Tel-Chai Nation

The UK Mail's got a story about a formerly Haredi woman who grew up - brainwashed, as she puts it - in the Stamford Hill borough of London, and later finally gained the courage to flee, though at the price of losing her children, whom the community offensively spared no expense in brainwashing as well to turn against her:

It was only when Miriam Kliers won a High Court dispute over the rights to the £1.4 million property last month that her disturbing story reached the wider world – and shone a spotlight into one of Britain’s most isolated communities.

Miriam, it emerged, had fled the home and the ultra-orthodox Hasidic Jewish community in Stamford Hill where she grew up, taking nothing but the clothes she was wearing. It was a rejection of the abuse, she says, that she and women like her suffer routinely.

Following a three-year legal battle, Miriam, 46, who has four children with her ex- husband Shlomo, was awarded 75 per cent of the property’s worth – £810,000 once debts are paid. But victory has come at a price.

Speaking to The Mail on Sunday, Miriam provides a troubling insight into the conservative sect. She reveals she often went hungry while living in distressing levels of poverty. She was effectively forced into marriage with a husband who, according to the tenets of their faith, had to devote himself to religious study rather than work while she provided for their family.

Miriam endured a rigidly controlled existence policed by influential rabbis peddling ideologies which, in her view, bordered on brainwashing. This was a world in which she had to ask for permission to sit GCSE exams, let alone use the internet.

She was even, she says, coerced into fraud. Deputy judge Murray Rosen QC heard that the couple’s home was bought in the name of Miriam’s brother, Mordechai Schmerler, so the family could claim housing benefit.

This led Rosen to conclude that tax evasion and housing benefit fraud were ‘on the evidence, common practice’ within the community and a ‘disgraceful illegality’.

Fighting the case has cost Miriam everything: her family, her parents, and most devastatingly, the affection of her children, two boys, 23 and 21, and two girls, 19 and 11.

‘I was driven out and they took my family from me,’ she says. ‘It was made clear to me at meetings and through abusive phone calls, that I was not going to be able to have a relationship with my kids, and they succeeded in turning them against me.’ Her life, she adds, was made a ‘living hell’.

What are the chances the court will grant her custody of the youngest, who's under legal age? They'd do well to see to it the cultish community doesn't continue to hold a grip on her.

Interestingly enough, they do tell where the outfits commonplace with the dress code originally came from:

It is an irony that Hasidic Judaism was designed as a joyful sect. The unusual clothing has its origins in 17th Century Polish-Lithuanian nobility, reflecting a determination to be part of a respectable, land-owning class but also to emphasise the importance of individual character.

If that was the intention of the eastern European societies that wore them, it's additionally ironic how opposite the ultra-Orthodox clans are from the societies they drew the dress from. And even mind-boggling whose books she was allowed to read from outside the community:

Books were strictly policed – the chaste tales of Enid Blyton were allowed, while the romantic idealism of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women was not.

Wow...Blyton, a poet and children's writer who was notoriously pro-nazi and racist/antisemitic, was an author on their approved list? Something's clearly wrong here when they're that ignorant.

Home life was a constant battle – her father carried out searches for contraband. ‘I felt under constant surveillance,’ she says. ‘There was no privacy.’ Miriam’s most daring book was about beauty because such things were ‘immodest’. Young Hasidic girls wear their hair strictly short, with long skirts and thick tights, even in oppressive heat.

‘I was taught from an early age I was a danger to men because I could lead them into sin, so it was my responsibility to be modest,’ she says. ‘I was told if I slipped it could have devastating ramifications for me, but especially the men, and it would be my fault.’

This sounds even more hateful and revolting than before - blaming the women as the root cause for everything, in effect insulting the very God they supposedly worship through monotheism. Except that their worship of a flesh and blood spiritual leader contradicts the whole alleged monotheism they claim to go by. And when it came to arranged marriage:

This came when, aged 23 in 1995, a cousin arranged a match with Shlomo Kliers, an unemployed Talmudic student, from Israel. Like most men in the sect, he was not expected to work before marriage.

‘I wasn’t attracted to him but I was lonely and he seemed OK, so I said yes,’ Miriam recalls. ‘He couldn’t even read English and knew very little about the world when we met.

‘After the wedding he told me that his father was in debt and he only married me because it meant he could move to London.’

They settled in a rented flat in Stamford Hill, paid for by Miriam’s parents.

She was pregnant within six months, and had three children in three years.

She was also the main breadwinner.

‘It was hard because I was doing different jobs but my husband contributed little to the household expenses. When I complained to the rabbi, I was told it was my job to turn him into a man.

‘I paid all the bills with the help of benefits and took care of the children. I knew that I couldn’t have another child so quickly. But I had to go to the rabbi to ask permission to take contraception.’

Socialism staring us right in the face. And how could she make him a man when their ideology makes it almost impossible?

Then, in 2008, Miriam met Peter, who is Jewish but not Hasidic, when she worked for a local charity. For the first time she felt the stirring of sexual attraction. ‘It was so good to have someone with whom I could share my thoughts,’ she says. ‘It was not a physical relationship then, but it spurred me to think about making changes in my life.’

Miriam asked Shlomo for a divorce many times but he refused – according to Jewish law, only a man can divorce a woman. All he would agree to is counseling, so she made the decision to flee with her daughters, then aged 14 and five. All hell broke loose.

I can't claim to be an expert on everything in Judaism, but it sounds like this disgusting "community" took up tactics in marriage similar to Islam, if they think only a man can agree to divorce.

The community cut her off and began a campaign of intimidation.

‘My parents abandoned me and supported him,’ she says. ‘My father said he was ashamed of me and told my siblings not to offer me help. My mother has not spoken to me and my sons cut me dead.’

Miriam moved into a rented flat, and tried to hold on to her girls but both ended up returning to their father and the community.

Meanwhile, Peter found his car tyres slashed, and spyware was discovered on Miriam’s laptop. The couple often felt followed.

Horrifyingly, they were also visited by police following accusations they had sexually abused the girls – claims which came to nothing. ‘It was a nightmare,’ she says. ‘Even the school, part of the community, joined in by telling social services I was not a good mother. Everyone believed they had to punish me and harass Peter because in their eyes I had sinned.’

Losing her children was, without doubt, the hardest part.

And all the blood libels her former community launched against were practically criminal. She may have won a divorce, but it's tragic it had to come with a price, and if any courts then granted custody simply because of the kind of background she originally came from, that too was wrong. The community she came from owes an apology for resorting to blood libel tactics that only tarnish the whole Orthodox Judaist religion, and I hope the lady can succeed in the future in helping other women to leave what I'm betting is one of the worst Satmar sects around.

Labels: haredi corruption, londonistan, misogyny, Moonbattery