rabbis of Jerusalem, and decided to don a black skullcap and give his children an ultra-Orthodox education. He foresaw a future for his son as a brilliant Torah scholar. He purchased countless religious books, including volumes of kabbala, in which the child immersed himself from the age of 12. Today Elior Chen, 29, is apparently in Canada, hoping to evade the international extradition order that has been issued against him. In Israel, he is suspected of being responsible for one of the worst cases of systematic child abuse the country has ever known. The victims are the children of his disciples, who were prepared to do anything for him, including spilling the blood of their own children and those of their friends. Advertisement Police and prosecutors believe that under instructions from their rabbi, Chen, the accused and parties still at large imposed a reign of terror on the children: beating them on the head with hammers, pushing them against burning-hot heaters, throwing salt on their wounds, tying them with ropes, and gagging and punching them. They are accused, too, of imprisoning them in suitcases and other confined areas, forcing them to eat feces and to drink arrack until vomiting, and made them run around until they fainted. The apparent victims of most of these acts were two children - 3 and 4 years old, the youngest of eight children of the woman charged this week with grave abuse together with another member of Chen's circle, David Kugman. In any event, the sixth wedding anniversary of Elior and Ruth Chen this week was marked separately by husband and wife: He is in Canada, along with a disciple, Yosef Fischer, and she is apparently somewhere in Israel with their four children and other followers who have not been arrested. "I knew [Chen] very well, like a brother," relates a former member of the group. "As I remember him, there weren't concepts like violence involved, but there was a madness that stood out in him. If he said jump off the roof, you'd jump. I am certain he has supernatural powers and the proof is that a mother, whom I know as a sterling woman, a religious woman, takes her son and passes him through fire, as though before Moloch. Is it possible to understand a thing like that rationally? And I tell you that even if the child had died, it would not have upset her. Why? Because she's certain she is doing the best thing for the child." Do you understand what you are saying? "You have to realize that there are people who can take you - someone from North Tel Aviv, from Haaretz - and control you. This is a reality, out of your control, and you will do things and all of a sudden wake up and only two years later will you manage to escape the scene ... "Do you know what the police are getting wrong? They aren't trying to understand this story. They think they are dealing with criminals, or with methods of child-rearing. They don't understand that from the perspective of these people there is a 'correction' going on here, in the spiritual sense, a tikkun [correction] of the soul. And the police don't understand what level of control this is. You are talking about nonviolent people who were not beaten at home, perfectly normal people. Someone simply comes along, gets control of their switch and that's it. They need to be sent for observation, and given about two years before they can understand the gravity of the matter. I wouldn't send them to prison for murder, I'd send the person who made them do what they did, because he's the main thing." Walking 'wounded' Elior Chen's bar mitzvah, in 1992, was graced with the presence of venerable ultra-Orthodox rabbis and wheeler- dealers, both Sephardic and Ashkenazi, who knew the boy's father, Yaakov, from the religious council. These rabbis were presented with a wunderkind who devoted hours to holy books. No one imagined these were mostly books about Jewish mysticism - kabbala. Despite his diligence, the youngster had difficulty getting along in ultra- Orthodox settings. At the age of 15 he was sent to the Oz Leyissachar Yeshiva, where he spent 10 years. From a narrow alley that leads from Joseph Caro Street in Jerusalem's Beit Yisrael neighborhood, steps lead to the second story of a building. Here, beyond an iron gate, Oz Leyissachar operates out of three rooms. Wretchedness prevails there. At the late hour when we visited, three students were trying to rest, sprawled on rickety bunk beds. In the main room, a man with a long beard and earlocks, sucking a lollipop, read a text by Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav. Oz Leyissachar was founded by Rabbi Haim Pinto, and intended for youngsters who are on the bottom of the ultra- Orthodox social ladder, some of whom have cut themselves off from their families. The yeshiva is identified with the Bratslav sect, but not formally affiliated with any major branch of Hasidism. Some students have become associated with an anti-establishment group called Pitzuei Hanahal - nahal, meaning "brook," from Rabbi Nachman's "Flowing Brook, a Fountain of Wisdom"; and pitzuei, "wounded," because of their oppression by the ultra-Orthodox establishment. Graffiti is scrawled on the cupboards at the yeshiva: "wanderer," "injured by nerves or anger," "hurt by the cold." The "wounded" have replaced life at establishment yeshivas with study in independent settings, wandering among graves of holy men and in forests. The group, whose members are unmarried, has been joined by the newly religious and refugees from national religious yeshivas. In recent years, the name "Wounded" has struck terror in the hearts of Arab passersby in Jerusalem's Shmuel Hanavi neighborhood after a number of violent incidents, some culminating in convictions. Elior Chen was never identified with the hard-core "Wounded," but that was the environment in which he grew up. He excelled in his studies and became Rabbi Pinto's favorite. After some years as a student, Pinto appointed him a ba'al shi'ur (teacher) at the yeshiva. Although he was never ordained, he has since been called by the title of "rabbi" and has attracted enthusiastic disciples, who are impressed not only by his knowledge of kabbala, but by the way he applies it practically. Rabbi Pinto was also responsible for making a match for his foremost student. A number of years ago he was contacted by Sharon Tel-Tzur, a Bratslav Hasid who had become newly religious and requested his help in transferring Rebbe Nachman's remains from Uman in Ukraine to Jerusalem. Tel-Tzur dreamed of marrying his daughter to an Ashkenazi, but when Pinto offered him the genius of the yeshiva, he could not refuse. The couple married and moved into an apartment in the Beitar Illit ultra-Orthodox settlement. The popularity of his lessons led Chen to believe that Oz Leyissachar was not "big" enough for him; Pinto was unhappy about the kabbala lessons he was giving. "He started dealing with kabbala too much," recalls one of Chen's classmates. "Rabbi Pinto would say: 'Don't teach kabbala. Study everything, but young people are forbidden to teach kabbala' ... Five years ago Elior quarreled once and for all with the rabbi. The explosion occurred because of the business about kabbala. Elior left." Other students left together with Chen. Some of them became members of the circle that coalesced around him, like Shimon Gabai - a main suspect in the child-abuse case, who was found Wednesday and is now in police custody. Others, like D., the separated husband of the woman who was indicted in the affair, who himself is not a suspect, and David Kugman, the other person who was indicted - simply worshiped Chen's "powers." At first he would give lessons in synagogues in the capital's Geula and Har Nof neighborhoods; later he met with followers near his parents' home in Romema. Canceled wedding About two years after the Chens' wedding, Tel-Tzur's second daughter met one of Chen's major disciples: Kugman. Today a central suspect in the child-abuse case, he then looked like a good match. "She wanted Kugman because he comes from a wealthy home. She wanted a comfortable life. She had several meetings with him and he looked to her like a refined, nice person," relates a relative. The intended bride linked up with Chen's group, and members of her family remember that she started to disappear from home. They felt they were losing her to Chen, but say the closer she got to him, the more she was upset by his control over her fiance, says one source: "She said she was not interested in anyone whose rabbi was Elior - she felt Elior controlled him entirely." The day before the vort (an agreement between the bride's and groom's parents) was sealed, Chen decided he did not like the bride's reservations, and ordered Kugman to call everything off. After this humiliation, the Tel-Tzurs broke off relations with their son-in-law and thus with their eldest daughter Ruth as well. The only one who continued to maintain contact with Ruth was her grandmother, who says she spoke to Ruth about a month ago, after she gave birth to her fourth child, and says: "I am very worried about her. She is a good soul. She is so naive and loyal to her husband." "Ruth realized that if her husband breaks up the match, it means her father is no longer happy with her genius [husband], her 'messiah rabbi,'" says a family member. "Tel-Tzur told his daughter many times: 'For me your husband is my son-in-law and he will never be my rabbi.'" Rabbi Yitzhak Batzri, son of kabbalist Rabbi David Batzri, relates that as early as 18 months ago he heard "talk about 'a hidden saint.' A kind of young star with supernatural powers, who was leading a group of Bratslav Hasidim connected to Pitzuei Hanahal. People were saying he was advising people, and doing tikkunim and rituals of applied kabbala for them." The practice of applied kabbala attributed to Chen has been considered illegitimate in the world of Jewish mysticism ever since it was prohibited by the Ari (Rabbi Isaac Luria) in the 16th century. Along with the flourishing amulet and "holy water" industry, many kabbalist rabbis engage in theoretical kabbala, such as "revelation of the secrets" of Creation. The so-called tikkunim conducted by kabbalists are for the most part a kind of prayer, rather than acts associated with applied kabbala - the forbidden realm of "invoking the names" of angels to influence reality. "Hardly anyone engages in those things," explains the younger Batzri. "I believe that this is possible, but I am somewhat skeptical about those things, and I don't believe that a youngster of 29 can do them." Chen has indeed engaged in "invoking names," relate former friends and members of his family. "He has engaged in applied kabbala and mysticism, and this has attracted many people," says his brother-in-law Nachman Tel-Tzur who, as noted, has cut off contact with him. "Many people have been in contact with him, asking for advice. When he would come to Ashdod, a list of people would chase after him because they thought he works miracles. There were rumors that he cured people in hospitals. I can't rely on that, but I have seen things with my own eyes. He would sit in the house and move things by reciting verses, and he would do things with parchment. One time he looked at the palm of my hand and told me things that I was shocked that he knew." His classmates relate that Chen's work with applied kabbala began in 2005, after he had left Oz Leyissachar; even before that, all of them are prepared to swear, they saw him perform wizardry. "At first I didn't believe it," relates one of them, who refrains from revealing his name for fear that Chen will do him harm. "The reality was," he continues, "that we would drive at no cost ... from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv, and then from Jerusalem to the North and back. He would ask how much was needed and then he would say, 'Bring a book,' open it and find cash. Call this whatever you want, I have seen this happen." Rabbi Batzri says that from the details of the abuse affair, it seems there were attempts to exorcise a dybbuk (evil spirit) from the bodies of the victims, rather than to perform tikkunim, as stated in the indictment. "To me it sounds like complete paganism, like sacrificing children to Moloch. This is a religious rite that does not exist in Judaism. There isn't any religious rite because there aren't any such things in the Jewish kabbala, not even in applied kabbala, which is forbidden. This is exactly how children are sacrificed to Moloch. Only in Christianity and in pagan religions is there a concept like that - to pass a child over a fiery oven so he will burn." Batzri is convinced that anyone who engages in "invoking names," like Chen, is exposed to danger from "demons and evil spirits," like Samael and Lilith. "Only someone who holds conversations with demons can arrive at passing children through fire.... It's like all kinds of mediums who don't have any connection to kabbala. That is the danger in these things, because it can lead to complete paganism." In May 2005, on the day opponents of the Israeli pullout from Gaza planned to block roads across the country, the Shin Bet security service exposed a Jewish group that was planning a terror attack on the Temple Mount, intended to spark an all-out war in the Middle East - and thwart the withdrawal. At that time the Shin Bet believed that Avtalion and Akiva Kadosh - two brothers who knew Chen from Oz Leyissachar, and afterward attended his lessons outside - were planning to fire a Lau missile from the Bratslav Shuvu Banim Yeshiva at the Temple Mount, and then hurl grenades at the police who arrived on the scene. At the end of the operation, the Shin Bet said, the two planned to commit suicide. To this end Avtalion Kadosh contacted Eyal Kermani of Rehovot, to help carry out the terror attack and purchase weapons, but Akiva Kadosh got cold feet, and refused to cooperate with them. Although he did not serve in the Israel Defense Forces, Chen is known as "a very militant, Kahanist figure." Attorney Naftali Wurtzburger, who represented the men under arrest, recalls "a hallucinatory group of Bratslav guys, hallucinatory in the harmless sense - fellows who go around to the graves of holy men and started to talk about how they would bring redemption by blowing up the Temple Mount. The Shin Bet took this seriously and thought they had discovered a new Jewish underground. In the end they realized that this is a hallucinatory story, somewhere in the twilight zone of these people's thinking." Wurtzburger remembers the major role Chen played in the affair: "The others in the group saw him as their squad commander in a way. He wasn't a sort whom battalions follow, but he did lead this small group. The initiative and the talk ... were attributed to him." Wurtzburger gained the impression that Chen's authority did not derive only from a dominant personality. "All of their talk was at the religious level. The idea was to bring about redemption by means of a grandiose action, and the messianic atmosphere was always in the background. In the end the Shin Bet also understood that it was dealing with a hallucinatory group." Chen's involvement in this affair unraveled his ties with the yeshiva and with Pitzuei Hanahal, once and for all. 'Hidden saint' Chen continued to nurture the hard core of his disciples, which numbered 10 to 15 people. After he was released from arrest in the Temple Mount affair, he closed the gates to the group and demanded total loyalty and blind obedience. Even though his reputation as a "a hidden saint" continued to grow, he ordered his disciples not to let people from the outside join the group, which met alternately at his home in Beitar, his parents' home and at the home of D. and his wife. "We weren't permitted to bring people in, and if this did happen he would be angry," says a former member of the group. "He didn't want other people. Whoever was there, was there; they were stuck to him. There were a lot of people whom he kicked out." Among the sworn followers were the suspected abusive mother and her husband D., Yosef Fischer, Shimon Gabai, David Kugman, Avraham Mascalchi and at least three other unmarried men, whose identies are protected by the court. "If someone met a girl and wanted to marry her," relates the former group member, "[Chen] would tell that person not to get married and people would cancel everything. That is what happened with Shimon Gabai, who got engaged and broke the engagement, that is what happened with David Kugman, who was about to get married to Chen's sister-in-law, and that is what happened with Avraham Mascalchi." Another wedding was canceled this week in different circumstances: Yet another disciple, whose identity is protected by a gag order, was arrested on Monday, just hours before his wedding. He did not agree to hold the ceremony in jail, as the judge suggested at his arraignment. Only a few of the Chen family's neighbors in Beitar knew the members of the group by name. The children who live on Hazon Ish Street tell about the lively traffic of visitors to the Chens' home, and about another family that lived with them during the weeks before the child-abuse story broke, and then left. Close to the family's apartment, a kollel (yeshiva for married men) of the Shuvu Banim Yeshiva operates in a trailer. One student there, newly religious, remembers the group of naive men that gathered under the leadership of the neighbor across the way. He remembers the tikkunim they conducted in the street in the middle of the night. "In that group, [Chen] was the only one from Beitar," he relates. "They would go to the ritual bath together and would go into seclusion. On nights of the new moon, at 2 A.M., he would stand here under the tree with some 10 or 15 people, doing tikkunim. If you want to find him, he is usually in the fields in the area. He is very mysterious. He has lived here for years and no one knows anything about him." The married men of the group were Chen, Fischer and D., the husband of the mother suspected of child abuse. D. and she were born and raised in the United States in Zionist, Orthodox families. After they immigrated, they lived for a few years in a settlement in Gush Katif in Gaza and then moved to the Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem. There D. abandoned the values of religious Zionism and began to take an interest in mysticism. The couple and their children felt comfortable in the Jewish Quarter, where there are many foreign residents who join the ultra-Orthodox communities in the city; D., who dresses in a white robe, is familiar to the residents. The couple sent their children to a relatively liberal Talmud Torah (school for young boys). D. met Chen about six years ago and became a key member of the group that traveled together to the tombs of holy men, and secluded themselves in the forests near Jerusalem and the Etzion Bloc. "Even though Elior is much younger, D. saw him as a very wise individual. He recognized his special qualities and thought Elior Chen was a spiritual individual with abilities," relates a close friend. D. opened his home on Misgav Ladach Street in the Jewish Quarter to the group's members, which is how their acquaintance with his children and his wife developed. In their home they came to know Kugman and Gabai, who "would come to their home and study, sitting and talking about the Torah portion of the week, Hasidism, things that people learn at any yeshiva. There wasn't a focus on raising children." D. and his wife were unusual among the members of the group, mostly because they were well off economically, even though D.'s friend says that "in his time it never happened that the rabbi asked for or received money. D. says that if he had wanted money then, he would have become a millionaire, because of his many disciples." During the past year the relationship between D. and his wife began to crack: The veteran Chen disciple found himself outside the circle, whereas his wife remained on the inside and her position grew stronger. "If there were a constellation of sexual closeness between the rabbi and the wife, that could explain why Chen took the trouble to neutralize D.," says the same source. Chen ordered D. to leave home and advised him to give his wife a bill of divorce. This past Sukkot D. was thus compelled to leave his wife and eight children, and to stop his visits to the home. At the same time he totally cut himself off from the group. The separation was kept secret, ironically, so as not to hurt the children, as D.'s friend relates. "She didn't want him to be in the home, but they kept up the pretense of conducting themselves as husband and wife for the benefit of those around them. Divorce in the ultra-Orthodox world can harm the children and he was afraid of that." The strengthening of the wife's position occurred in parallel to her total abdication to Chen's will, to whom she turned when she had difficulty raising her small children in the absence of the father. Chen authorized Gabai and Kugman to "help" in the education of the children, an education that was almost entirely pure torture. Gabai and Kugman took control of the home in the Jewish Quarter and later of the villa to which the wife moved two months ago. The villa, part of the prestigious Wolfson complex in the Shaarei Hessed neighborhood of Jerusalem, belongs to the wife's mother, who lives in the United States and is the proprietor of a well-known Jewish newspaper. According to his friend, D. "did not really know what was happening there. When he heard the story, he said that it couldn't be happening, that they had gone crazy. How could people do such things to children? He couldn't believe it of his wife and he said that she was a woman who put all her soul into the children. This isn't a family where there was violence, it's a very wealthy family. Now he is in bad shape and he can't sleep at night." On Monday an ambulance left Hadassah University Hospital in Ein Karem for the Herzog Hospital for nursing care. In it lay a small child of three and a half, hooked up to tubes and machines. His condition is defined as vegetative. This is the eighth child of the mother and D. The doctors at Hadassah have given up hope that he will ever regain consciousness. At Hadassah, before she was jailed, the mother was able to visit him once, accompanied by police. One of the medical team recalls: "The mother looked calm and serene, completely normal, didn't ask how the child was doing and didn't even ask to see him. There was only one thing she wanted. She said that they have a very important and precious amulet, which is valuable, and she wanted to leave it with the child. That is the only thing she said." The amulet was not found. Bookmark to del.icio.us   Word wars Hamas reverses effort to improve portrayal of Jews in Palestinian text books. Cyber-pimps beware MK Gal-On's proposed bill would jail 'online brothel managers' for 5 years.   1.   Excellent thorough reporting 14:27  |  Charlie 11/04/08   2.   Witchhun on... 15:55  |  Kadosch 11/04/08   3.   Hiding in Montreal or up north 16:40  |  Dar 11/04/08   4.   #3 18:56  |  Mannstein 11/04/08   5.   Is the mother, the biological mother of the kids.? 01:30  |  Laura Kelber 09/05/08   6.   child abuse 13:22  |  Joe Tanti 28/05/08   7.   Another group of TERRORISTS 15:57  |  Chaval 04/06/08

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