The Silenced Testimonies: How Milvitsky's Guru Managed to Evade Police Investigation
The Silenced Testimonies: How Milvitsky’s Guru Managed to Evade Police Investigation
Hanoch Milvitsky (right) and the leader of “Kabbalah for the People”, Michael Laitman. “He (Laitman) built individual relationships with each woman in order to reach spiritual enlightenment”
Chairman of the Finance Committee Hanoch Milvitsky was questioned two weeks ago with a warning, but his teacher and spiritual guru, Kabbalah Michael Laitman, has managed to evade investigation to this day — even though five women have testified that they were harmed or witnessed sexual abuse by him. The police consistently ignore the suspicions against him, with a systematic system of silencing underway in the background. Police: “New information is under review”
In the days following his police interrogation two weeks ago on suspicion of rape and the rejection of a witness, MK Hanoch Milvitsky claimed that the motive for his interrogation was political and that its purpose was to persecute him. The claim is based on the timing of the investigation, days before his appointment as chairman of the Knesset Finance Committee, at a time when it was published that the testimony of A., the complainant against him, had been collected about a year earlier. Milvitsky refrained from using another argument, perhaps even stronger, to support his claim that the investigation is focused on him and ignores other suspicions that arise in it:
A. alleged sexual assault by two men in the religious movement “Kabbalah for the People” to which he belongs, Milvitsky himself and the group’s leader, the Kabbalist Michael Laitman. But while Milvitsky was questioned with a warning, the police refrained from questioning Laitman.
The gap between the police’s motivation to investigate Milvitsky and their lack of motivation to investigate Laitman is becoming more pronounced in light of the following story, which was revealed this week in TheMarker: About three months ago, a foreign citizen, who left the organization Kabbalah for the People a few years ago, contacted the Israel Police by email to file a complaint about a sexual assault tract which she said she experienced from senior members of the organization, led by Laitman himself.
As we will see later, this is the third woman to complain that the spiritual guru Laitman sexually assaulted her while allegedly exploiting his position as the leader of the religious group.
However, although the complainant, referred to below as C, received confirmation in an official letter from a police officer that her complaint would be forwarded to the Investigations Division (IVD), she was not even summoned to testify at the police station, and in fact her complaint was abandoned, apparently as a result of negligence. The police only recalled the existence of the complaint last week following TheMarker’s contact with the police spokeswoman.
Embarrassingly, the Investigations Division was unable to even locate the complainant’s request in order to formulate a response.
After TheMarker presented the spokeswoman with details that proved the receipt of the request and the commitment to forward it to the AHM, the police spokeswoman decided not to respond to the details.
A harmless Center for Kabbalah Studies or a Dangerous Cult?
Kabbalah for the People is a spiritual organization that studies the “wisdom of Kabbalah,” in a popular version formulated by Laitman. Laitman (79), born in Belarus, immigrated to Israel in the mid-1970s and a few years later began studying at the seminary of the Kabbalist Rabbi Baruch Shalom Halevi Ashlag (the Rav) in Bnei Brak. Later, he became the Rav’s assistant.
In the 1990s, after the death of his rabbi, Laitman decided to establish a religious movement under his leadership. The movement, “Bnei Baruch - Kabbalah for the People,” was named after his late rabbi, but unlike his rabbi, Laitman sought to popularize Kabbalah studies and appealed to a much wider audience in Israel and around the world.
The movement began operating from a commercial building on Jabotinsky Road in Petah Tikva, and Laitman’s followers soon established an organization to recruit new students, who in turn invested their time and energy in recruiting more and more students. “Kabbalah for the People” houses began to spring up in other cities in Israel, and later throughout the world. An entire enterprise was established to spread the gospel, and the distribution of flyers and books by Laitman on street corners evolved into an empire of translating his writings and lectures into many languages, a formidable video production company, a dedicated television channel (the Kabbalah channel on HOT), and a Digital propaganda that appeals to audiences all over the world in English, Spanish, Russian, and other languages.
Laitman positioned himself as someone who had an answer to every question that existence poses to man, from geopolitical crises to marital life, and admiration for him soared. Later, the activity was moved to a new, larger building in Petah Tikva, with classrooms, kindergartens for the children of the followers, and an office that partially served as the residence of the Kabbalist leader Laitman.
Allegations of control over the daily lives of the group members, including decisions about the personal relationships they were allowed and forbidden to have, the existence of a strict code of conduct, a strict requirement to show up for each of Laitman’s lessons held at unusual times in the early morning, an internal tax levied on the group members — up to the level of taxation of the members’ child allowances, demands to volunteer in the organization to spread the wisdom of Kabbalah according to Laitman, and at a certain point also a requirement to perform actions and vote for the Likud party — all of these were included, on According to testimonies published over the years, the list of elements that put Kabbalah for the People in the sights of the press, as well as the Israeli Center for Victims of Cults. In the middle of the previous decade, allegations of sexual abuse by people at the top of the group’s social hierarchy also began to emerge. Until recent years, Kabbalah for the People was careful to sue anyone who dared to use the term “cult” in relation to the organization.
However, significant public interest in the movement, as well as the interest of the Israel Police in what was happening within it, began only after Kabbalah for the People managed to send a representative to the Knesset by force of its functionaries. In the last primaries, Milvitsky, then the legal advisor of Kabbalah for the People, won the 26th place in the Likud, reserved for the representative of the Dan district. The reserved districts can be won with less than 5,000 votes, as Milvitsky received. According to estimates, many of his voters were Kabbalah for the People members and their relatives, who functioned for the Likud in an organized manner.
A series of failed investigations
The first evidence of sexual abuse by Laitman emerged about a decade ago. It happened as part of one of the many defamation lawsuits filed by the group against its critics. The specific and most important of these proceedings has been ongoing for 13 years against Aaron Applebaum, whose son joined Kabbalah for the People, for about 12 years, which led to a rift and disconnection in his family, until he left the group. During this period, Applebaum became a vocal critic of the movement, and soon described it in publications as a missionary cult. Since then, he has spent a significant part of his time in legal battles with the movement and its lawyers.
In one of the cases, a young woman from the group, identified as B, agreed to testify on his behalf. Like A and C, B also lives abroad. B told how on the sidelines of one of the Kabbalah for the People conference, was invited to Laitman’s room, and she was pressured by someone she saw as her spiritual teacher and forced to have sexual intercourse with him despite her disgust for him.
B. said in an affidavit that she had slept with Laitman several times, even though contact with him was "disgusting, to me," as she expressed it, due to the fear that he would alienate her. She even gave an interview on camera, but the interview and the testimony were immediately shelved. She later told several people about a visit her family received abroad from some threatening guests.
The Israeli Center for Victims of Cults filed a complaint with the police regarding the alleged threats against B. The police’s Central Fraud Unit tried to find out what happened, but it ended up being another story about the police’s helplessness. In her distress, the police turned to the journalist with a demand that he hand her over a tape with the archived interview. The Petah Tikva Magistrate’s Court later ruled that the police’s demand should not be met, due to the journalistic confidentiality that was promised to the complainant, which also included an undertaking that she could archive the interview at her discretion. Judge Oded Moreno ruled that the journalist was not obligated to hand over the tape to the police, reasoning this out of concern that “the journalist would turn from a reporting entity into a kind of ‘police agent,’” which would deter journalists from performing their duties and discourage the public from cooperating with the press. Thus, the affair was hushed up for several years.
In 2017–2018, Osnat Nir and the journalist Gur worked on a television investigation that was later published on the channel Kan11 about what was happening in Kabbalah for the People. In the margins, we managed to show part of the mechanism that led to the silencing of B’s complaint, without delving into the details of her complaint. Milvitsky, then still the movement’s legal advisor and unknown to the public, contacted a woman named Rina Ben Ami, who had begun the process of leaving Kabbalah for the People and had been in contact with the journalists, and asked her to meet. At the time, Ben Ami was trying to contact the group’s former members and ask them what they knew about allegations of sexual abuse to women. This is apparently what led Milvitsky to initiate the meeting with her, in which he tried to convince her that B’s allegations were baseless.
Rina Ben Ami agreed to have the meeting between her and Milvitsky recorded on a hidden camera, which recorded what Milvitsky said about B. "I'll tell you What do I know... I know for sure that whoever is in a legal dispute with us paid money and bought false testimony. They also paid her 100,000 euros, and I know for sure that it was false testimony." Of course, Milvitsky had no evidence to support the dubious story about buying B's testimony for 100,000 euros. The story he told about B is part of the same conspiracy in which he convinced A, according to the suspicion being investigated against him, to testify falsely in the case against Appelbaum in court and to deny the sexual relationship she allegedly had with Laitman.
“Men belonging to a higher spiritual status”
Around the same time, another testimony emerged from a woman named R., who intended to leave Kabbalah for the People. She contacted the Center for Victims of Cults and even agreed to testify on behalf of Appelbaum on a variety of issues, in order to reveal what was going on in the group. The draft affidavit that she drafted together with Carmel Pomerantz, Appelbaum’s lawyer, spoke, among other things, about cases in which she discovered relationships between senior men in Kabbalah for the People and young women who went to a Kabbalah for the People conference.
The Kabbalah for the People movement abroad, which she participated in, and she said. “I discovered that at conferences, male members of the inner group (the hard core of Kabbalah for the People of Petach Tikva) are perceived by the women from abroad as belonging to a higher spiritual status, and therefore many of them are interested in sleeping with these men… The men, even the married ones, take advantage of this,” reads the draft affidavit attached to the complaint that the lawyer Pomerantz later submitted to the police. Regarding the “will” of the new members, it is not certain that the law recognizes it as free will: the Penal Code designates a special offense for sexual relations between a religious leader and a person who receives advice or guidance from him. A “religious leader” is defined in the law, among other things, as someone who “presents himself as having special spiritual virtues.”
Like A. and C., B. is also a young woman who is a member of Kabbalah for the People , living abroad. B. told how, on the sidelines of the Kabbalah for the People conferences, she was summoned to Laitman's room and, under pressure from someone she saw as a spiritual teacher, was forced to have sexual intercourse with him despite her disgust for him.
B. said in an affidavit that she had slept with Laitman several times, even though contact with him was “disgusting, to me,” as she expressed it, due to the fear that he would alienate her. She even gave an interview on camera, but the interview and the testimony were immediately shelved. She later told several people about a visit her family received abroad from some threatening guests.
R. also testified that Laitman groped her buttocks three times when he passed her in public.
On the eve of the intended signing of the affidavit, R. told Attorney Pomerantz about the pressure exerted on her following her intention to testify. “Hi Carmel, we were contacted again by Bnei Baruch (Kabbalah for the People). This time they say they want to meet with us and offer us something. At the meeting will be Hanoch (Milivetsky; GM), Parvuz and Moshi (other members of Kabbalah for the People). What do you think? Is this a trap by chance?”, the witness asked in a WhatsApp message that was given to the police. After receiving the message, contact between Pomerantz and R. was severed. Later, a lawyer on behalf of R. filed a complaint against Attorney Pomerantz, claiming that she offered R. favors in exchange for the draft affidavit, which was rejected. Thus, R.'s testimony also flew out the window. Needless to say, the complaint that Pomerantz filed with the police about her rejection as a witness yielded nothing.
While the journalists were working on the investigation for channel Kan11, further evidence of alleged sexual exploitation in the group emerged—which was also silenced for several years. Y., a clinical social worker who was also in contact with the journalists, was part of the “inner group” of Kabbalah for the People in Petah Tikva. Kabbalah for the People members were not only her neighbors, but also her clients as a therapist, and also the parents of the children in the educational setting to which she sent her children. Her livelihood, her social life, and the social life of her family were under the control of Kabbalah for the People.
For Y, a clinical social worker, the members of Kabbalah for the People were not only the neighbors, but also her clients as a therapist, and also the parents of the children in the educational setting to which she sent her children. Y. said that several of her patients had revealed to her that they were having or had sexual relations with Laitman, as part of their attempt to approach higher spiritual levels. According to her, she confronted Laitman, who, surprisingly, confessed his sins and promised to improve his behavior.
Y. wanted to reveal all of this, but a few months later she announced in tears that she had received a message from one of the members of Kabbalah for the People that she, her husband, and her children were being expelled from all the Kabbalah for the People’s frameworks, and therefore would not cooperate. Y. returned to the embrace of Laitman and his students.
A few years later, after she had the courage and uprooted her family from Petah Tikva and all contact with the Kabbalah community, she also told how an organized social boycott of her small home prevented her from participating in the investigation: “A hellish process began. We joined the cult when my daughter was 7 years old, and then she was 12. She begged us to come back. It’s not easy to leave a cult.”
The testimony that was interrogated
In 2022, the testimony of A., the complainant who was interviewed with a blurred face by the journalist Omri Maniv on Channel 12 and told what later became suspicions against Milvitsky for witness tampering, was revealed. A. said that, as B. claimed before her and C. claimed after her, she slept with Laitman because he exploited his spiritual status and the pressure that was put on her. “This is a man who is 40 years older than me,” A. said. “He built individual relationships with each woman in order to reach spiritual enlightenment.”
Regarding the testimony she gave in the proceedings against Applebaum, A. claimed that Milvitsky instructed her on how to lie in her testimony and deny having sexual relations with Laitman. Although she did not mention this in an investigation on Channel 12, when the police department of Lahav 433 investigators arrived to collect testimony from her in Moscow, she also spoke of an assault she allegedly experienced at the hands of Milvitsky on the sidelines of her visit to Israel for the purpose of that testimony. According to her version, Milvitsky raped her while they were alone in her hotel room. Milvitsky completely denies her version.
Along with Milvitsky, Zvi Gelman, the lawyer who led the libel lawsuits that were clearly intended to silence the movement's critics, was also questioned two weeks ago, along with a Kabbalah for the People’s senior member Eli Vinokur. Strangely, Laitman — who according to the body of evidence should have been the main suspect — was not questioned at all.
Beyond the suspicion that he raped A., Milvitsky consistently served as a central part of the mechanism for silencing allegations of sexual abuse in the organization that sent him to the Knesset. However, his claim that he was investigated precisely because of his appointment as chairman of the Finance Committee does not seem unfounded. After almost a decade of police ignoring and being helpless in the face of consistent allegations of sexual abuse of young women that were accepted by the public, today the police are only investigating the part of the affair that entangles Milvitsky. The obvious question mark that Milvitsky does not talk about concerns precisely what the police did not do in this case: Why has Michael Laitman, Milvitsky’s spiritual guru, not yet been summoned to the interrogation rooms of the Israel Police?
The Israel Police responded: “Every complaint that raises suspicion of a criminal offense is examined by the police, and where there is reasonable basis for suspicion of a criminal offense, and in accordance with each case and its circumstances, an investigation is opened. Our discoveries revealed that an investigation was indeed conducted in 2018 regarding the matter stated in your request, and at its conclusion, the investigation file was transferred to the Prosecutor’s Office, which decided to close it. In addition, initial information was recently received about another incident, which raises suspicion of a criminal offense, and the police are currently conducting an investigation into it.”
Attorney Zvi Gelman stated: “I cooperated with the investigation. I believe that the matter will be clarified soon and it will be found that there was no defect in my work.”
No response was provided by the Kabbalah for the People representatives, the spiritual leader Michael Laitman or Hanoch Milvitsky.