Israeli Kabbalah guru arrested for fraud

[Defensor Fidei]

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3161625,00.html

Police arrest Sunday Shaul Youdkevitch, head of Kabbalah Center in Israel, on suspicion he extracted money from cancer patient, convinced her donations will make her recover from illness

A devotee of Kabbalah, the ill woman put her faith in the center and contributed USD 36,000 to the organization. When her condition deteriorated, members of the Israeli branch recommended she donate another USD 25,000. Meanwhile, rabbis recommended that she also purchase holy water to improve her condition - at an exorbitant price.A woman suffering from cancer was talked into paying tens of thousands of dollars to the Israeli Kabbalah Center, on the pretext that the donation would help improve her condition.

...After her death at the age of fifty, the woman's husband filed a complaint against the head of the center, Shaul Youdkevitch, who was consequently arrested by the police Sunday.

...Youdkevitch, one of the main figures in Kabbalah studies worldwide and the man behind Madonna's visit to Israel last year, was arrested on suspicion of exploiting and deceiving the woman and her husband.

...The couple has previously complained several months ago that they were told by the rabbis who run the center in Tel Aviv that the woman should make 'a significant and painful donation' if she wanted to get well and overcome cancer.

 

[Heiroglyph]

Uh so now proclaiming faith in God's ability to heal someone will get you charged with fraud? Thats a violation of freedom of religion.

 

[Defensor Fidei]

Uh so now proclaiming faith in God's ability to heal someone will get you charged with fraud? Thats a violation of freedom of religion.

This "faith in (the Jewish) G-d's ability to heal" came with a price tag of over $60,000 and left the cancer patient dead.

 

[Voegelin]

Psychoanalysis, while it lasted, was the best con. It looked like science but it wasn't and it had so many self-defense mechanisms built into it nailing anyone for fraud was virtually impossible.

 

[Sphere]

Uh so now proclaiming faith in God's ability to heal someone will get you charged with fraud? Thats a violation of freedom of religion.

agreed.