November 5, 1962 - Shlomo Erez Helbrans
The community he founded and led, Lev Tahor, became a subject of sustained scrutiny from child welfare authorities across multiple countries, with allegations of abuse, forced medication, and psychological control leveled by former members. His 1994 kidnapping conviction in the United States marked only the beginning of a pattern in which legal pressure prompted relocation rather than reform — from Israel to New York, then to Canada, where he secured refugee status. The group's repeated claims of religious persecution framed each confrontation with authorities as grounds for flight, allowing the organization to persist under his leadership until his death in 2017.
From Wikipedia
Shlomo Erez Helbrans (Hebrew: שלמה הלברנץ; 5 November 1962 – 7 July 2017) was an Israeli-born Rabbi. He was the founder and Rebbe of Lev Tahor.
Originally having established his community in Israel, which he claimed to have modelled after the Satmar Hasidic movement, Helbrans moved his community to the United States, where he was convicted in 1994 for kidnapping, for which he served two years in prison. During this time he was accused by a few former community members of child abuse, serving medicine and psychological pills, and using various punishments on his followers. He was deported back to Israel, but in 2001 he fled to Canada, where he reestablished his community in Sainte-Agathe-des-Monts, Quebec, applying for and attaining refugee status for himself two years later. In November 2013, amid clashes with the education authorities, most members of the group left for Ontario, again claiming religious persecution.
On 7 July 2017, Helbrans drowned while performing a ritual immersion in a river in Mexico at the age of 54.
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