|
|
NEWS
Lev L'Achim Renews Warnings Against Kabalah Learning
Center
by A. Cohen
Heads of Lev L'Achim's anti-cult department publicized
renewed warnings to the public to avoid a mystic cult called
Hamerkaz Lelimudei Kabalah set up by Philip Berg, head of the
Machon Cheker Hakabalah (Kabalah Learning Center), which has
stepped up efforts of late to disseminate its books in
various parts of Eretz Yisroel.
Several years ago after gathering information on the cult Lev
L'Achim workers warned the public not to attend the
organization's lectures or read its books. According to a
special beis din ruling, "It has been shown that
through [Berg's] deeds not in accordance with the Torah and
in public view through the kabalah books he prints and
disseminates he induces innocent people to think he is a
mekubol in order to increase his earnings and his
control over them and to increase his ruinous enterprises by
causing the masses to stumble, and as such he and his
associates represent a cult dangerous to Torah and
emunoh . . . Therefore we state as daas Torah
that all books he and Machon Kol Yehuda or Machon Cheker
Hakabalah print and distribute in any language, including
their Zohar books, must be removed immediately--and it
is a mitzvah to remove them--from all kosher Jewish homes,
botei knessios and botei medrashos and to send
them for genizah, for they represent a threat to the
home in which they are held and it is forbidden to read or
look through them."
Recently the organization endeavored to distribute books in
Modi'in Illit (Kiryat Sefer and Achuzas Brachfeld) by phoning
residents directly and coming to their homes in an attempt to
distribute their wares by taking advantage of certain
people's innocence, even setting up a distribution stand at
the Kesem Shopping Center in Kiryat Sefer. A group of alert
avreichim who had seen the Lev L'Achim warnings asked
them to leave. The four cult members manning the stand
refused to go and one even pulled out his gun, threatening
the avreichim. General commotion ensued but the cult
members did not budge until several policemen arrived on the
scene.
According to Lev L'Achim the cult activists plan to continue
the extensive campaign to distribute their books in various
towns in Judea and Samaria. Lev L'Achim's anti-cult
department has dispatched letters to rabbonim all over Israel
to inform them of this dangerous sham in the guise of a
campaign to distribute copies of the holy Zohar.
|
