Rabbi Eliezer Berland: Jewish Fraudster, Serial Rapist and Murderer

Now you probably have never heard of Rabbi Eliezer Berland but once you know his name and google him it is like puncturing a particularly nasty abscess for the first time: the vileness just keeps spraying out and by god is it disgusting.

Rabbi Berland is a senior figure within the Breslov Hassidic movement and acts as a kind of Tzaddik (a kind of religious cult leader often considered a kind of saint) to many Breslov Hasids.

Berland's specific area of expertise among the Breslov Hasidim was (and is) as a revivalist leader who sought to bring secular jews back to Judaism (note: not convert non-jews to Judaism, which in Hasidic teaching just isn't done apart from exceptional circumstances). (1)

Berland however was doing quite a bit more than that in so far as he was systematically raping dozens of young female followers of his as well as molesting underage girls who came under his spell. (2)

Apparently, the rabbi's sex talk was decidedly pious with one example being:

'The Rebbe loves you, the Rebbe is thinking about you.' (3)

Rather horrid really, isn't it?

However, we should note that even the state of Israel objected to Rabbi Berland's extracurricular activities - presumably because he was abusing jews and not gentiles - although the reason Berland was originally arrested was because he fired a gun at one of his own Yeshiva's students who interrupted him while he was having sex with an underage jewess. (4)

Berland managed to flee Israel's rather lax custody in 2012 first to Miami (5) then to Morocco (6) then to Zimbabwe (7) then to South Africa (8) and then to Amsterdam: where he was finally arrested in 2014. (9)

The irony is that Berland tried to claim there is an international conspiracy against him and his followers (10) and complains that Israel should be killing non-jews rather than chasing him around the globe. (11)

Nice: huh?

However, by all accounts Berland is a jewish psychopath who exploits non-jews who rent accommodation to him and his followers to a lunatic decree: (12) a fact which even former students of his recognize (13) although many followers of his remain slavishly devoted to him. (14)

His next ruse was to claim that he is now unable to have sex and thus 'isn't a danger to anyone' and per force has been 'set up' by the secular Israeli government. (15)

Then Berland proceeded to escape from Dutch custody in July 2015 after it was ruled in in June of that year that he could be extradited back to Israel to face trial for four charges of sexual assault. (16) Then he managed to somehow get back to South Africa where he was apprehended by the police in Johannesburg on 7th April 2016. (17)

Rabbi Yitzchak Dovid Grossman – the same jewish man who protected jewish lesbian and serial child molester Malka Leifer until they had a squabble over money I might add – (18) then intervened - along with other senior ultra-Orthodox figures like Rabbi Shalom Arush - (19) to help Berland and claim that the South African authorities were being ‘anti-Semitic’ because they weren’t affording him luxury accommodation and hanging on his every word. (20)

After a second visit by Grossman, Berland claimed that he would ‘voluntarily’ return to Israel to face his accusers; (21) where he was subsequently convicted in Jerusalem after pleading guilty to two counts of committing indecent acts and one count of sexual assault for which he was sentenced in November 2016 to eighteen months in prison. (22)

As well as making the following weird public confession:

‘I am willing to accept any punishment in the world, including burning me and stoning me because that is Torah law. The punishment that was meted to me was perhaps too light, and I am willing to accept a greater punishment.’ (23)

So, in essence Berland claimed that he should have been burned alive or stoned to death because that ‘is the law of the Torah’ – note the real face of Judaism is shown here rather than the ‘we are just a peaceful religious minority’ nonsense – but Berland wasn’t done as you might well have guessed by now.

On 12th February 2017 Berland was taken to hospital for an ‘urgent operation’ and was subsequently released from prison on ‘house arrest’ that turned out to be more a sinecure than an extension of the slammer. (24)

Naturally this didn’t stop Berland’s next jolly adventure this time into realm of mass fraud which came to light in February 2020 with the ‘Times of Israel’ reporting that:

‘Convicted sex offender Rabbi Eliezer Berland entered prison on Thursday to serve out a fresh sentence for fraud, after he swindled his sick and elderly followers out of millions of shekels.

Around a thousand of his supporters gathered outside the prison from Wednesday evening to protest his conviction.

Berland and his extremist Shuvu Bonim sect returned to the spotlight this month with a number of arrests in connection with the suspected murder of a teenage boy and the unsolved murder of a man in the 1980s and 1990s.

Berland started his jail term on Thursday after he was convicted of fraud in June, in a plea deal that saw him sentenced to 18 months. The sentence will include time already served as Berland spent a year in jail before being released to house arrest in February of this year.

Berland was arrested in February 2020, after hundreds of people filed police complaints saying that he had sold prayers and pills to desperate members of his community, promised families of individuals with disabilities that their loved ones would be able to walk, and told families of convicted felons that their relatives would be freed from prison.

In the arrest raid, dozens of boxes of powders and pills were found at Berland’s home that were given to supplicants as “wonder drugs.” Laboratory checks revealed them to be over-the-counter pain medication and candy, including Mentos.’ (25)

Nor is Berland the only one; since in 2019 alone six close associates of Berland’s were charged with fraud and money laundering. (26)

Unsurprisingly Berland again got off with a mere eighteen months in prison and only served a year in a cushy Israeli detention facility before again being let out on house arrest in November 2021. (27)

And to top it off Berland is currently being investigated by the Israeli police for being part of two murders allegedly conducted by his subordinates according to the ‘Times of Israel’:

‘According to the Kan public broadcaster, law enforcement are probing whether Berland was personally involved in the disappearance and suspected murder of 17-year-old Nissim Shitrit and the murder of 41-year-old Avi Edri.

Shitrit was allegedly beaten by the sect’s “religious police” four months before he was last seen in January 1986. In a documentary released by Kan in 2020, one of Berland’s former disciples said that the religious police murdered the boy, dismembered him and buried his body in Eshtaol Forest near Beit Shemesh. His remains were never found and the case was never solved.

The second murder reportedly connected to the arrested suspects was of Edri, who was found beaten to death in Ramot Forest in the north of Jerusalem in 1990. Kan reported that Edri’s murder was tied to Shuvu Bonim by former disciples. It too has remained unsolved for over 30 years.’ (28)

Isn’t Rabbi Eliezer Berland just a lovely individual?

Oh, but we aren’t done friends: I’ll be writing a separate article about Berland’s miniature war against Ukraine in 2022/2023.

Stay tuned!

References

(1) http://www.breslev.co.il/articles/breslevpedia/rabbi_eliezer_berland.aspx?id=1167&language=english

(2) http://www.worldwideweirdnews.com/2013/05/27088.html

(3) Ibid.

(4) http://failedmessiah.typepad.com/failed_messiahcom/2013/03/video-rabbi-eliezer-berland-is-a-mental-patient-who-needs-hospitalization-says-yeshiva-student-who-caught-berland-having-sex-.html

(5) Ibid.

(6) http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=13201

(7) http://www.sajr.co.za/religion/featured-item/2014/04/28/speaking-for-breslov-rabbi-eliezer-berland; http://failedmessiah.typepad.com/failed_messiahcom/2014/04/breslov-hasidic-leader-rabbi-eliezer-berland-gets-3-month-jail-sentence-in-zimbabwe-567.html

(8) http://www.jpost.com/Jewish-World/Jewish-News/Fugitive-Israeli-rabbi-flees-to-South-Africa-348333

(9) http://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/headlines-breaking-stories/258153/rabbi-berland-shlita-released-on-bail-in-holland-israel-remains-clueless.html; http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/jewish-world-news/1.619448;http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/185003#.VF0hPvmsWSp

(10) http://www.sajr.co.za/religion/featured-item/2014/04/28/speaking-for-breslov-rabbi-eliezer-berland

(11) http://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/headlines-breaking-stories/258153/rabbi-berland-shlita-released-on-bail-in-holland-israel-remains-clueless.html

(12) http://www.iol.co.za/news/crime-courts/rabbi-on-the-run-a-horror-tenant-1.1751290#.VF0hsvmsWSp

(13) http://failedmessiah.typepad.com/failed_messiahcom/2013/03/video-rabbi-eliezer-berland-is-a-mental-patient-who-needs-hospitalization-says-yeshiva-student-who-caught-berland-having-sex-.html

(14) http://www.worldwideweirdnews.com/2013/05/27088.html

(15) https://meashearim.wordpress.com/2014/09/17/eliezer-berland-stating-he-is-unable-to-have-sex

(16) http://www.nltimes.nl/2015/07/06/prosecutor-looking-into-alleged-sex-predator-rabbis-disappearance/

(17) https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/2016-04-07/ty-article/fugitive-rabbi-accused-of-sex-crimes-arrested-in-south-africa/0000017f-f438-d497-a1ff-f6b8a46b0000; http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/israeli-rabbi-wanted-on-rape-charges-arrested-in-joburg-after-4-years-on-the-run-20160408

(18) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/malka-leifer-jewish-lesbian-and-serial

(19) http://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/headlines-breaking-stories/414375/rav-arush-rav-berland-is-in-sakanas-chaim.html

(20) https://ravberland.com/2016/05/09/hear-about-rav-yitzchak-dovid-grossmans-trip-to-johannesburg-in-his-mission-to-help-rav-eliezer-berland-the-tzaddik-rav-eliezer-berland-shlita-is-a-holy-servant-of-hashem/; https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/headlines-breaking-stories/414978/rav-grossman-speaks-about-rabbi-berlands-conditions.html

(21) https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/headlines-breaking-stories/422191/is-rabbi-berland-heading-back-to-eretz-yisrael-in-the-coming-days.html

(22) https://www.timesofisrael.com/fugitive-rabbi-convicted-of-sexual-assault-in-plea-deal/; https://www.timesofisrael.com/popular-rabbi-convicted-of-sexual-assault-sentenced-to-18-months/

(23) https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/229147

(24) https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/224847; https://www.timesofisrael.com/followers-mass-outside-prison-as-sex-offender-rabbi-set-to-start-sentence/

(25) https://www.timesofisrael.com/followers-mass-outside-prison-as-sex-offender-rabbi-set-to-start-sentence/

(26) https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Six-associates-of-sex-abuse-rabbi-arrested-on-charges-of-fraud-609651

(27) https://www.timesofisrael.com/followers-mass-outside-prison-as-sex-offender-rabbi-set-to-start-sentence/

(28) Ibid.