Ultra-Orthodox Jews who moved from Canada to Guatemalan village ..., by Jenny Awford, Daily Mail (August 30, 2014)

Ultra-Orthodox Jews who moved from Canada to Guatemalan village to find 'religious freedom' are forced to leave because the locals don't like them

A community of Orthodox Jews have been expelled from their homes in a bitter conflict with hostile villagers.

Just a few months after fleeing from Canada amid allegations of child abuse, members of the Lev Tahor community were forced to leave San Juan La Laguna in Guatemala yesterday.

The village Elder's Council voted to kick them out because the group refused to greet or have physical contact with the community, according to a member of the council.

Lev Tahor is a radical strain of Hassidic Judaism that believes television and computers are bad and must be avoided.

The group rejects the state of Israel because it views the Jews as a people who must remain in exile.

Verbal abuse, threats to cut off power and eject them by force were the last straw for the Jews, some of whom have been there for six years.

A leader of the Lev Tahor sect in San Juan, Rabbi Uriel Goldman, said that most Guatemalans were friendly towards the Jews but an aggressive minority chose to push the group out.

'I don't understand why they don't want us, we're doing nothing bad here. They also warned us they would remove us from the village by force.'

He said that the council in San Juan issued an ultimatum to Lev Tahor, saying water and electricity would be cut off if they did not leave.

Misael Santos of the Lev Tahor community said: 'We decided to leave because the Council of Elders does not want us.

'It's sad to leave, and there are people who like us here because when we left there were people who cried.'

Around 230 members of the Jewish community were living in the lakeside village, the majority moving over from Canada in March this year.

They left Canada amid allegations of child abuse and suspicions the group was carrying out underage marriages.

Rabbi Shalom Pelman, who leads the Chabad Lubavitch congregation in Guatemala's capital city, has denounced the move.

He said it is the type of activity that brings to mind the treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany.

'This is not typical in the world I live in. Even in Iran, Jews are not expelled,' he said.

Miguel Vasquez Cholotio, a member of the elders' council, said the villagers decided to expel the group because they refused to greet or have physical contact with the community.

'We felt intimidated by them in the streets. We thought they wanted to change our religion and customs,' he said.

Antonio Ixtamer, who lives in the community, said that several members of the group had upset residents because of their 'arrogant' attitude.

He said they would go into stores and pay whatever they wanted for the products rather than the marked price and that they bothered tourists.

'On one occasion there was a tourist taking pictures of a hill and the Jews thought he was taking photos of them and they clashed,' Ixtamer said.

Lev Tahor means 'Pure Heart' in Hebrew and the group practices an austere form of Judaism and believes that technological trappings such as television and computers must be avoided.

It was founded by Rabbi Shlomo Helbrans in Israel and flourished after he moved the group to the U.S. in the early 1990s.

The community, which believes the Jews must remain in exile, has won the admiration from some for its devoutness but others condemn it to cult-like sect.