[vc_row][vc_column][vc_empty_space height=”64px”][vc_custom_heading text=”The Terrible Secrets of the African Hebrew Israelite Community in Dimona” font_container=”tag:h2|text_align:center” use_theme_fonts=”yes”][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1509824904289{margin-top: 0px !important;margin-bottom: 0px !important;border-top-width: 0px !important;border-bottom-width: 0px !important;padding-top: 0px !important;padding-bottom: 0px !important;}”]After Kevin Penix, a young man from the Hebrew community in Dimona, decided to reveal the fact that he had undergone sexual abuse as a child, children and women of the community leveled harsh accusations against the heads of the community and the life they lead. Sexual abuse that crosses three generations, violence against children and infants, polygamy and the subjugation of women, poverty and overcrowding that leads to physical and emotional neglect, and a strict code of silence that forces all the information to stay inside the community. The heads of the community in response: “Our community is based on high moral values.”[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1509825382099{margin-top: 0px !important;margin-bottom: 0px !important;border-top-width: 0px !important;border-bottom-width: 0px !important;padding-top: 0px !important;padding-bottom: 0px !important;}”]

By Esti Aharonovitch | Haaretz | July 31, 2009
Originally published in Hebrew here. Translated by Andrew Esensten and Ronna Ilan. Read Esensten’s letter in response to this article below.

[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]There are articles that cannot stand a preface. This is one of them. Too many things happened in the Hebrew community in Dimona for there to be time to play games with words. Sexual harassments crossing three generations, extreme chauvinism leading to the humiliation and oppression of women, violence toward students and starvation and poverty leading to physical and emotional neglect of children. Too many offenses have been silenced and swept under the rug by the community itself, too many social ills were ignored by the Israeli establishment that there is any pretense to gently invite readers inside. There is nothing to pretend about. The social bomb in Dimona is ticking, and no soul music with a stirring rhythm can conceal the anguish and shame.

***

Tziporah Baht Israel, 50 years old with 10 children, left her husband eight years ago and left the Hebrew community in the “Village of Peace” at the edge [Biblical: corner of the field left unharvested for the poor] of Dimona three years ago. The community cohanim agreed to give her a divorce only after a struggle. “I want a new start today,” she says. “I am 50 years old and I have no money, I have no savings, I have nothing. I and the women in the community need help. The time has come to say so.”

She immigrated to Israel with her father at age 6. Her father was counted among the close associates of the community founder, Ben Ammi Carter. Her mother, who didn’t believe in the movement, stayed in the United States. “I was afraid my whole life; we were being brainwashed for years,” she dares to say candidly for the first time. “Ben Ammi taught us from childhood that the entire world is against us and there is nowhere to go, if people do the opposite of what he says they will be sent out and banished from the community. Only after many years, after my children grew up, did I begin to understand that something is wrong in our life. Today I understand that the community leaders don’t care about children and women. For women in the community there is no status. Once one of the leaders said the role of women in the community is to be a blank disk.”

Like most women in the community she married at the age of 18 and began the work of having children and raising them. The commandment to be fruitful and multiply is held in high regard in the community, as is the tradition, which is against Israeli law, that each man is permitted to marry seven women (since the state does not recognize inside-the-community marriages as valid, the police do not see it as a felony; most women are listed at the Ministry of the Interior as single or single mothers). When the tiny apartment in the village became too crowded, she and her husband moved to a two-bedroom apartment in the nearby Shechunat Ha’Nitzachon (Victory Neighborhood). “There was no money to feed the children. From five shekels I knew how to prepare a meal for 20 people. My husband worked and I worked cleaning in Be’er Sheva, but the money wasn’t enough. Even to distribute fruit to each child was impossible. At a certain point, when we were recognized as permanent residents in 2004 and began to receive a stipend if we had children, I received a nice amount of about 4,800 shekels. It was plenty of money, but we didn’t get to use it (lit. didn’t enjoy it). We were required to pass the money over to Ben Ammi. They told us that the community had a lot of debts and for this they need the money. For two years we gave the stipend and we still haven’t seen the money. There were times when I said, ‘I’m not giving,’ so they threatened me with punishments, excommunication, that I won’t be allowed to enter the village or participate in parties or holidays.’”

The small apartment in Shechunat Ha’Nitzachon was shared with another family, as was the custom. “So I was with nine children. All the girls slept in one room with me and all the boys slept on the balcony where you could fit one bed. The second family had only two children. Everyone shared one bathroom, a small kitchen, and everyone thought that this was okay.”

They moved to a bigger apartment with four rooms, and the number of tenants grew accordingly. “We moved to an apartment with four rooms. Five families lived there. Each family had seven or eight children. When I would feed my children in the evening, the other children would come and take food off the plate of my children with their hands. I had to watch my children so they would eat quietly. It was a terrible mess.”

The fourth son, age 26, lives today in Tel Aviv, away from his family. “He is mad at me and his father and the community. I asked him: ‘Why are you so angry?’ When I moved away from the community, he started to talk to me and to let things out. He told me that as a child he used to eat out of the trash because he was so hungry. I didn’t know and it’s so painful to me today. I didn’t think that my child was so hungry. There were days when even I wandered around hungry, but for my children I was always looking for food. I remember one day he begged me: ‘Mom, give me something to eat.’ I didn’t have anything to give him. So he asked for a teaspoon of tahini. I gave it to him and he was so happy it was like I gave him gold.”

Why during 30 years did no one talk about the hunger and suffering?

“We were under the influence of brainwashing. They talked with us about how the world will come to an end and everyone will die, and we, the chosen tribe, will be saved. My father is still waiting for the entire world to be destroyed.”

I understand that the punishments include hitting the children.

“There were times when they would hit the children hard, even infants. They thought it would do them good. When a child was insolent or didn’t do what they told him to do, he got hit. One time my child didn’t sweep the village in the morning so they took him to the shelter and beat him. I didn’t know. The children came and called me. I also hit children. At the end I saw that it was not helping so I stopped. My little girl, I’ve never hit her.”

Like everyone she believed in the community vision, but along the years went through a painful awakening. “I thought we’ll all gather the money, buy land and do something together as a community. Everybody thought so. But I don’t know where the money went and the community is stuck in place for 40 years. The houses in the village are trash, no man should be living in them.”

The straw that broke the camel’s back was her husband’s desire to marry a second woman. “He brought home a young woman, 27 years old, I was already 41. She moved in to live with us and it wasn’t good. I couldn’t accept it. They allowed me to divorce him after a long period of time. Today in the community they see me as an instigator. They speak bad about me. In spite of this a lot of women come to me to consult and talk, there is so much suffering.”

What’s your dream?

“To leave Dimona. To start from scratch somewhere else and get help.”

Behind Closed Doors

Four months before Kevin (Afran) Penix entered the police station in Dimona, he knew well that from here there is no turning back. Penix, age 24, sat in front of the investigator, took a deep breath and began to describe in great detail how a relative regularly raped him when he was an 11-year-old boy. He handed the investigator a CD with recorded conversations he and his relative made prior to filing the complaint. “What exactly attracted you to an 11 year old boy?” He asked for explanations. He remembered each and every moment: The nights in which he was taken out of bed, the little TV in which the pornographic films were played, the warm evenings when he was taken by his relative to his work place, in the industrial area, just so they could, in front of the yellow desert, be alone in the back seat.

At the end of the investigation the relative was arrested. Dimona police passed all the evidence to the attorney’s office and recommended to press charges. (Attorney’s office: we are deep in the investigation). Penix knows that by turning to the police he opened a Pandora’s box and broke the code of silence around a difficult issue in the Hebrew community, men and children behind closed doors. “Many see me today as a traitor,” he says. “We were taught to never ask whites for help.”

Penix turned to the state with the encouragement of the principal of Beit Sefer Achvah (Brotherhood School) of the community, Mimi Azriel, a 44-year-old Israeli woman who was appointed to the role two years ago and requested to leave this summer. A number of weeks before, Azriel started her own investigation. In light of the fragments of information and the strange behavior of students, a worry arose in her that something was wrong. In the severe report which she submitted in the spring to the supervisor of the Ministry of Education, Mimi Gilotz, and to the supervisor of the welfare office, Azriel wrote that she suspected that some of her students had been subjected to emotional neglect and physical and sexual violence. She created educational-explanatory activities regarding the issue and made a list of parents and children who might testify. Together, Penix and Azriel led the community to its first curtain lifting ever.

Penix’s apartment in central Tel Aviv is spacious and furnished with black leather couches. He has already lived in the city for three years and earns a living by working in a frozen yogurt shop. A whole world separates him from the Village of Peace. He exchanged the colorful cotton outfits with a fashionable Tel Aviv look, the crowded cabinets with a computer and a plasma TV. He can’t bring himself to return to the village, where his mother and the members of his family live, and today he is no longer sure if this is even possible.

Like many children in the community he lived for long periods of time with relatives. His father was deported from Israel during his childhood, and his mother raised him and his sister while still working in Tel Aviv. During long months she would return home only on weekends. He and his sister slept at the house of relatives with nine children of their own. “When I think about what I went through there I don’t believe that I’m here today, functioning, relatively sane. I was an 11-year-old boy and I remember everything.”

During the early years of your childhood you probably remember the village for the better, no?

“For me, the village was a fun place to live in. We were there with a lot of other children. During summertime, my relative used to darken the house and let all the children watch Disney movies on TV. On hot days he would take us to the playground and spray us with water from a hose. For me it was the most wonderful thing there. But then began also the nightmare of my life.”

Small touches. And so it began. “One of the things I remember most is that I was against the refrigerator in the kitchen and he came next to me and touched my butt. I did not know if it was deliberate. In retrospect, I know that he checked to see what my reaction would be. There were days when all the children were out with their mother in the morning, and I stayed at home. In those days he started to come to me while I was in bed and touch me. I died with fear. I didn’t know what to do. A lot of times I would also doubt that what happened maybe didn’t happen. My brain didn’t comprehend. When he started to touch my genitals, I didn’t know what to do. To tell his wife? I didn’t know.

“Six children were sleeping in the room,” he continues, agitated. “I slept close to the door, he would pull me by the ankle and take me out of the room. In his room there was a red television that as long as I live I will never forget. He had pornographic movies (lit. blue movies) there and made me watch them. At the age of 11 I was exposed to every kind of movie. I was sure that this was part of our life, that I was not the only one who saw this. The frequency was once or twice a week when his wife worked outside the home and stayed overnight in Be’er Sheva. Many times after he fell asleep I would turn off the television and leave to return to my bed. I knew he wouldn’t wake me again because he already got what he wanted. In my room I would cry. I didn’t know who to turn to.”

Why didn’t you share what happened with your mother?

“I didn’t tell because I didn’t want to hurt her, because I didn’t know if she would believe me. He would also hit his children in a terrible way. He used to bang the kids’ heads on the wall or closet. For me it was a sign that I should be quiet.”

When they started to go outside of the house it was already hard for him to stand the pain and humiliation. “What broke me was what happened next to the factories. The community has factories in the industrial area and every member must do the night shift in turns. He would take me with him to his shifts, would say that he needs company. I remember I was getting out barefoot, without sandals, and we would go and he would rape me there. When he started to rape me, I started to destroy myself. At school I became closed off and lonely. I was a child quiet. I was afraid.”

The nightmare ended when he was about 13 and his mother returned to Dimona and transferred to live outside the village, in an apartment. He carried his secret with him with difficulty. “For years I exploded inside. In the army I completely lost my mind. I was recruited to combat engineering, but I was in turmoil inside. I did stupid things. I couldn’t hold on. I got to the situation where I started to smoke drugs and because of that I went to jail for four months. The drugs were the only thing that calmed me. All of a sudden I stopped caring and everything was good. I’m clean today. I only smoke cigarettes. During that period, I knew in my heart that something was causing me to act the way I acted, that something was wrong.”

During his military service, he decided to talk to those close to him and open the matter. “I wanted to finally get it off my chest. I arrived in Dimona one Friday. All of his children were at home. I looked at him. He asked: ‘What’s up? How are you doing?’ And a look passed between us that said it all. My look said, You know damn well why I came here. He asked me to go to his sister’s house and bring him brewer’s yeast for cooking. I went and didn’t go back.”

Years have passed. He was discharged from the army and began to build his life in Tel Aviv without sharing the secret with a living soul. Six months ago, when he and his girlfriend watched the police series “CSI” on television, he revealed it to her. “It was an episode about a young woman who killed an entire family and they didn’t catch her. My girlfriend said: ‘You know, she will kill another family and they won’t catch her.’ I had had a few bottles of beer and suddenly I said to her: ‘I have a secret about someone else that they didn’t catch. Then I told her: ‘A relative raped me.’ Suddenly, after many years, I realized that people can’t just do whatever they want. Suddenly I realized that I needed to catch them.”

That same evening, he decided to call his mother and tell her. “I called and told her, and she said: ‘I thought you called because you knew about your female relative.’ In the same conversation she told me that another relative revealed to her recently that she was subjected to sexual abuse by another man in the community. This turned into a heavier evening than I thought.” The relative, a member of the community, is not ready to reveal herself. Penix made up his mind to break the code of silence. Before he approached the police he called his relative and conducted a number of loaded conversations in which he demanded explanations. When the investigators heard the recorded conversations, they understood that the case in their opinion was closed.

Looking for Answers

The Hebrew community, commonly known as Ha’Kushim Ha’Ivrim, today number approximately 2,000 people of whom 1,300 live in the Village of Peace. The community was founded in Chicago in the 1960s by the bus driver (wrong!) Ben Carter who claimed to experience a vision and in which he heard the angel Gabriel say that African-Americans are descendants of one of the ten Lost Tribes. Carter changed his name to Ben Ammi Ben Israel and gathered up a group of believers. During the second half of the 60s the group immigrated to Liberia in Africa, where for three years they prepared themselves as a group to make aliyah to Israel. In ’69 they began to immigrate to Israel on the basis of temporary visas. Despite the fact that during those years the Chief Rabbi ruled that they are not Jews and are not entitled to citizenship, the devout members of the group continued to arrive and settle in Dimona. In ’90 they reached an agreement with the government to receive tourist visas with work permits, and in 2003 they received permanent residency status that afforded them rights just like every Israeli, except for a passport and the right to elect and to be elected to the Knesset. By virtue of their status, they are not required to join the army, but many children choose to do so when they reach the age of 18. [Note: This is false. As permanent residents, the youth are, in fact, required to enlist in the IDF. More information here.] The community, which favors strict veganism, also believes as previously mentioned in polygamy.

During the first decades of building their settlement in Dimona (in a place that was an absorption center) the Village of Peace was the center of the pilgrimage. In articles that were published, everyone was impressed with the cleanliness and vegetation and with the small houses that were renovated. After many years, when all attempts to find an alternative space for a community settlement failed, the village remains surprisingly clean but has become very crowded. The houses are small, close together, buildings patched together from plaster walls that are covered in black material, filled with children’s voices and the smell of cooking. To a large extent the families consist of a man, two or three women, and dozens of children still crowded together in two small rooms. Even most of the families that spent the last decade in nearby housing projects are not spared the overcrowding and are forced to share the apartments with other families with multiple children.

Carter, age 70, married to four women and father to 16 children (wrong!), is considered in the community the superior authority whom everyone follows. Beneath him in the hierarchy operate 11 “nesikeem” (princes) who serve as spiritual and social advisors, together with nine “sarim” (ministers) who are responsible on the administrative side. The “cohanim” (priests) are in charge of religious matters and serve like rabbis, and at the bottom of the system are the “aturim” (crowned brothers) and “aturot” (crowned sisters), whose duty is to oversee the community members who will carry out designated tasks and meetings. All petition Carter on what to do by passing a request in a letter to his ministers, unless we’re talking about the singer Whitney Houston, who was a guest of the community during her visit to Israel six years ago.

When Penix decided to blow up the story, he and his mother, Rakiyah, turned to the community leaders and demanded their intervention in the matter. In a small village it’s difficult to keep a secret and the rumor about the boy who wants to turn to the police began to agitate the spirits. Then Rakiyah found herself between a rock and a hard place [lit. between the hammer and the anvil] – on the one hand she encouraged her son in his facing the police, on the other hand she positioned herself against the angry community. “These days are very hard for me,” she says, in fluent Hebrew. “A relative of mine told me about a man, a friend of the family, who touched her. She was young and didn’t tell. I spoke with three of our leaders and they said that they are dealing with the situation. In the meantime, they didn’t do anything. The man who attacked my son, they issued him a letter with a message that it is forbidden for him to enter the community. A kind of excommunication. This punishment did not satisfy me.”

Penix’s story had another effect: it spurred additional victims to talk. One of them is “A,” a 40-year-old man, married with children, who claims that relatives of Penix also sexually abused him when he was 11 years old. “I was 12 years old when I told about what happened to people in the community,” he tells in a choked voice. “I didn’t understand what they said then. It didn’t sit well with me. When I grew up, in my 20s, I realized that I need help, I need to understand myself and to move on with my life and I went to psychological treatment. I went to America, where I visited with a psychologist and it helped me a lot because today I can be relaxed with myself.”

Do you meet the person you claim attacked you?

“I don’t see him every day, he lives outside the village. But I stand up straight. I even went to him when I was older and spoke with him. I lived in anger for many years and I realized that anger would kill me. This anger didn’t help me, so I expelled it from myself. Today, I’m calm, and that’s the most important thing. He’s not important to me, he will die his death. I know he has already suffered and his life is not a life. I realized that I didn’t need to do anything, God will do it.”

When you told people in the community about what happened, what did they do?

“I don’t know. They did something. There are several questions that I still wonder about today.”

Why didn’t you go to the police?

“What’s important to me is that today I’m in a better place.”

Penix is more blunt in his attitude toward the leaders of the community: “Before I went to the cops, I went to several important people in the community and told them what I was going to do. They told me to be quiet. I petitioned the leader [i.e. Ben Ammi] in a letter. One of the princes returned to me, I told him I understand that I’m not the only one who was attacked. ‘You’ve known this for a long time,’ I told him. He told me that it should remain in the community, that nothing should get out. This is what bothers me the most. Because in retrospect it became clear to me that many people knew and kept quiet.”

Major Question Marks

Beit Sefer Achvah (Brotherhood School), located adjacent to the village, across the road on Yigal Alon Street, operated for most of its history as a “recognized but not official” institution of the Ministry of Education and is managed by the Hebrew community. Today 450 students from first grade to twelfth grade study at the school, and about a quarter of the teaching staff are members of the community. Three years ago it was finally declared an official school of the Ministry of Education, to be financed by it and it was forced to adopt the official curriculum. Two years ago, with the changes, the school appointed a new director, Azriel, who became the key character in revealing the dark side of the community.

In the same report that Azriel passed on to the Ministry of Education and the county welfare secretary in Be’er Sehva, Mariam Ben Atar, in the spring, Azriel said that she was exposed to testimony from students and mothers from which she can suspect of physical and emotional neglect and physical violence and even complaints about the sexual abuse of children. During the past few days, the number of complaints rose because the girls in fifth grade and their mothers were complaining that the boys in the fifth grade were sexually harassing them. Due to these complaints and other pieces of evidence that raise crucial question marks about sexual behavior around the children, it was immediately decided to a host a discussion in the fifth grade to float the issue. Later on Azriel added that parents that came to talk to her after that discussion with the children told her that they themselves went through sexual abuse and they are afraid that their children are the second generation to the horror. In one of these cases Azriel reported on a grandmother who told her that her daughter went through sexual abuse and today she’s afraid that her granddaughter is also a victim.

Furthermore Azriel reported on harsh physical violence against students by adults in the community: “According to the laws of the community, a child who wanders around outside after 7 without his parents’ permission is taken by “security” to the shelter facing the house of the leader [i.e. Ben Ammi] where they beat him and leave him in the basement until morning… If it is reported that a child committed a breach of discipline in the classroom, it is reported to the security people and they take the children to one of the shelters and punish them.”

All the people interviewed for this article confirmed the existence of the shelter and of the violent punishments that were issued in it. “One time, as a boy,” Penix recalled, “I insulted a girl next to the aquarium in class. I told her that her mother is similar to one of the fish. I was told on to one of the members of the community, I was taken down to the shelter with the entire class and each child received an order to hit me with a stick on my butt. It was customary to hit there with sticks and rubber hoses.”

Azriel, who received her MA in Educational Administration and has 16 years of teaching experience, arrived at Beit Sefer Achvah knowing she would face a special challenge. During the first year she studied the customs of the community and the unfamiliar world she walked into. The teachers at the school, the Ministry of Education says, had difficulty understanding why children come to school without a 10 o’clock snack and wait eagerly until lunch is served at the dining hall at the center of the village. This did not contribute to quietness at the school. “If a child would come to the school with something to eat,” a source at the Ministry of Education said, “he had to eat the food in the corner, surreptitiously, otherwise children would attack him, hit him and grab the food from him.” Azriel called together the leaders of the community and requested that they be sure to send their children with a proper breakfast.

With time the principal and staff noticed unusual behaviors of many students. “We started to notice that children were falling asleep during lessons, at 10 in the morning,” says a source at the school. “When we ask a child why he is not sleeping well at night, and he says he’s scared and he wets the bed at night, you understand that the child has real concrete anxieties.” A warning light began to flash in the current school year, when during one of the recesses teachers heard the students playing “Catch Benny Sela.” In an inquiry made with female students it turned out that “the game was to catch a girl, to grab her and to do inappropriate things to her.”

A school counselor and Azriel immediately called all the students from the year where it was customary to play the game and they explained that there are clear boundaries about what you can and cannot do and you cannot touch another kid’s body without permission. Azriel emphasized that her door is open to anyone who would like to talk. “We floated the issue,” says a source in the school. “We were talking about sexual harassment, about insult. What the children brought up unfortunately was personal experiences. It was clear to us that part of these children did experience injury. One of the reasons for that is that children in the community live without an organized family structure. They call all of their father’s wives “mom,” when practically their biological mother is something away in the U.S. and not even present. The emotional neglect is harsh. There is no one to rely on, no one to protect them.”

On that day students came to the principal’s office and opened their heart. The next day one of the mothers also came. Within a few days mothers and grandmothers began to stream into Azriel’s office and told her that they themselves have been subjected to sexual assault. “Parents came who said that they endured similar things and they never complained,” says a source at the Ministry of Education. “Grandmothers came and told that it also happened to their children. They explained that if they would complain the entire family would be ostracized from the community. Today they want to stop it. This is something that they never dared to say.”

Four of Her Daughters

The reverberations of the past school year, like Penix’s complaints to the police, continue to arouse great interest in the Village of Peace. Edo Mankita, director of welfare services in Dimona, tells that in recent months more and more applications have been recorded from the middle generation of the community. “In recent months, community members began to tell and report on cases of violence and sexual injury, especially things that occurred in the past,” he says. “I’m talking about a community that refused to share their actions with us, a community that for 30 years was very closed.” When residents were given permanent residency status and the youth began to join the army, he explains, the integration and openness of the community to Israeli society began. “What happened at school this year represents a catalyst for every sociological process that began in 2004. The young suddenly need to share what is happening to them.”

The awakening occurred not only among the young but also among the women. More and more women in the community are fed up with their treatment and dare to leave their husbands and try to live outside the village. “Today we see women who take the children and leave the community,” tells Mankita, “women without a profession, without an education, without a support network. And here very serious problems are created.”

Like Ziporah Ben Israel “A,” 45 years old, is also considered unwanted by the leaders of the community. Recently, after a life-long struggle with her children, she hopes she will receive the long-awaited divorce. “Although I live in a projects apartment of two rooms I can’t be happier,” she says. “Peace has returned to my life. My kids and I returned to live in peace with each other.” A year ago she discovered to her horror that four of her daughters claimed to have been sexually assaulted.

I meet “A” at a coffee shop at the entrance to the city. “A” like Ziporah, asked not to return to her husband after he married again to a younger woman. “His wife is older than my eldest son by 2 or 3 years,” she says. Life in the community was never easy for her. “The minute I got pregnant I didn’t stop. Every year I got pregnant. I have 11 children. My eldest son is 23 and my youngest is 9. My daily routine was to raise the kids.” Soon the family fell into hunger and poverty but the big crisis started as she says only when her husband wanted to take a second wife. “Ben Ammi gave an order to get my husband out of the house and separate us. For two years I wasn’t allowed to talk to him, to contact him, and he wasn’t allowed to enter the house. Every time I needed money or food there was no answer.”

How did you survive?

“I practically grew my own food in the house garden. After that the leaders’ representatives came and told me that I’m using too much water. I was living for two years without a water heater or a washing machine, while I kept asking the leaders of the community for money to live. Do you know how many times I walked around from house to house in the community and I just asked for food for the children?”

After two years she was asked by the leaders of the community to return to her husband who in the meantime already married a second wife that gave him children. “A” refused. “Because I was stubborn and I refused to accept him with a second wife, the heads of the community punished me. I was considered educated. I was a teacher and an alternative doctor in the community. My job was taken away from me. For the community I was a bad example. The aturot in the community came over, tried to convince me to have him back. They told me otherwise I’ll die, that I am the devil.”

The most painful issue was how her children were treated. Adults in the community used to beat them badly. “In the last years I’m not living in the community but my children go to the school where it’s not allowed to beat children but behind the principal’s back they used to take my children into the village and punish them there. In one of the cases a man form the community hit my boy with a rubber hose. I took the kid to the police. The police asked me to bring witnesses. In another case a child of mine did not come back home and I was looking for him all day long. At 8pm he came back. What happened was they took him to the village and made him stand in the corner in one of the houses without food or drink. I couldn’t bear it.”

Due to everything that happened she wrote in May a harsh letter of complaint to the Ministry of Education in Be’er Sheva: “The teacher, who is responsible for the discipline in the community, kicks out students without informing the principal and lets them be punished by the community…there were situations in which students complained that they were being touched in intimate places, that they were being punished and beaten in the community…if they were complaining then they would excommunicate them, for example not allowing them to participate in community activities…I feel that this story is being covered up because no one wants to mess with the community…you must open an investigation.” Because of sending this letter, she was called into a meeting when she was told that the principal is taking care of the matter.

This year, she says, four of her daughters told her that they went through sexual assault. “I was always very close to the children, because of everything we went through the children were seeking my love and they were open with me and talked. One girl started telling and then I started talking to all of my children about it and so her sisters told me also. It happened to one of them in a relative’s house when she was 11. She said that she woke up in the middle of the night and someone was hovering over her and touching her. A man from the family tried to have sex with her and she ran out of the room. When she went to tell she was told: “there’s nothing you can do because it’s your word against his.” She was told that it’s her fault because her clothes were too tight. My youngest daughter remembers how another relative used to touch her with his genitals. Another girl said that one of the men in the community called her to his house, put her in his bed while taking her clothes off. She told me that she felt uncomfortable, got up and ran away. She said that he wasn’t trying to do anything with force and he let her leave.”

Did you file a complaint with the police?

“No, I was in the middle of my divorce custody battle and I was afraid that it would hurt them. Now I have established a new home for the kids. We’re living in a two bedroom apartment but we’re feeling good. We have a lot of peace and quiet and no one’s hurting them. I swore that no one would touch them ever again. I’m struggling to get them out of school next year and it’s not simple. I don’t want them to go there anymore because of the community’s involvement in the school. I personally deal with major guilt.”

Hell in Heaven

Ziporah Baht Israel says that she would like to write a book about the life of the community. She wants to call it “Hell in Heaven.” “There’s something confusing in the community’s life,” she says. “People are happy, there are always gatherings, making music, everybody’s together and it’s like heaven. But then you come back home and there isn’t even water to take a shower. It’s like hell in heaven. And people are blind, they don’t see the difficulty. People from all over the world are interested in our community. A lot of people are coming to visit and see, journalists too. Ben Ammi decides who they’ll talk to and what they’ll see, and everything comes out so well. The women look young, the children look beautiful, and the people are nice. No one sees the truth and the suffering.”

On Monday the atmosphere in the village was high. In the main courtyard a group of men were building a festive gazebo, preparing for the community’s Unity Day. In the dining room nearby women were placing homemade vegan dishes and talking to each other cheerfully. The next day in a festive ceremony in the Ministry of Interior in Be’er Sheva, two women from the village received blue IDs and became Israeli citizens for the first time in the history of the community.

In a tour given to me by Avraham Ben Israel and Yafah Baht Gavriel, spokespeople for the village, very impressive and generous people, I could immediately see the extraordinary organization in the streets but also improvised houses made out of a plaster wall or two. Ben Israel says that the density is the Achille’s heal of the village and they’ve wanted to move to a different place for years. “There are families here with over 20 children,” he says. After that he presented his mother’s house to me. “I have three mothers. We grew up with a lot of kids together,” he says proudly.

A guest for a moment would find it hard to see beyond the utopia. The doors of the houses are open, the people are greeting each other warmly, the young children are bowing if they see an old person. One of the houses is now a gym. Another house is the “House of Life,” where the women of the village give birth. In the center of the village there is a bakery that specializes in whole wheat organic bread and there is also a small sewing products store and on the way down a modest grocery and a dance hall.

At the end of the tour Adiv Ben Yehuda, the vice principal of the school empowered by the community and the one that connects between the community and the Ministry of Education, joined them at the offices of the village. The three spokespeople were amazed to hear the specific testimonies in this article. They vehemently denied the harsh accusations about sexual injuries that sometimes cross generations as it was written in the Ministry of Education’s report. “This is the first time we are hearing about this story,” says Ben Israel. “There are no sexual assaults and we do not hit children. If we would have known about this Ministry of Education’s report, we wouldn’t have waited, we would have gone to the police ourselves.” Ben Yehuda: “Our community is based on high moral values. We do not allow such behavior.”

In the case of Afran Penix it was claimed that the community knew and preferred to keep quiet.

Ben Avraham: “He knew about it for years, so did his mother and they never spoke up. The police arrested the man and they found him innocent.”

It’s not true, the police recommended to press charges against him.

“The community cooperated with the police. Today we know who is in the community. Every parent is aware of that person and knows that he has problems.”

It was claimed that people were afraid of excommunication and that’s why things were dealt with inside the community for years.

Ben Israel: “Here in the community no one is afraid of such things. A child who was sexually injured and won’t complain? First of all, we deal with that in the community and we take it to police. Justice here is done.”

There is a recurring complaint, from several sources, that the men of the community used to punish children in the village severely, sometimes using physical strength and sending them to the shelter.

Ben Yehuda: “In the last 20 years, there is no such thing in the community. People do not hit children. During the 70s and 80s there were complaints and talk like this from people who left the community and wanted to hurt it. I guess this time it also comes from people who left and want to hurt us.”

Are children in the community being punished?

Ben Yehuda: “No. When we got the school they explained to us that beating is not legal by the Ministry of Education. I don’t remember any situation when a teacher hit a student. There are cases in which students fight with each other but that’s something else.”

Ben Israel agrees that life in the village is not always simple. “I understand that a child can come to school hungry, there is no situation in which an entire family sits together around a table for a proper meal. In the mornings we get up and we stand in line to go to the bathroom. There are children who pee in their pants. There are difficult problems of density. Sometimes a child cannot finish his breakfast because a lot of children are waiting in line and the school bell rings, but there is no starvation.” He brings up the devotion to veganism and clarifies that “people must prepare food all day long, it’s all natural and fresh. It’s not like buying in the supermarket, that’s why sometimes you have to wait.” Ben Yehuda: “Because our children are vegan, what they eat is not enough to keep them going all day long so there are a few individuals who are hungry by 12. In the Ministry of Education they thought that hunger was what was keeping children from concentrating in class. It’s not like that.”

All three of them emphasize that in the last couple of years the village is not as polygamous as it used to be. “In the last couple of years men married one woman because of the law of the land,” says Ben Yehudah. Marriage in the community is conducted in a traditional way by the cohanim of the village, and are not recognized by the State of Israel. In the Ministry of Interior the women are listed as single or single mothers. “In the Ministry of Interior they know that we are married,” says Ben Gavriel (Baht Gavriel), “but it’s not listed. The couples are known in public and the children are listed under the two partners.” It’s worth mentioning that polygamy in Israel is a criminal felony. “If someone broke the law, the police have to investigate,” says legal consultant Moshe Negbi. “It’s not about pressing charges. By the way, the one who marries men to another woman is breaking the law.” Answering the question if there were ever any criminal proceedings on this matter, the spokesman of the Negev police Tamir Aftabi says that “the State of Israel does not recognize these marriages and that’s why we cannot say that they broke the law. Nowhere are they listed as being married to more than one woman.”

About the economical perspective Ben Avraham says that life in the village runs like an urban kibbutz. People of the community make a living from a natural food factory that they own and many of them are musicians and English teachers. Every member of the community has to donate up to 15% of their income to the community. From the central pot the salaries are being paid to the workers in the community, for example the women who work in the dining hall serving lunch to the children and the youth guides in the village.

It was claimed that it was customary to take the children’s stipend (from the parents).

Ben Yehuda: “All the children’s issues are taken care of on a community level. For example, parents shouldn’t be paying tuition, so the children’s stipend, or other money, goes to the community and that helps to pay for tuition, for the dining hall, to pay electricity.”

Whoever has financial difficulties gets support, says Ben Israel. “Whoever doesn’t have money files a request to a committee to receive money. As a member of a community you have to follow the rules. When you have some, you’re supposed to give and when you don’t have we’ll help you. A lot of the problems are that people who have money don’t want to give it but when they’re in trouble they ask and want the support of the community.”

***

In response to the things that are being exposed in this article it was told from the welfare office: “After Ha’aretz turned to us, the report (of principal Azriel) was brought to the attention of the office management. The CEO of the office assembled a team that is investigating what is done inside the Hebrew community in Dimona, including a request to offer an intervention plan if necessary, all of this in cooperation with the Dimona welfare department and the Ministry of Education. In addition the office will examine the performance of the Dimona welfare department and the professional bodies of the welfare office and the Ministry of Education. It must be clear that the relationships between the Hebrew community and social services is delicate, sensitive, and complex because this community was known for years as a closed community that was not transparent and made it difficult to enter the community.” On Tuesday the spokesman of the Negev district police called the paper and said that a complaint had been filed with the Dimona police station by the secretary of the southern district of the welfare department alleging that sexual felonies are being conducted between minors and adults among the Hebrew community.

Originally published in Hebrew here.

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row el_id=”letter”][vc_column][vc_separator][vc_column_text]Letter to the Editor

Over the past two years I’ve been conducting research sponsored by Harvard University on the Hebrew community in Dimona. As part of my research, I lived in the “Village of Peace” in Dimona for over a year, and I’m currently writing a book on the community that will be published soon. In light of my deep familiarity with the community, I was disappointed to read the article “The Terrible Secrets of the Hebrew Community in Dimona” (Musaf Haaretz, 31.7), about the ethical and social problems in the community. It was written in a provocative tone and distorts a complicated situation involving a decent group of people.

In addition, it’s important to point out several errors in the article. First, Ben Ammi Ben Israel, formerly known as Ben Carter, was not a bus driver as noted in the article. He worked at a foundry. It’s possible that the author confused him with Nasik Gavriel Ha’Gadol, who was a bus driver in Chicago. Second, Ben Ammi has 23 children and not 16 as written. He told me this himself in an interview. Third, the author wrote that the two women who received Israeli citizenship in July were the first people from the community to receive citizenship. However, community member Elyahkeem Ben Yehuda received citizenship back in February of this year.

I feel that the article as published amplifies stereotypes and misconceptions. With respect to the Hebrew community, I certainly understand how difficult it can be to receive truthful answers to questions, since many community members are afraid of speaking with journalists. It’s important for me to clarify that I believe some of the facts in the article are true. However, I hope that in the future the subject of the Hebrew community will be handled with greater sensitivity and attention to detail.

Andrew Esensten
San Francisco, CA, USA

Originally published in Hebrew here on September 11, 2009.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]