Rabbi Lipszyc's Story of the week 64.
The 1960’s were the time of the rise of the “Hippie” generation. That was a time when many youth rebelled and rejected conventional and familial values. While the leaders from all spectrums of Judaism threw their hands up in despair, The Rebbe lauded the youth’s rejection of their parents’ complacence in accepting a lack in spiritual interest. The Rebbe encouraged the shluchim to take advantage of the generation’s search for meaning in life and offer them the experience of a lifestyle of Torah and mitzvos. Thus, began what became known as the Baal Teshuvah Movement with a bang and zest. However, Satan wasn’t yet ready to concede failure, so in the 1970’s a new problem with the youth arose. The proliferation of cults, false gods and so-called religions that relied heavily on mind control. Youths searching for spiritual highs flocked to these cults en masse. Unfortunately, many Jewish teenagers were caught up in this wave.
One day, while I was living in Michigan, I received a call from a distraught couple who urgently wanted to meet with me. When we met, this middle-aged couple explained their problem. They said they were 4thgeneration reform Jews and they had three children, two sons and one daughter. Three years earlier, the younger son, a teenager, ran away from home and joined a cult called “Children of God.” Although all the cults were bad news, some were outright dangerous. Of all the dangerous ones, this was one of the most dangerous ones. They would teach that parents were messengers of the devil and therefore it is a good deed to steal their money, and if their parents would try to stop them it is even proper to kill them. Also, the longer one is involved in a cult, the more difficult it is to successfully deprogram that person When one is three years in a cult, most professional psychologists felt, it was a lost cause to try to get them out.
At that time there was one interesting fellow named Ted Patrick who was very involved in trying to get kids out of cults. The history of his involvement was quite interesting. He had quite an impressive government job, in California, on a federal level, a job as the Special Assistant for Community Affairs, under then governor Ronald Reagan. His son got caught up in a cult so he tried investigating it from an inside view and found himself getting caught up in it. He pulled himself out and realized the danger of these mind controlling cults posing under the rights of freedom of religion. He took his findings to different governmental agencies only to be rebuffed. Everyone was afraid to start up with “religion.” At that point he quit his comfortable government job, got a number of other concerned parents together and created a group called deprogrammers. At the behest of distraught parents, they would “kidnap” these kids from the cults, off the street or whatever, and take them to distant unknown places where they would spend weeks and sometimes months deprogramming them. Most of that time these kids were held against their wishes, but were closely watched and locked up without any means of escape. This became a very controversial issue and Patrick was arrested and imprisoned for this. It didn’t faze him, and he continued doing it. Many questioned his methods, and he was accused of actually using physical abuse on his captives, but that was never actually proven. He was considered successful in deprogramming many kids and eventually earned the designation as “the father of deprogramming.”
I was told all about this by the distraught father who came to see me about his son being caught up in the COG cult. He had done his own investigation to see what he could do to get his son out. Although, Ted Patrick would charge the parents for the costs, which were quite high, given the preparations, actual kidnapping, rent of places to keep the cult member, 24/7 round the clock guarding etc., the concerned father assured me that money was not the issue since he was quite well off. He just was uncomfortable with the controversial reports surrounding Ted Patrick and the accusations of physical abuse. A friend recommended he try Chabad, and that’s how he got to me. He told me that this particular cult was very wary of losing their recruits, and wouldn’t allow them to go home to visit their families until they were certain that they were beyond being deprogrammed. Being that his son, had been with them for more than three years, the heads of the COG were pretty confident they could trust Alan to go home, and successfully recruit his siblings and perhaps even his parents. Even if not, perhaps to get funding from his wealthy parents. In either event, they were pretty sure that he wasn’t at risk of losing faith in their beliefs and cause. His parents explained that he was coming home for a four-day weekend and asked if I could help get him out of this cult. I agreed to try to speak with him, but that I would need help from Heaven to succeed. I also explained that in order to evoke Heavenly intervention I would like him to put on tefillin with me right then and there, and that his wife should agree to light Shabbos candles and say a prayer for her son while doing so. From the look on their faces at my suggestion, I saw them wondering if they were just exchanging one “cult” for another. The truth was that I had never before met a 4th generation reform Jew. All too often, by the 4th generation they were either already not Jewish at all, due to intermarriage and assimilation, or they had already found their way back to tradition. Here was an actual 4th generation reform Jew, who had no connection, not even a clue about Jewish practices, and yet still considered himself as Jewish!? I have to say that until today I don’t think I have met another such case. In any case, he did put on tefillin with me, (for the first time in his life,) and his wife agreed to light Shabbos candles. When his son came home the next day, the parents got him to agree to come and meet with me. Of course, I asked him to put on tefillin, which he refused. He spoke to me about how the leader of his cult, himself a “Jew,” was a reincarnation of J.C., a “Jew” as well. I finally convinced him that since J.C. himself put on tefillin, it certainly couldn’t be wrong for him to put on tefillin. So, he did. Afterwards, he seemed uncomfortable, and said he had to leave. I asked if he would agree to meet me later in the evening, and he agreed to do so at his parents’ home. Although I was uncomfortable to meet and speak with him under the watchful eyes of his parents and siblings, there really was no other way. I asked if he would mind if I brought along a colleague of mine (Rabbi Itche Meir Kagan a”h) to which he surprisingly agreed. I was hoping that in the event that our conversation became a bit heated, Itche Meir would be able to find a way to divert the family so that I could continue in a more aggressive manner. Without a doubt, he was quite confident that he could even handle two rabbis. Well, we went to the house that evening, and Rabbi Kagan and I brought some vodka and farbeissen tofarbreng. Sure enough, as I had suspected, his father, mother and siblings stood off to the side, but were clearly observing what we were doing. Rabbi Kagan was just as obviously, very uncomfortable with the set-up, but I whispered for him to ignore them and we should do what we came there to do. Rabbi Kagan agreed to go along, provided I take charge and set the tone. I opened the bottle of vodka and took out three plastic shot glasses and poured each of us a shot. Alan immediately declined his, saying that he didn’t believe in drinking alcohol. I explained that chassidim also didn’t believe in just drinking alcohol. However, this is a farbrengen, not a drinking party and even teetotalers understand that sometimes alcohol has to be used to sterilize and sensitize a person. I then went on to explain that between the three of us (Alan, Rabbi Kagan and I) either we want to help him see the truth or he wants to get us to “see the light,” and a farbrengen is the best way to open all of us to the truth. I further explained the purpose of alcohol and singingnigunim help to set the tone for serious discussion. He finally agreed, and we said l’chaim and each drank four shots. Rabbi Kagan and I then started singing the Alter Rebbe’s niggun of arba bavos. At first, he sat very stiffly and then he closed his eyes, tried covering his ears, and started to chant. I knew we were beginning to have the desired effect. So I began to speak earnestly with him. How as Jews, we have a direct connection with G-d. He was trying to counter that his cult leader was a reincarnation of J.C. To which I replied that perhaps that could be true, but J.C. himself was a renegade Jew, definitely not one that any Jew should be emulating. This totally threw him off, since he never heard anyone speak negatively of J.C. before. Alan became very agitated and jumped up and started to run for the door. I gently grabbed his arm, to try and detain him, but he aggressively pulled himself away and ran out. This is where, we knew that the family being present was detrimental, because it stopped us from also acting more aggressively in keeping him there. We all ran outside, but he was gone. The next morning, his father angrily called me and told me that I totally made a mess of it, because Alan decided to cut his stay short and ran back to the cult. I was saddened, but there was nothing more I could do about it.
About a half a year later, Alan’s father called and asked to meet with me. I agreed. When we met, to my complete surprise, he asked me how much would it cost for me to designate my full time to helping Jewish kids get out of cults, and that he was willing to sponsor the whole cost. He apologized for what he said in his last telephone call to me and said that he realized that his family being there probably prevented us from more forcibly keeping Alan from running away. He then filled me in on what happened with Alan.
Being disappointed in my failure to help his son out of the cult, he turned to Ted Patrick. He paid the costs that Ted Patrick and his team should immediately go into action, planning and kidnapping Alan, whisking him away to an undisclosed place, and there to deprogram him. It took a while, before they could actually kidnap him, because the leadership in the cult saw that Alan had been quite shaken up by his experience, and they weren’t sure of how strong his belief was at the moment. They also suspected that the family would perhaps next try kidnapping, so for these two reasons, they kept Alan under 24/7 surveillance. It wasn’t until a few months later that the cult finally let down their guard and Patrick’s team was able to go into action. Since Alan had been steeped in this cult for well over three years, the team was quite surprised that it only took them about 4 weeks to actually deprogram him. Seeing that Alan’s father was very happy at their results, and knowing that he was quite wealthy, Mr. Patrick asked him to help sponsor their program with a $100,000 donation. Alan’s father promised to give it serious thought. While he was discussing it with his family, most of whom seemed to be agreeable, it was Alan himself who questioned it. Alan said, “why would you want to support Patrick’s program, which took four weeks to get me out of it, when the rabbi’s method had me practically out of it in 15 minutes. If he would have held me back from running, in 5 more minutes, I would have been totally deprogrammed. If you want to support a deprogramming project, get that rabbi involved.” Alan’s father told me that he got Patrick’s permission for me to spend from one Monday to Thursday to observe their rehab place with its methods, but they wouldn’t agree to have me sit in on the deprogramming itself, (which quite frankly I was happy about.) I did go, but was not at all impressed for a few reasons: 1. When I first came, the fellow assigned to me, made it very clear that I was not to speak with any of the teenagers undergoing rehab about any form of religion. Although they themselves were Christians, they felt that at this point any religion would be detrimental; 2. I myself was not allowed to practice any religious activity in public, not even to make blessings on food. I had to daven and eat in my bedroom; 3. I was getting very strong vibes, that I wasn’t wanted there, and they felt “forced” into allowing me to be there by Alan’s father’s money. After the trip, Alan’s father asked me what I thought of the program, he also asked if I thought they perhaps also used abusive methods. I answered, regarding the question of abusiveness, that although I wasn’t privy to what goes on in the actual deprogramming, in the rehab center I didn’t see any signs of abuse. But as far as the program itself, after speaking with some of the ex-cult members, I couldn’t see how their method could have a positive lasting effect. They were taking away a very powerful urge to connect with a “spiritual entity” albeit a false one, but they were not replacing it with an alternative belief in a different higher and spiritual Being. They were leaving each person in a vacuum. There was no way that a high rate of reversals wouldn’t happen. I later learned that they indeed had more than a 50% regression rate. Alan’s father agreed to sponsor one year’s salary for a rabbi to work on U of M’s campus against cults, with the pledge that if successful, he would continue supporting such a program. Unfortunately, the shliach brought to put his effort into anti-cult activity, was not very successful in that area and we lost that support for the years to follow.
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Support Rabbi Lipszyc's work by Donating at https://chabadcrimeaorg.clhosting.org/templates/articlecco_cdo/aid/2511910/jewish/Crisis-Relief/lang/en or sending checks to: Chabad of Crimea World Friends, 1601 Union St, Brooklyn, NY 11213
The 1960’s were the time of the rise of the “Hippie” generation. That was a time when many youth rebelled and rejected conventional and familial values. While the leaders from all spectrums of Judaism threw their hands up in despair, The Rebbe lauded the youth’s rejection of their parents’ complacence in accepting a lack in spiritual interest. The Rebbe encouraged the shluchim to take advantage of the generation’s search for meaning in life and offer them the experience of a lifestyle of Torah and mitzvos. Thus, began what became known as the Baal Teshuvah Movement with a bang and zest. However, Satan wasn’t yet ready to concede failure, so in the 1970’s a new problem with the youth arose. The proliferation of cults, false gods and so-called religions that relied heavily on mind control. Youths searching for spiritual highs flocked to these cults en masse. Unfortunately, many Jewish teenagers were caught up in this wave.
One day, while I was living in Michigan, I received a call from a distraught couple who urgently wanted to meet with me. When we met, this middle-aged couple explained their problem. They said they were 4thgeneration reform Jews and they had three children, two sons and one daughter. Three years earlier, the younger son, a teenager, ran away from home and joined a cult called “Children of God.” Although all the cults were bad news, some were outright dangerous. Of all the dangerous ones, this was one of the most dangerous ones. They would teach that parents were messengers of the devil and therefore it is a good deed to steal their money, and if their parents would try to stop them it is even proper to kill them. Also, the longer one is involved in a cult, the more difficult it is to successfully deprogram that person When one is three years in a cult, most professional psychologists felt, it was a lost cause to try to get them out.
At that time there was one interesting fellow named Ted Patrick who was very involved in trying to get kids out of cults. The history of his involvement was quite interesting. He had quite an impressive government job, in California, on a federal level, a job as the Special Assistant for Community Affairs, under then governor Ronald Reagan. His son got caught up in a cult so he tried investigating it from an inside view and found himself getting caught up in it. He pulled himself out and realized the danger of these mind controlling cults posing under the rights of freedom of religion. He took his findings to different governmental agencies only to be rebuffed. Everyone was afraid to start up with “religion.” At that point he quit his comfortable government job, got a number of other concerned parents together and created a group called deprogrammers. At the behest of distraught parents, they would “kidnap” these kids from the cults, off the street or whatever, and take them to distant unknown places where they would spend weeks and sometimes months deprogramming them. Most of that time these kids were held against their wishes, but were closely watched and locked up without any means of escape. This became a very controversial issue and Patrick was arrested and imprisoned for this. It didn’t faze him, and he continued doing it. Many questioned his methods, and he was accused of actually using physical abuse on his captives, but that was never actually proven. He was considered successful in deprogramming many kids and eventually earned the designation as “the father of deprogramming.”
I was told all about this by the distraught father who came to see me about his son being caught up in the COG cult. He had done his own investigation to see what he could do to get his son out. Although, Ted Patrick would charge the parents for the costs, which were quite high, given the preparations, actual kidnapping, rent of places to keep the cult member, 24/7 round the clock guarding etc., the concerned father assured me that money was not the issue since he was quite well off. He just was uncomfortable with the controversial reports surrounding Ted Patrick and the accusations of physical abuse. A friend recommended he try Chabad, and that’s how he got to me. He told me that this particular cult was very wary of losing their recruits, and wouldn’t allow them to go home to visit their families until they were certain that they were beyond being deprogrammed. Being that his son, had been with them for more than three years, the heads of the COG were pretty confident they could trust Alan to go home, and successfully recruit his siblings and perhaps even his parents. Even if not, perhaps to get funding from his wealthy parents. In either event, they were pretty sure that he wasn’t at risk of losing faith in their beliefs and cause. His parents explained that he was coming home for a four-day weekend and asked if I could help get him out of this cult. I agreed to try to speak with him, but that I would need help from Heaven to succeed. I also explained that in order to evoke Heavenly intervention I would like him to put on tefillin with me right then and there, and that his wife should agree to light Shabbos candles and say a prayer for her son while doing so. From the look on their faces at my suggestion, I saw them wondering if they were just exchanging one “cult” for another. The truth was that I had never before met a 4th generation reform Jew. All too often, by the 4th generation they were either already not Jewish at all, due to intermarriage and assimilation, or they had already found their way back to tradition. Here was an actual 4th generation reform Jew, who had no connection, not even a clue about Jewish practices, and yet still considered himself as Jewish!? I have to say that until today I don’t think I have met another such case. In any case, he did put on tefillin with me, (for the first time in his life,) and his wife agreed to light Shabbos candles. When his son came home the next day, the parents got him to agree to come and meet with me. Of course, I asked him to put on tefillin, which he refused. He spoke to me about how the leader of his cult, himself a “Jew,” was a reincarnation of J.C., a “Jew” as well. I finally convinced him that since J.C. himself put on tefillin, it certainly couldn’t be wrong for him to put on tefillin. So, he did. Afterwards, he seemed uncomfortable, and said he had to leave. I asked if he would agree to meet me later in the evening, and he agreed to do so at his parents’ home. Although I was uncomfortable to meet and speak with him under the watchful eyes of his parents and siblings, there really was no other way. I asked if he would mind if I brought along a colleague of mine (Rabbi Itche Meir Kagan a”h) to which he surprisingly agreed. I was hoping that in the event that our conversation became a bit heated, Itche Meir would be able to find a way to divert the family so that I could continue in a more aggressive manner. Without a doubt, he was quite confident that he could even handle two rabbis. Well, we went to the house that evening, and Rabbi Kagan and I brought some vodka and farbeissen tofarbreng. Sure enough, as I had suspected, his father, mother and siblings stood off to the side, but were clearly observing what we were doing. Rabbi Kagan was just as obviously, very uncomfortable with the set-up, but I whispered for him to ignore them and we should do what we came there to do. Rabbi Kagan agreed to go along, provided I take charge and set the tone. I opened the bottle of vodka and took out three plastic shot glasses and poured each of us a shot. Alan immediately declined his, saying that he didn’t believe in drinking alcohol. I explained that chassidim also didn’t believe in just drinking alcohol. However, this is a farbrengen, not a drinking party and even teetotalers understand that sometimes alcohol has to be used to sterilize and sensitize a person. I then went on to explain that between the three of us (Alan, Rabbi Kagan and I) either we want to help him see the truth or he wants to get us to “see the light,” and a farbrengen is the best way to open all of us to the truth. I further explained the purpose of alcohol and singingnigunim help to set the tone for serious discussion. He finally agreed, and we said l’chaim and each drank four shots. Rabbi Kagan and I then started singing the Alter Rebbe’s niggun of arba bavos. At first, he sat very stiffly and then he closed his eyes, tried covering his ears, and started to chant. I knew we were beginning to have the desired effect. So I began to speak earnestly with him. How as Jews, we have a direct connection with G-d. He was trying to counter that his cult leader was a reincarnation of J.C. To which I replied that perhaps that could be true, but J.C. himself was a renegade Jew, definitely not one that any Jew should be emulating. This totally threw him off, since he never heard anyone speak negatively of J.C. before. Alan became very agitated and jumped up and started to run for the door. I gently grabbed his arm, to try and detain him, but he aggressively pulled himself away and ran out. This is where, we knew that the family being present was detrimental, because it stopped us from also acting more aggressively in keeping him there. We all ran outside, but he was gone. The next morning, his father angrily called me and told me that I totally made a mess of it, because Alan decided to cut his stay short and ran back to the cult. I was saddened, but there was nothing more I could do about it.
About a half a year later, Alan’s father called and asked to meet with me. I agreed. When we met, to my complete surprise, he asked me how much would it cost for me to designate my full time to helping Jewish kids get out of cults, and that he was willing to sponsor the whole cost. He apologized for what he said in his last telephone call to me and said that he realized that his family being there probably prevented us from more forcibly keeping Alan from running away. He then filled me in on what happened with Alan.
Being disappointed in my failure to help his son out of the cult, he turned to Ted Patrick. He paid the costs that Ted Patrick and his team should immediately go into action, planning and kidnapping Alan, whisking him away to an undisclosed place, and there to deprogram him. It took a while, before they could actually kidnap him, because the leadership in the cult saw that Alan had been quite shaken up by his experience, and they weren’t sure of how strong his belief was at the moment. They also suspected that the family would perhaps next try kidnapping, so for these two reasons, they kept Alan under 24/7 surveillance. It wasn’t until a few months later that the cult finally let down their guard and Patrick’s team was able to go into action. Since Alan had been steeped in this cult for well over three years, the team was quite surprised that it only took them about 4 weeks to actually deprogram him. Seeing that Alan’s father was very happy at their results, and knowing that he was quite wealthy, Mr. Patrick asked him to help sponsor their program with a $100,000 donation. Alan’s father promised to give it serious thought. While he was discussing it with his family, most of whom seemed to be agreeable, it was Alan himself who questioned it. Alan said, “why would you want to support Patrick’s program, which took four weeks to get me out of it, when the rabbi’s method had me practically out of it in 15 minutes. If he would have held me back from running, in 5 more minutes, I would have been totally deprogrammed. If you want to support a deprogramming project, get that rabbi involved.” Alan’s father told me that he got Patrick’s permission for me to spend from one Monday to Thursday to observe their rehab place with its methods, but they wouldn’t agree to have me sit in on the deprogramming itself, (which quite frankly I was happy about.) I did go, but was not at all impressed for a few reasons: 1. When I first came, the fellow assigned to me, made it very clear that I was not to speak with any of the teenagers undergoing rehab about any form of religion. Although they themselves were Christians, they felt that at this point any religion would be detrimental; 2. I myself was not allowed to practice any religious activity in public, not even to make blessings on food. I had to daven and eat in my bedroom; 3. I was getting very strong vibes, that I wasn’t wanted there, and they felt “forced” into allowing me to be there by Alan’s father’s money. After the trip, Alan’s father asked me what I thought of the program, he also asked if I thought they perhaps also used abusive methods. I answered, regarding the question of abusiveness, that although I wasn’t privy to what goes on in the actual deprogramming, in the rehab center I didn’t see any signs of abuse. But as far as the program itself, after speaking with some of the ex-cult members, I couldn’t see how their method could have a positive lasting effect. They were taking away a very powerful urge to connect with a “spiritual entity” albeit a false one, but they were not replacing it with an alternative belief in a different higher and spiritual Being. They were leaving each person in a vacuum. There was no way that a high rate of reversals wouldn’t happen. I later learned that they indeed had more than a 50% regression rate. Alan’s father agreed to sponsor one year’s salary for a rabbi to work on U of M’s campus against cults, with the pledge that if successful, he would continue supporting such a program. Unfortunately, the shliach brought to put his effort into anti-cult activity, was not very successful in that area and we lost that support for the years to follow.
To receive Rabbi Lipszyc's Story of the week via Whatsapp add the number 513-456-7595 to your phone contacts, and then send a text to with the message "Join".
Support Rabbi Lipszyc's work by Donating at https://chabadcrimeaorg.clhosting.org/templates/articlecco_cdo/aid/2511910/jewish/Crisis-Relief/lang/en or sending checks to: Chabad of Crimea World Friends, 1601 Union St, Brooklyn, NY 11213
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