32 ICSA TODAY
Spiritual leader of African Hebrew Israelites dies
According to spokeswoman Yafa Baht Gavriel, the spiritual
leader of the polygamous vegan African Hebrew Israelites,
Ben Ammi Ben-Israel, has died in the southern Israeli town
where he brought his followers four decades ago. Born Ben
Carter in Chicago, Ben Ammi was 75.
Ben Ammi maintained that some black Americans were
descendants of the biblical tribe of Judah. He said they
migrated to West Africa after the destruction of the Jewish
Temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD and were eventually sold as
slaves to the United States. Baht Gavriel said that, following his
vision in 1966 that the angel Gabriel told him to “return to the
holy land by way in which we came,” Ben Ammi gathered and
led his few hundred followers, mainly from Chicago, to Liberia
and later (1969) Israel.
Many of the group entered Israel as tourists and were in the
country illegally until the interior ministry granted them
residency status in 2003. Living mostly in Dimona, they
established businesses in crafts and tailoring, formed a
respected choir, started a factory producing tofu ice cream, and
set up several vegan restaurants. Members dress in colorful,
self-made clothes, practice polygamy, shun birth control, and
refrain from eating meat, dairy products, eggs, and sugar. The
group also has thousands more members in the United States,
the Caribbean, and Africa. (The Guardian, 12/28/14)
Cult continues to influence sarin nerve gas suspect
Kimiaki Nishida, a social psychologist and professor at Rissho
University, met former AUM Shinrikyo member Katsuya
Takahashi at a detention center in October and said Takahashi
“is still influenced by the [cult’s] doctrine and looked like a
believer[,] … being unable to be free of brainwashing even
though he has led a social life for a long time” since he departed
from the group. It is the first time since his arrest in June 2012
after being on the run for about 17 years that the condition
of 56-year-old Takahashi has been revealed. Takahashi’s
appearance has not changed since the time of his arrest, the
professor said.
The former AUM member, set to go on trial in January, has been
charged with murder over the cult’s deadly sarin nerve-gas
attack on the Tokyo subway system in 1995, which killed 13
people and left more than 6,000 people ill.
Nishida has also met many other former cult members, and his
assessments of some AUM members have been admitted as
evidence. (South China Morning Post, 12/8/14)
Surveillance of Aum successor cults extended for 3 years
The Public Security Examination Commission (an external
organ of the Justice Ministry) has said that two spinoffs of
Aum Shinrikyo will remain under surveillance for 3 more
years starting February 1, 2015. This extension is the fifth since
surveillance began in January 2000 and will apply to Aleph, as
the cult is now known, and Hikarinowa, or Circle of Rainbow
Light. (The Japan Times, 1/24/15)
A look inside the secret group in Murray Hill
According to its leader Tom Baer, 73, and former followers,
Congregation for the Light has about 200 members in New
York, and other congregations in Washington, DC and Atlanta.
They describe the group as “the cult next door to every New
Yorker, and no one even knows that it’s there.” The Light dates
back to at least the 1960s and has met in Murray Hill, New York
since the 1970s, although members are taught that the church
dates to the 19th century.
Former followers say the Light’s teachings are shrouded in
secrecy and rooted in 19th-century England, where a husband
and wife—known only as “the Wyeths”—woke from the same
dream and wrote down the karmic tenets and symbols they
remembered. “They don’t give you any sources. There’s no
dogma you can reference. It’s just word of mouth,” a former
member said. “You just believe what you’re told.”
Known simply as “the Light” to members, the group claims that
its followers descended from a “master Aryan race” on Atlantis,
and that humans once lived on the moon. But leader Baer said,
“It’s not a cult. It’s not a scam. You can come 3,000 times and
you’re not going to have to pay a dime.”
The group has banned homosexuality, which it reportedly
considers “a hangover from the Roman Empire.” It encourages
corporal punishment, although Baer denies this while saying,
“If I want to spank my kids, it’s no one else’s business…” And
members atone for bad karma in past lives. Former members
say that young women are denied higher education and are
often married off to older men in the group.
A former worshipper who spoke anonymously out of fear of
retribution said Baer talked to her of battling evil people in
lucid dreams, and of how cancer and other illnesses were the
result of karma, not health habits, genetics, or environment.
“Everything is ambiguous,” she said. “And if you ask, you’re
told, ‘You just don’t remember. You’ll remember when you’re
supposed to ...Try to control your dreams, and tonight you’ll
remember a symbol.’”
Another former member born into the group, Paul Arthur
Miller, said he “felt like a prisoner, … an indentured slave.” At
18, he was one of a dozen young men secluded for 3 days
in the Adirondack Mountains on a training mission for elite
members of the “Light Patrol.” The trainees were taught survival
skills that included firing M14 automatic rifles and practicing
hand-to-hand combat in preparation for the apocalypse. Miller
explained the group’s belief that the end of “Planet Earth” was
“…imminent, weeks or months,” although “they changed the
doomsday date at least twice.” Miller was there across 30 years
and two leaders, each with his own agendas and “personal
beliefs.”
Morris Kates, chairman during the 1960s and 1970s, taught
that once the world ended people would be reincarnated on
another planet called Nay. Joseph Denton, Kates’ successor
and a former Southern Baptist, tried banning the Internet and
some TV. Current leader Tom Baer took over when Denton died
in 2001. An Ohio native, Baer is a charming, sharply dressed man
who uses a cane and believes he was an Apache in a past life.
News Desk
30
Spiritual leader of African Hebrew Israelites dies
According to spokeswoman Yafa Baht Gavriel, the spiritual
leader of the polygamous vegan African Hebrew Israelites,
Ben Ammi Ben-Israel, has died in the southern Israeli town
where he brought his followers four decades ago. Born Ben
Carter in Chicago, Ben Ammi was 75.
Ben Ammi maintained that some black Americans were
descendants of the biblical tribe of Judah. He said they
migrated to West Africa after the destruction of the Jewish
Temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD and were eventually sold as
slaves to the United States. Baht Gavriel said that, following his
vision in 1966 that the angel Gabriel told him to “return to the
holy land by way in which we came,” Ben Ammi gathered and
led his few hundred followers, mainly from Chicago, to Liberia
and later (1969) Israel.
Many of the group entered Israel as tourists and were in the
country illegally until the interior ministry granted them
residency status in 2003. Living mostly in Dimona, they
established businesses in crafts and tailoring, formed a
respected choir, started a factory producing tofu ice cream, and
set up several vegan restaurants. Members dress in colorful,
self-made clothes, practice polygamy, shun birth control, and
refrain from eating meat, dairy products, eggs, and sugar. The
group also has thousands more members in the United States,
the Caribbean, and Africa. (The Guardian, 12/28/14)
Cult continues to influence sarin nerve gas suspect
Kimiaki Nishida, a social psychologist and professor at Rissho
University, met former AUM Shinrikyo member Katsuya
Takahashi at a detention center in October and said Takahashi
“is still influenced by the [cult’s] doctrine and looked like a
believer[,] … being unable to be free of brainwashing even
though he has led a social life for a long time” since he departed
from the group. It is the first time since his arrest in June 2012
after being on the run for about 17 years that the condition
of 56-year-old Takahashi has been revealed. Takahashi’s
appearance has not changed since the time of his arrest, the
professor said.
The former AUM member, set to go on trial in January, has been
charged with murder over the cult’s deadly sarin nerve-gas
attack on the Tokyo subway system in 1995, which killed 13
people and left more than 6,000 people ill.
Nishida has also met many other former cult members, and his
assessments of some AUM members have been admitted as
evidence. (South China Morning Post, 12/8/14)
Surveillance of Aum successor cults extended for 3 years
The Public Security Examination Commission (an external
organ of the Justice Ministry) has said that two spinoffs of
Aum Shinrikyo will remain under surveillance for 3 more
years starting February 1, 2015. This extension is the fifth since
surveillance began in January 2000 and will apply to Aleph, as
the cult is now known, and Hikarinowa, or Circle of Rainbow
Light. (The Japan Times, 1/24/15)
A look inside the secret group in Murray Hill
According to its leader Tom Baer, 73, and former followers,
Congregation for the Light has about 200 members in New
York, and other congregations in Washington, DC and Atlanta.
They describe the group as “the cult next door to every New
Yorker, and no one even knows that it’s there.” The Light dates
back to at least the 1960s and has met in Murray Hill, New York
since the 1970s, although members are taught that the church
dates to the 19th century.
Former followers say the Light’s teachings are shrouded in
secrecy and rooted in 19th-century England, where a husband
and wife—known only as “the Wyeths”—woke from the same
dream and wrote down the karmic tenets and symbols they
remembered. “They don’t give you any sources. There’s no
dogma you can reference. It’s just word of mouth,” a former
member said. “You just believe what you’re told.”
Known simply as “the Light” to members, the group claims that
its followers descended from a “master Aryan race” on Atlantis,
and that humans once lived on the moon. But leader Baer said,
“It’s not a cult. It’s not a scam. You can come 3,000 times and
you’re not going to have to pay a dime.”
The group has banned homosexuality, which it reportedly
considers “a hangover from the Roman Empire.” It encourages
corporal punishment, although Baer denies this while saying,
“If I want to spank my kids, it’s no one else’s business…” And
members atone for bad karma in past lives. Former members
say that young women are denied higher education and are
often married off to older men in the group.
A former worshipper who spoke anonymously out of fear of
retribution said Baer talked to her of battling evil people in
lucid dreams, and of how cancer and other illnesses were the
result of karma, not health habits, genetics, or environment.
“Everything is ambiguous,” she said. “And if you ask, you’re
told, ‘You just don’t remember. You’ll remember when you’re
supposed to ...Try to control your dreams, and tonight you’ll
remember a symbol.’”
Another former member born into the group, Paul Arthur
Miller, said he “felt like a prisoner, … an indentured slave.” At
18, he was one of a dozen young men secluded for 3 days
in the Adirondack Mountains on a training mission for elite
members of the “Light Patrol.” The trainees were taught survival
skills that included firing M14 automatic rifles and practicing
hand-to-hand combat in preparation for the apocalypse. Miller
explained the group’s belief that the end of “Planet Earth” was
“…imminent, weeks or months,” although “they changed the
doomsday date at least twice.” Miller was there across 30 years
and two leaders, each with his own agendas and “personal
beliefs.”
Morris Kates, chairman during the 1960s and 1970s, taught
that once the world ended people would be reincarnated on
another planet called Nay. Joseph Denton, Kates’ successor
and a former Southern Baptist, tried banning the Internet and
some TV. Current leader Tom Baer took over when Denton died
in 2001. An Ohio native, Baer is a charming, sharply dressed man
who uses a cane and believes he was an Apache in a past life.
News Desk
30
