The Path Inside Laitman's Cult: 9 Stages of Coerced Submission

Michael Laitman placed the night lesson at the center of his cult and made submission to its routine a measure of spiritual advancement. In an affidavit published by Ynet on March 4, 2016, “Elena” described her former husband’s regime: waking at 2:30 AM, lessons from three to six, sleeping in his car before work, volunteer shifts, silence at home from eight in the evening. For months his wife and children barely saw him, while he cited Laitman: a woman needs seven minutes a day.

Laitman is dangerous as the man at the head of this cult: his name justifies a regime that strips a family of its father and subjects the home to the teacher’s schedule. In the same case, Ynet simultaneously published more than thirty counter-affidavits from Bnei Baruch members denying coercion, a secret rulebook, mandatory tithes, family alienation, and Laitman’s interference in students’ personal lives. The newsroom has learned that no significant action in the cult happens without Laitman’s command or approval, and the night lesson is his decision, not the will of the “entourage.”

The sequence repeats: an open lesson, a night regime, duties, payments, restrictions on outside materials, a congress with physical isolation. Every step unfolds as a voluntary spiritual choice.

Stage 1: Free entry

Laitman’s lessons are free and require no relocation to Israel. An anonymous former participant told A Mother in Israel he entered the cult online: broadcasts, messaging, downloaded lessons daily. He cancelled plans with friends and family, reorganized his sleep around time zones, listened on an MP3 player from morning until night, fell asleep with Laitman’s voice on headphones.

Another post on A Mother in Israel gathered accounts: a couple drawn by acceptance of a non-Jewish husband, and “P.” from Kiryat Matalon on people moving closer to the center in Petah Tikva. Entry here, too, is mundane.

Stage 2: Removing the religious barrier

Laitman markets mysticism as science. The Seventh Eye describes his Kabbalah as a universal “spiritual-scientific” path for Jews and non-Jews, religious and secular. A newcomer receives a method for understanding the world, not religious doctrine.

Framed as science, it disarms the wariness of people who would never set foot in a synagogue but are willing to listen to a lecture on the “laws of the universe.” The distinctive feature of “Kabbalah LaAm,” as The Seventh Eye notes, is its claim to teach Kabbalah, a mystical teaching, “even to someone who is not religious at all, or not even Jewish.” In ultra-Orthodox circles, this is considered heresy.

The barrier is gone. An anonymous former online participant recalled that students were told not to change jobs, clothing, or habits. Yet a fixed obligation had emerged: Laitman’s lesson.

Stage 3: Centralizing authority

The title “Rav” is Laitman’s instrument of authority; what backs it is examined in an article on the pseudo-kabbalist. In 2009, an opinion in The Seventh Eye accused television of broadcasting Laitman without rigorous discussion of messianic ideology and cult structure.

Doubt is met with “faith above reason,” as the anonymous online participant recalled. Maxim Diamandi, a former member of the inner circle, described in an affidavit published by Ynet what Laitman became for his students: “the cult of personality in Bnei Baruch toward Laitman is total… No one will ever dare contradict him, people consult him on their personal matters and obey his instructions. He is in the habit of shouting daily at senior members of the group and humiliating them.” The same affidavit: “Laitman used to say that one who has not ‘crossed the machsom’ (that is, has not attained spiritual elevation) is ‘a beast.’” Laitman’s cult of personality rests on humiliating people. “The Creator Speaks Through the Teacher” details how his authority becomes the right to control a student.

Stage 4: The schedule as obligation

In 2006, an insider circulated a “Rulebook for Members of Bnei Baruch.” According to an investigation by Uri Blau in Haaretz, members were not asked to sign. Former members said the contents reflected practice at the time. Bnei Baruch’s Avihu Sofer denied the cult document was official, binding, or enforced.

The document itself, fully published here, calls the morning lesson a daily obligation. The weekday schedule runs strictly 3:15 to 06:00 AM: advance notice required for absence, absolute silence, no leaving except bathrooms, late arrivals confined to a secondary hall.

The same regime was observed from outside by Haaretz: 2:15 AM, a stream of men toward the center, about two hundred attendees, the lesson running 365 days a year. The magnetic card, a former cult member explained to the paper, opened the gate and sent a report to the person in charge of who arrived and when; ten minutes after the lesson began, the person in charge called those who were absent. “Many people wake up from the call and come, others make excuses, some don’t answer, and some get it from their wife, because the whole family wakes up from it.” This is surveillance of students and pressure on their households. On an Orthodox Christian program, Zhigaylov described his experience: about two years of nights from two to five AM, an hour and a half of sleep before work, and in Israel, students falling asleep during lessons.

Stage 5: The group as pressure

The same document assigns every participant a function in the cult: shifts, dissemination, events, meals, center duty; anyone left without a role immediately looks for a new one. Binyamin Kogan, in an affidavit published by Ynet, described a different kind of function: “there are members of the group whose job is to serve Laitman in his personal needs: a tea server, food preparers, bodyguards. There is a coordinator responsible for assigning members to the rav’s security duty.” The cult turns students into Laitman’s servants. And a member asks comrades in advance to disregard his arguments during a “fall,” however logical, and to pull him back to lessons, Sabbaths, gatherings. “Anna” testified under oath in the same case: “I told my friends they are not my friends, my brother that he’s not my brother, and my mother that she’s not my mother. I told them I have a new family. ‘New family’ was an expression of the Bnei Baruch group.” The cult replaces a person’s family and cuts them off from their relatives.

The rulebook reaches into marriage and family. Among obligations: “to be married”; a footnote cites Laitman that an unmarried man “cannot advance.” Members are directed to discuss collective life with their wives, study weekly, dedicate one evening to family, buy flowers for the Sabbath.

Affidavits published by Ynet show the human price of the norm. Maxim Diamandi described “heavy pressure from Laitman and his associates to marry within the group”: bachelors, he said, “were called by the disparaging nickname ‘quarter chicken.’” Laitman then encouraged him to marry a suggested member, telling him she was right for him; they married two months after meeting, divorced two months later. Binyamin Kogan wrote he requested Laitman’s permission before his wedding. In 2022 it surfaced outside sworn testimony. In a letter on behalf of Binyamin “Boka” Rafaeli, attached to Bnei Baruch’s lawsuit against him, attorneys Meir Avraham and Yigal David claimed he was directed to marry a cult member and then separate (News1). Affidavits from 2016, the attorneys’ letter from 2022, and a rulebook with the duty to marry propped up by Laitman’s own words all speak to marriage coercion. In none of these accounts does the student decide on his own marriage.

Stage 6: Payment and invested time

The document names monthly maaser and payments for maintenance and food as member obligations, and directs anyone short of funds to the social assistance department. Laitman himself confirmed that the tithe is collected: A Mother in Israel cites his response to allegations from former members: 10%, “as in every community synagogue in Bnei Brak.” According to former members in the same A Mother in Israel piece, the real figures are closer to 20%. The “Kabbalah LaAm” website, as quoted by Haaretz, explains the meaning of the payment: “The tithe is a material means for connecting other souls to you.” The cult takes money under a spiritual promise.

In the affidavit published by Ynet, “Elena” reported: her husband handed over a tenth of his salary every month, and then, just as his savings fund had opened, he decided on his own to donate 40 thousand shekels in cash to Channel 66, Laitman’s channel. “I was categorically against it,” she writes, “but there was no one to talk to.” This is money drained from the family.

Within the regime, payment is a personal obligation. Bank accounts, non-profits, real estate, and fundraising are analyzed in the article on money and control.

Stage 7: Sealing the information loop

The cult document prohibits other “spiritual” paths, unapproved materials, or another rav. Outside literature cannot enter the center except for dissemination. Any observer of a violation must report to the society committee; silence brands one an accomplice.

A second filter governs external communication: video, audio, and texts are transmitted only after editing and censorship; the Bnei Baruch name is used publicly only by designated speakers. The cult determines what a member reads and who speaks on its behalf. Through a team of online commentators, it also speaks under false names. Maxim Diamandi, in an affidavit published by Ynet, described the assignment: “monitoring all publications on the internet … that dealt with or mentioned Bnei Baruch and Laitman in a negative or critical manner,” and in response, comments defending Laitman and Bnei Baruch under fictitious names, on the instructions of the dissemination department; later he taught a team of roughly seventy volunteers “how to write comments without revealing their affiliation with the group.” The instructions “Spreading the Science of Kabbalah on the Internet,” which reached Haaretz, state the same: do not use your real name and never write on behalf of Bnei Baruch or Rav Laitman. The cult monitors every critical text and deceives the public by answering it in other people’s voices.

Stage 8: The congress as a model regime

The Arava congress rulebook applies to one event, not daily cult life. Entry remains open until midnight on February 23, 2012. Members surrender phones, laptops, and MP3 players, sleep only on premises, cannot return after leaving.

Not one line of the 2012 Arava rulebook links the congress to purchasing a building. A separate financial mobilization is documented in an official video titled “Bnei Baruch asking,” posted November 2013: student Shimon Karmon (Facebook) guides the camera through headquarters and asks on behalf of Bnei Baruch to become partners in the purchase: “buy, not rent,” “we ask you to become partners,” “we have no time.”

Congress control rules prescribe silence, collective movement, shifts in the kitchen, security, maintenance. Participants submit fully to appointed “police officers,” speak “not even half a word of criticism,” nullify themselves before comrades. If the leadership finds a violation, the member leaves immediately at his own expense, and his guarantor leaves alongside him.

Laitman himself explained this pressure spiritually in a lesson on January 27, 2012: society must press and obligate a person until he cries out wanting to be “born.” In the document, those words sit beside physical isolation, surveillance, and collective punishment. That pairing is cult subjugation.

Stage 9: Two realities

Four sources, independent of one another, present the same sequence: a blog by an anonymous online participant with night broadcasts and family alienation, Haaretz observing magnetic check-in and calls to absentees from outside the center, sworn affidavits published by Ynet, and two rulebooks of obligations and sanctions written inside the cult itself. The nocturnal routine, maaser, information filters, and physical isolation remain embedded in the documents themselves.

Outside: free lectures and words of unity. Inside: rigid schedule, assigned roles, payments, accountability, prohibition on outside spiritual materials. A personal complaint here is routed through a separate internal channel; one such episode appears in “How Should I Go On Living?”.

Where this mechanism leads

Internal discipline later found a political outlet: names, positions, Likud enrollment, and the 50-million-shekel bill are analyzed in a separate political article.

Afterword

Laitman’s villainy is evident in the sequence itself: a person approaches for a free lesson, and the cult leaves him with middle-of-the-night awakenings, an assigned function, maaser, filtered information, and comrades authorized in advance not to believe his own arguments. Maxim Diamandi came to the cult at nineteen, through an introductory lecture, and in an affidavit published by Ynet listed what he could no longer deny in the end: “Laitman’s dictatorship, the directorate’s control over members of the inner circle, the subjugation of group members to the organization’s interests, and the exploitation and humiliation bound up with participation in the group: complete self-nullification before Laitman and the group.” A free lesson ends in the exploitation of a person who has nullified himself before Laitman.