Thread by @PosenIzzy

Really well made documentary about the latest in Lev Tahor (an extreme chassidic cult), narrated by a former member. Fills gaps in the story since the last documentary about them years ago. Big changes since they left Canada and their leader died.

Extremely disturbing allegations made towards the end about plans of Jonestown-style mass infanticide and suicide. Seems to be corroborated by the letter below from 2019, which I have not been able to authenticate.

https://twitter.com/YehudisFletcher/status/1462848579471618052?t=6-2npHjJ7uP2_JR3TQE26w&s=19

The most disturbing part for me is that a lot of this is the making of well-meaning, but misguided approaches of intervention by the secular authorities. Since the Canadian authorities started seriously intervening a decade or so ago, they've gone from a community living in ➡️

⬅️relative security and comfort, with normal houses, stable village etc, to living in tents in forests, constantly on the run. Their ideology has also become much more extreme as a result, as testified by former members. For anyone who knows anything about cults and extreme ➡️

⬅️ideologies, this is completely unsurprising. I predicted all along that this is exactly what would happen. Secular authorities consistently undermine the power of extremist dogma and conviction. People are literally willing to kill and die for their beliefs and way of life.

I don't know what the solution is. There were serious allegations of child abuse at the time. But without a doubt the intervention made things much much worse for those it was intended to help: the children. Lessons must be learnt and applied to engagement with other ➡️

⬅️ such as the charedi community more generally. In the UK the government's attempt to meddle in charedi education has resulted in a feeling of belligerence and persecution in the community, which may well have set back the slow, internal progress that was happening, by decades.

For such communities, any outside pressure is just an immediate call to fight back and resist. This is inbuilt into the very theology of the community. It's not that muscular liberalism is morally unjustified: it simply doesn't work. Engagement with communities and offering ➡️

⬅️ assistance in areas where they themselves are happy to improve, is a much better way than pushing on them values that they cannot stomach. Thus there has been lots of progress in charedi schools in the areas of child safety and SEN because this is something that the ➡️

⬅️ itself is happy to improve upon and there is an internal push for it. But the push for 'British values' or RSE (relationship and sex education) has had the exact opposite effect and is eroding trust between the community and educational institutions, slowing down progress ➡️

⬅️ in other areas. Progress does happen internally, but it's a gradual process. Thus, it is no longer considered acceptable in any UK charedi school to brutally hit and assault children in the way that was done when I was in school. This change came entirely from internal ➡️

⬅️ pressure, of parents no longer taking it. Likewise parents are demanding better secular education for their kids. But sadly bad government intervention has given the extremist leaders an excuse for their fight back. It's now no longer a trivial matter, but one where ➡️

⬅️ one has a duty to resist any change and outside influence.

It's worth explaining a bit how this theology works because it looks like the secular authorities don't get it. The UK charedi, but especially chassidic, community believes that wider world is corrupted and full ➡️

⬅️ of vice. God places us Jews in this environment as a test and it is our duty to withstand these temptations and remain pure and isolated. The secularists will try to force their values on us because the powers of darkness and evil want to destroy the good, holy forces. ➡️

⬅️ It is our job as Jews to withstand that test. The more that the evil forces want to corrupt us, the more we have to seperate and isolate and shield from them. Secular education for young boys is not a big issue per se, but when the secular forces push it, it's a sign to ➡️

⬅️ fight back.
If we really want to improve secular education for boys in the chassidic community, then we should look at market forces. People don't want their kids to starve. Everyone needs money and people know that basic maths and English skills are vital for that.

When I asked as a teenager how I'd support myself as a head of a family. The answer was "benefits". The community is abusing the benefits system on an institutional and systematic level. Listen to this BBC documentary for details:
bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00…

Without a doubt the constant flow of money from the government is enabling the lack of secular education of boys to be economically viable. If we want to improve that then we need to create an economic situation where the secular education is actually needed - i.e. crack down

⬅️ on benefit fraud.

Anyway, I think that there's a lot to be desired in whatever is informing current engagement policy with groups with isolationist ideology.