The Devil in Jerusalem

by Naomi Ragen

  It was the same with the others, with Eli and Duvie, who also suffered. Yossi and Gabriel were more pliant and tried not to anger him, so they were punished less, as were the girls, although I often heard Amalya sobbing into her pillow at night. I assumed it was because of what she was seeing happening to her brothers. But now, I am not so sure. Amalya never told me anything, but I always felt she was holding back.

  By court order, the remainder of Daniella Goodman’s testimony as it pertains to her minor children is sealed from public view.

  In conclusion, I have told the entire truth as I witnessed it. Although I never raised a hand to my children, I am not innocent, but participated fully in what happened to my children, except it wasn’t me. I had been canceled, destroyed, nullified, unable to act, to speak, to think.

  I have come forward now to speak the truth not, as the lawyers defending the criminals who hurt my children accuse me, because I want to put the blame on them and save myself. It is impossible for me to save myself. The past cannot be erased. I believe I deserve to be punished for what happened. I was their mother. I do not expect a lesser sentence because of my testimony. I speak the truth now for one reason and one reason only: For so long, my great sin was my silence. I did not speak up. I did not try to help my children. The tikkun for that sin is simply to speak, and speak and speak, all the truth. May God and my children forgive me for what I’ve done.

  EPILOGUE

  Despite strenuous efforts to avoid extradition, Menachem Shem Tov was brought back to Israel a year and a half after fleeing. While his wife and children had joined him in Peru, they did not return with him and have since gone to live with relatives in Canada, where they remain. For some reason, the Israeli police never charged her or asked for her extradition, perhaps pitying her children and viewing her as more a domestic abuse victim than a criminal. Ruth has never asked for or received a divorce.

  The trial of Menachem Shem Tov, like those of Elior Chen and Goel Ratzon, other gurus of child- and women-torturing cults in Israel, was widely followed by the public. Often, the courtroom was crowded by Shem Tov’s enthusiastic supporters, Ultra-Orthodox Jews who held up signs outside the proceedings complaining the trial was religious persecution. Also like Chen, Menachem Shem Tov chose not to defend himself, maintaining absolute silence throughout. His lawyer also gave up the right to cross-examine prosecution witnesses, saying this was his client’s wish. However, with the help of Daniella Goodman’s detailed and reliable testimony, he was sentenced to the maximum term allowed by law. He will spend forty-five years behind bars. Batlan, Hod, and Goldschmidt were sentenced to thirty-five years each, while Bannerman received a ten-year sentence.

  Daniella Goodman has been in Neve Tirza women’s prison for the last three years. With good behavior, she will be out in the next twenty-four months. Each week, she is granted special permission to leave the prison grounds and visit with Menchie. While he is no longer in a coma, he cannot speak, walk, or swallow and seems unaware of his surroundings. He is a very handsome little boy, with large blue eyes and blond hair. The dedicated staff at the home for severely disabled children who lovingly care for him have nicknamed him Sleeping Beauty.

  Although Daniella asked to formally divorce Shem Tov even before his case went to trial, only now has he agreed to grant her a religious divorce in exchange for certain prison privileges, like being allowed to join the haredi section in the penitentiary, where he is allowed three hours each day to study. He still studies kabbalah and is busy writing his own “sacred” text. But so far, he has not been able to conjure up the same magic he was known for on the outside world: no angels have opened his cell door for him, nor improved his food, nor made his bed softer.

  Daniella has no interest in ever marrying again.

  Shlomie, on the other hand, was introduced by a matchmaker to an eighteen-year-old girl from a newly observant family, a recent graduate of Beit Yaakov Seminary, soon after Daniella’s incarceration. They were married a month later. They have two children and are expecting their third.

  Shlomie went through a period of deep depression, which he said he was able to overcome through prayer and meditation. While he no longer studies kabbalah full-time, he is still deeply religious. He works in a store selling religious souvenirs: amulets, ram’s horns, mezuzah holders, and prayer shawls. His young wife is an assistant in a religious kindergarten. With help from Daniella, they purchased a comfortable apartment near the sea in Ashdod. He doesn’t believe in psychiatrists but does his best to lavish love and attention on Eli, Gabriel, Shoshana, and Yossi, who requested to live with their father and to visit their mother as often as possible.

  While all the Goodman children suffer from nightmares, behavior disorders, and sudden fits of rage, with time these symptoms of post-traumatic stress seem to be lessening.

  Soon after the trial, Joel and his family went back to America. While he was willing to accept custody of all his nieces and nephews, he did not fight the decision of Eli, Yossi, Gabriel, and Shoshana to live with their father. Duvie and Amalya, however, accompanied him back to Washington, D.C., after the court granted Joel formal custody, over the objections of both parents. They are good-looking, healthy, intelligent young people who want absolutely nothing to do with religion or their parents. After finishing the local public high school in Washington, D.C., Amalya is now studying computerized jewelry design. Duvie, however, dropped out of school when he turned seventeen. Both still struggle with feelings of guilt and depression and are under the care of skilled psychiatrists. Once a year, they spend two weeks in Israel with their family, visiting with their younger siblings, with whom they are in year-round contact through Skype and the telephone.

  Amalya has never publicly spoken about what happened to her during the time she spent with Shem Tov. Both Amalya and Duvie realize that they will probably never really be whole again.

  The Neshamah Amuka cult and Reb Leibel were raided by child welfare authorities in Peru, who took all the minor children into custody. After a long legal battle, in which it was alleged that large bribes were paid to Peruvian authorities, the children were released into their parents’ custody. Soon after, the entire group found its way to a small village in Chile with a tiny Jewish community. Since their arrival, local villagers, who had always had good relations with their Jewish neighbors, are reportedly growing more and more anti-Semitic because of the strange ways of the newcomers, who are reportedly looking for yet another haven to which they can flee with their leader, who continues to exercise total control over them and their children.

  Menachem Shem Tov recently appealed his conviction on the grounds that he had not received a fair trial since he had not testified or cross-examined witnesses. The Supreme Court denied his appeal, citing the many, many attempts made by the court during the trial to convince him and his lawyer to do both.

  Two weeks after the conviction of Menachem Shem Tov, Johnny Mann had a massive heart attack. He died instantly. He continues to be deeply mourned by his friends and colleagues, who blame his death on the strain of dealing with the Shem Tov cult.

  Bina Tzedek is still a detective in Jerusalem. Just recently, she had her third child, a little boy named Yonatan, whom everyone calls Johnny. To her surprise it was a very easy birth. She remembered to call Rabbanit Toledano to thank her for her blessing.

  She has taken a few months’ maternity leave. Sometimes, when the weather is fine, she takes Johnny out for a long walk in his carriage past the walls of the Old City. Whenever she approaches the spot where the hill dips down into the Valley of Hinnom, she shudders, hurrying past to the nearby park. There, with her baby in her lap, she sits on the grass watching happy children laughing and flying kites, which soar upward, out of the dark shadows, toward a pure and light-filled Jerusalem sky.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My deepest thanks to Israeli journalist Avishai Ben-Chaim who in 2008 wrote a series of fascinating and detailed articles for Maariv concerning a case of horrific child abuse, a
rguably the worst ever reported in the State of Israel. In his reports, he described how a person presenting himself as a rabbi and a master of practical kabbalah, Elior Chen, and his followers abused the children of a cult member with their mother’s passive participation. All members of this cult received long jail terms. Other journalists who explored this case and whose informative articles I found useful in my research include Uri Blau, Yair Ettinger, and Tamar Rotem, of Haaretz. The documentary of Doco 10 on Channel 10, “Elior Chen: Kabbalist and Sadist,” was vividly informative.

  Since the Chen case, numerous other such cults have come to light both in Israel and abroad. I thank Rachel Lichtenstein, CEO of the Israeli Center for Cult Victims, for providing valuable material on the hundreds of dangerous religious and secular cults that exist in Israel, and their many victims.

  The experiences of the Goodman children Duvie, Amalya, Eli, Yossi, and Menchie are based on three hundred pages of actual court testimony from the Elior Chen trial. Still, I would like to make it clear that this is a work of fiction that does not in any way attempt to give a factual presentation of the Elior Chen case or any other case, but was rather inspired by a large number of such cases. As such, it wishes to explore through fiction the wider implications of how people seeking spiritual guidance can naïvely wind up in horrific cults led by psychopaths, particularly cults that abuse children.

  By court order, no information is legally allowed to be published identifying child abuse victims or their families. Thus, Daniella, Shlomie, and their families and children—indeed all the characters in this book—are purely products of my imagination and bear no resemblance to any person, living or dead. Instead, these characters represent my extensive research into the psychology of cult victims, mothers in cults, and child abuse in cults, as well as books on the psychology of psychopaths, many of whom are cult leaders.

  Among the sources I consulted on these topics, I found the following most helpful: “Children and Cults: A Practical Guide,” by attorney Susan Landa, which I found on the excellent Web site of the International Cultic Studies Association, and on which I based the information in chapter 31 on child abuse in cults; “The Art of the Interview in Child Abuse Cases,” by Captain Barbara Craig, MC USN, medical consultant for child abuse and neglect, Department of Pediatrics, National Naval Medical Center, Bethesda, Maryland; “Techniques for the Child Interview and a Method for Substantiating Sexual Abuse,” published on the Child Welfare Information Gateway, a service of the Children’s Bureau, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Child Welfare; “Utilization of Questioning Techniques in Forensic Child Sexual Abuse Interviews,” by Monit Cheung; “Manipulation of Spiritual Experience, Unethical Hypnosis in Destructive Cults,” by Dr. Linda Dubrow-Marshall and Steve K. Eichel, PhD; and the seminal book Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism, by Robert J. Lifton, MD.

  Other useful books included The Complete Illustrated History of Kabbalah, by Maggy Whitehouse; Tender Mercies: Inside the World of a Child Abuse Investigator, by Keith N. Richards; Martha Stout’s popular bestseller, The Sociopath Next Door; and R. D. Hare’s Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us. The medieval text of Sefer Yetzirah was also enlightening. All these books were helpful in allowing me to form a more knowledgeable take on my character Menachem Shem Tov.

  The description of child sacrifice in the cult of Molech is based on author Zev Vilnay’s “Idolatry in the Valley of Hinnom,” in his book Legends of Jerusalem, published by the Jewish Publication Society of America.

  My special thanks to Oshrat Shoham, state prosecutor, for meeting with me and her many invaluable insights into how such a case as depicted here would be investigated, as well as how dealing with such cases affect the personal lives of all those involved in getting justice for child abuse victims.

  I thank Alexandra Stein, author of Mothers in Cults, who kindly and generously allowed me to read unpublished chapters from her book on this topic, an expanded version of the material she has published on this subject online.

  Chapter 34, Daniella’s confession, is based on an e-mail by a heartbroken victim of an unscrupulous kabbalah guru published by Hannah Katsman on her Web site www.amotherinisrael.com. While the author wishes to remain anonymous, I thank her for allowing me to use her words and experiences. It is my hope that this cautionary tale of the dangers inherent in allowing oneself to be swept away by any spiritual system of beliefs will get the wide distribution it deserves and prevent others from undergoing these horrifying experiences.

  I thank my editor, Jennifer Weis, for her belief in this project, as well as my agent, Mel Berger at WME, for his outstanding support throughout.

  A very special thanks to my son, Akiva Ragen, who explained to me some of the true beauty and poetry of kabbalah as it is meant to be learned and practiced by normal people interested in exploring an interesting insight into spirituality. I also thank him for explaining to me just how an unethical cult leader could use kabbalah to manipulate and destroy innocent seekers of wisdom.

  Last but not least, I thank my husband, Alex, for being my first reader, for his many sensitive and helpful suggestions when I took this book from first to second draft.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  NAOMI RAGEN is the author of eight novels, including several international bestsellers, and her weekly e-mail columns on life in the Middle East are read by thousands of subscribers worldwide. An American, she has lived in Jerusalem for the past forty years and was voted one of the three most popular authors in Israel. You can sign up for email updates here.

  Also by Naomi Ragen

  FICTION

  Sotah

  Jephte’s Daughter

  The Sacrifice of Tamar

  The Ghost of Hannah Mendes

  Chains Around the Grass

  The Covenant

  The Saturday Wife

  The Tenth Song

  The Sisters Weiss

  PLAY

  Women’s Minyan, A Play

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  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Epigraphs

  Prologue

  Part I

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Part II

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Naomi Ragen

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  THE DEVIL IN JERUSALEM. Copyright © 2015 by Naomi Ragen. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.stmar
tins.com

  Cover design by Elsie Lyons

  Cover photograph © Lee Avison/Arcangel Images

  The Library of Congress has catalogued the print edition as follows:

  Ragen, Naomi.

  The Devil in Jerusalem: a novel / Naomi Ragen.—First U.S. edition.

  pages; cm

  ISBN 978-1-250-04313-9 (hardcover)

  ISBN 978-1-4668-4123-9 (e-book)

  1. Women detectives—Israel—Jerusalem—Fiction. 2. Jewish fiction. I. Title.

  PS3568.A4118D48 2015

  813'.54—dc23

  2015027338

  e-ISBN 9781466841239

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  First Edition: October 2015