CULT
A report about
cult rabbis from a victim’s point of view at a time when cult rabbis sit in
Israeli jails for decades. The alleged moneylender, Clare Bronfman of Canada,
of the repulsive sex trafficking, criminal cult Nxivm faces a jailbird life of her
own.
By Dr.
Harold Goldmeier. He is co-manager of an investment fund, retired CEO and adj.
professor. Today Goldmeier writes for premium financial investment companies.
His social and political commentaries appear on numerous web sites and in
print. Harold.goldmeier@gmail.com
Measure Your Mind By The Shade It Casts
Cults are frightening, fearsome, and loathsome. We do not understand what
motivates normal people to join and stay in a cult? We intuitively tag a toxic
connotation to the word. Dispel the notion that this will never happen in our
family.
Author Rachel Saginsky, in Give Me A Second Chance (Gefen
Publishing House, 2021), has written a fictionalized biography of a normal husband
and wife. Her novel is in the best traditions of solid social anthropology. This
is insightful storytelling about one young family’s journey from rollicking
bliss to its demolition. The couple wants security, love, and to spiritually
grow together. They want to fulfill God’s commandments. Their metamorphosis is
an exhausting read.
Pale Ink Is Better Than Memories Unwanted
The husband searches out teachers to lead them to a higher plane. They find
matches with ultra-Orthodox rabbis who later
press their cult conforming demands on these new ardent followers. to be
there for mother and children. Readers experience the interactions between
husband and wife questioning what is right and wrong, good for the family, and
pleasing in the eyes of God. Afterall, the husband proclaims, “We’re living in
the times of Moshiach.”
Saginsky makes the reader the fly on the wall. The book ought to be required
reading for psychology students. The strains and cracks in the family
foundation begin to show as the guileless
husband becomes more emotionally attached and devoted to the words of
the rabbis. The wife wants to keep her husband “and the whole family happy.”
She gets sucked into the manifestations of their lunatics’ imagination. The
wife describes her early encounter with one Rav “sitting at the head of the
table. The lapels of his black, shiny frock were perfectly pressed, like the
closed wings of a beetle… He didn’t look at me. It was the impurity on my
hands. I was sure of it… I could see the gold flecks in his eyes flashing. My
heart beat faster… Sheets of fire flickered over the Rav’s eyes. He was in a
different place. Seeing things, we could not see. How lucky I was to be a part
of his greatness.”
Eventually, the marriage unravels. The husband grows distant and is seldom
helping at home. He is constantly on a quest for a holier rabbi. They transfer
their love for one another to the rabbis who emanate a magnetic pull like bees
to blossoms. The rabbis demand more conformity. The family must perform more
religious observances. Her husband reinforces his wife’s self-doubts by
cajoling her to grow. Her old behavior, for example the way she dresses in modern
Orthodox style, represents the evil in the world. “Hashem wants people to be
modest.” He breaks her down saying, “Don’t you want Hashem to love you?” He
cannot if you go to lectures and are not good. Power and control in the hands
of ruthless and shrewd men can be effective.
The rabbis are pushing utter devotion. The couple isolates from family and
friends. “Just stay home with the kids.” Parental alienation, physical, and
sexual abuse become part of the new social pattern in the tenacious web spun by
the cult rabbis. In the end, the wife-mother realizes that her rabbi, to whom
she kowtowed, is nothing. She and her husband “made him who he was. We had
built our own destruction.
The God Of Cult Leaders is Winning
A cult can be small or have millions of followers. There is the innocuous
cult of celebrity. The top six celebrities each have over 200 million
enthusiastic to fanatical followers on Instagram. Manson had 50 devotees.
Preacher Jim Jones had thousands. 918 in Jonesville committed murder-suicide by
drinking cyanide-laced Flavor Aid. The 76 religious Branch Davidians set
themselves and 25 children on fire rather than surrender to U. S. government
officers.
The Hasidic Lev Tahor cult shlepped to three continents to avoid
authorities. Kidnapping children, abusing them, forcing females to be child
brides and money theft charges follow them. Breslov Rabbi Berland, charismatic
leader of the cult Shuvu Banim, is a convicted rapist. He reportedly engaged
single and married women whom he counseled. He professed to have healing powers
for payment. His hundreds of supporters and political contacts helped him flee
from country to country to avoid arrest and prosecution. A foremost Israeli
rabbi talked about for the position of Israel’s Chief Rabbi claims to try to
“aid (Berland) and ease his conditions.”
Daniel Ambash is a convicted of sadist. He is serving 26 year’s sentence for
keeping women and children in slavery conditions, rape, administering electric
shock punishments and beatings. Meantime, four of his 28 wives founded a
pro-polygamy party that ran in a recent Israeli election. These are
well-educated, normal, beautiful women.
The Takeaway
Several issues in the 320 pages novel are worth Saginsky elaborating. First,
I want the author to tell us more about the wider community that sanctions aberrational
behavior. They ignore, tolerate, and collaborate with evil ones. How and why
did they give cover to the cult rabbi and then victimize the wife-mother?
Second, sex is often at the core of cult behavior. Saginsky is a
writer whose deft craftsmanship would not have let this subject stumble and
tumble into anything salacious. For instance, another rabbi her first husband
attaches to turns out to wanting to marry the family’s eight-year-old daughter?
Also, what kind of life did the wife-mother have living as the second wife of
the great tzaddik?
Another issue deserving further attention is how unarmed to intervene
are families and friends. They feel the
marital tension, witness the growing isolation of the couple, and are
exasperated by the couple’s insufferable idolization of the rabbis. There is
nothing to do until crimes are committed. “Maybe if I had listened, it would
have been different. Too late for maybes.”
Aberrations cannot only happen in normal families but they invariably begin
with good intentions, with tiny footsteps, like erasing pictures of women from
publications, demanding females cover all exposed skin in burka dress, having
children learn religious texts to the exclusion of all other educational
materials.
Saginsky keeps the extended family on stage throughout the novel. They cannot intervene but they never give-up their musing. Her family and friends never slam the door shut. Do not enable or excuse strange and bad behavior of cult members but do not shame them. They might one day own their guilt. Then they will be ready for a second chance. I give Second Chance a nine out of ten rating.
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About Daniel Ambash's wives you write "these are well-educated, normal, beautiful women"
ReplyDeleteNormal? and they want legal polygamy?