Jerusalem lets convicted cult leader use municipal parking lot for Sukkot events

Jerusalem has allowed a convicted cult leader and his followers to use a municipal-owned park lot next to the Old City for holding Sukkot festivities.

Rabbi Eliezer Berland, leader of the Shuvu Bonim religious cult, has served separate prison sentences in the past for sex offenses and fraud, and last year was implicated but not charged in the decades-old murder of a teenager. He also spent years on the run from Israeli authorities.

According to a Channel 12 report Thursday, advertisements published by Shuvu Bonim boasted that “after three years in which we couldn’t hold our holy event with our holy teacher Eliezer Berland, and after massive efforts we managed to gain a large amount of land for the purposes of holding all Sukkot events.”

“We are talking about a huge territory of 5,000 square meters… for comparison, that’s a complex 10 times larger than the Sukkah we built in the past,” the advertisement added.

The Jerusalem Municipality justified the decision to let Shuvu Bonim use the parking lot, which is usually reserved for municipal workers. However, most staff are on vacation amid the Jewish High Holidays, with the parking lot largely unused at the moment.

“Therefore the Jerusalem Municipality permitted the sukkah in the carpark,” a statement from the municipality said.

It added that police also approved construction of the sukkah, which “was done according to all the conditions agreed upon: that it be built in an orderly manner and the obligation to remove it at the end of the festival.”

According to the television report, local residents were upset by the presence of the group in their neighborhood, with Berland’s followers set to remain there for the duration of the Sukkot festival.

“Berland held events with loud music until the early morning, with thousands of Hasidim causing enormous suffering to the locals,” an anonymous resident was quoted as saying.

Berland fled Israel in 2013 amid allegations that he had sexually assaulted several female followers. After evading arrest for three years and slipping through various countries, Berland returned to Israel and was sentenced to 18 months in prison in November 2016 on two counts of indecent acts and one case of assault, as part of a plea deal that included seven months of time served. He was freed just five months later, in part due to ill health.

He was arrested again, this time for fraud, 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.

Berland was convicted last year under a plea bargain and given an 18-month sentence, but was released in December.

In November 2021 police investigating the murder of a teenage boy in the 1980s told a court that Berland had ordered the killing.

Police said Berland allegedly sent the suspects who kidnapped and killed 17-year-old Nissim Shitrit, but that he was not present at the time of the murder. Berland is linked to three suspects arrested for their involvement in the crime, which went unsolved for 35 years.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report