Heavenly Deception
Robins, Lottie
HEAVENLY DECEPTION One family's encounter with the "Moonies" LOTTIE ROBINS In 1975 our son Arthur disappeared for several weeks. When we finally located him on the telephone, he told us that he...
...They really cared, all these wonderful, beautiful people, whose parents really did love them, and missed them, as mine did...
...All parents try this...
...Arthur: I'm not sure yet...
...His entire personality had changed...
...A friend offered to come with her two grown sons to give us moral and physical support...
...She left the room, but did not return...
...Arthur then asked us all to sit on the floor while he talked and cried and tried to explain to us why young people join the Unification Church...
...Then six Moonies hugged me and said, 'See, we're your family...
...He is a musician and a poet...
...The church occupied two huge expensive estates in exclusive Westchester County...
...That was the original sin...
...But giving a child a Jewish identity apparently is not always the answer...
...He walked and talked like a zombie...
...We were able to convince Arthur that our love for him was genuine, while Moon's was materialistic...
...We need our elders to listen...
...Questions are discouraged...
...Nevertheless, by the time we located Arthur, a fine arts and dean's list scholarship student at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, he had already persuaded his girl friend Debbie, with whom he had been keeping company for a year, to join him...
...John did not tell me," Arthur stressed, "what he was into when he invited me to spend an evening at the church center...
...I have a new family—the Unification Church...
...Freedom means the ability to do or not to do anything for any reason...
...Tell them what their heritage is, give them a good solid Jewish education...
...And I'll make a pact with you," added Arthur...
...Again and again during the next few days we asked ourselves where we had failed as parents...
...But parents had stopped showing it years ago, by not hugging, touching, kissing...
...Once in, Jewish youth are used as liaisons to deceive and infiltrate the Jewish community...
...Who's the new Messiah...
...Today we're finding the children of the 'lost generation' of American Jews who in the 30s and 40s tried to assimilate," says Rabbi Joel Kutner, former principal of the Jewish Day School of Allentown, Pa...
...Postscript: John Lowen eventually became editor of New Hope, the daily newspaper published by the Unification Church in New York City...
...They brought us down to a childhood level, appealing to our emotions, and the 'loving' and the prayers made us feel good, and secure, and wanted...
...After two hours of attempting to persuade Arthur to come home, we said good-bye while I wept, and his eyes were moist...
...As the candles flickered on the bima, and the choir sang the familiar Rock of Ages words...
...Cults recruit mostly on the streets, especially during spring and summer, when college students are hitchhiking their way across the country and are receptive to a free meal...
...It's the love and care the cults offer members during the indoctrination they get...
...It's so important, all this physical love...
...The cults go looking for us...
...Arthur's replies made no sense...
...Despite this, the two men persuaded Debbie to "just come for a weekend...
...Reverend Sun Myung Moon and his wife are now my true heavenly parents...
...To listen because they care...
...In 1979, B'nai B'rith Hillel Foundation, in a research report, stated that a ten-percent membership of Jews in cults is not serious...
...They cared...
...You're going to have a tough time getting him out...
...Do they join because they lack a certain "something" in their lives, or is it by accident, or coincidence, as in our son's case...
...I plan to make the church my life...
...Or would the two come out free...
...Therefore, Adam and Eve's children were imperfect...
...What is it that ex-cultists treasure the most once they are out...
...There is little reference to religion, or the role of the cult's messiah...
...I whispered to Arthur, "We forgot to buy you a Chanukah present...
...he needed deprogramming...
...This is why the Jews have been persecuted...
...Yes, we had lots of questions, but were anxious to hear Arthur's point of view...
...Arthur was always a strong-willed individual who defended his convictions and played devil's advocate when his Judaism was attacked...
...We thought, in those early days, Lottie Robins, a freelance writer, is executive editor of Yiddish Lingo and a writing instructor in Allentown, Pa...
...We attended temple services regularly...
...Young people don't go looking for cults," Arthur emphasized...
...Are Jews more vulnerable...
...In one case, a Pennsylvania doctoral student of economics, just getting over a broken romance, was approached by a pretty girl on the Berkeley campus, a popular cult hunting ground...
...We have a very Jewish home...
...After that we were unable to make the decision to get out...
...But in 1980 a Messiah will come to make a perfect society...
...But we'll be here in case of trouble...
...We felt as if we were caught in a bizarre kidnapping scheme, with the police cruising by, providing the protection we had asked for and been granted...
...He put his arms around Jack and me...
...Inside, Arthur asked Debbie to get her coat after the meal...
...Where did you get this distorted version of the Bible...
...I've already got it—my freedom...
...We were quite unprepared for what we found...
...Not our teachers, nor our parents, nor our rabbis...
...It was ten days before he found out he was in a Moonie center...
...The following statements came up repeatedly: "We can't quite accept the fact that intelligent, questioning individuals can get duped into joining a cult unless they really want to...
...But when they killed Christ, they failed God, and God could not stand behind His chosen people anymore...
...When she accompanied me to the airport to pick up the deprogrammers I felt as if I were acting out a James Bond movie...
...But why a large proportion of Jewish followers...
...On advice from other parents, we told Arthur we were going to join the church...
...I change every day...
...How could this have happened, we asked ourselves...
...Whatever your goals are, they are worth working for...
...Hitler later had to kill six million Jews as an indemnity because they did not accept Jesus as their God 2,000 years ago...
...The following day we waited for Debbie at her apartment...
...If she's really sick, we'll pray for her...
...John was recently married to a Korean Moonie whom he had never met in a mass wedding of 700 couples...
...Arthur: Because I am responsible for the sins of my ancestors...
...After 24 hours of discussing, persuading, loving, crying, and comparing the Old and New Testaments with the Divine Principle, the crisis broke...
...What are you doing to help the needy, the sick, the aged, the orphaned...
...For example, in 1976, two young women approached Rabbi Arnold J. Maggid of Congregation Emmanu-El in San Francisco on behalf of, they said, "Judaism: In Service to the World...
...Today, as we look back on these past seven years, we realize that the question most often asked by parents is, "What do cults do that enables them to carry out their goals so effectively...
...Following Arthur's deprogramming, the guilt of having recruited Debbie tormented him...
...Not our son...
...But Debbie's eyes remained glassy, her Moonie trance unbroken...
...Moshe Durst, a former Lubavich Ha-sid who is now the President of the Unification Church...
...Who pays for all these expensive buildings and grounds...
...they said...
...As we sped out of Tarrytown and past Moon's multi-million dollar mansion, guarded by chains of Moonies, I thought of a letter Arthur had written only a few months before...
...Arthur had been "brainwashed...
...Can you leave whenever you please...
...Several weeks later, on a chance phone call to Arthur's apartment to find out if his roommate had heard from him, we found Arthur packing his belongings...
...If she dies, let the dead bury the dead...
...Heavenly Deception in these enterprises works two ways: free labor and no taxes...
...we asked each other on our way home...
...Arthur's reply was vague, but on one question he was firm...
...What can we offer him, at age 30, that would make him feel as important...
...every day, for three years, to complete extra projects...
...In Oakland, Cal., two men applied for membership at Temple Beth Abraham...
...We sell dried and fresh flowers, candles, tea, peanuts and candy...
...We learn more by talking out our problems than we do from their constant preaching...
...Topics such as what is truth, and is there a God, were always, on our minds...
...We made a pact," Arthur reminded us...
...On a rainy foggy night, on a brightly lit street in Brooklyn, we sat in a car in front of the Moonie Center and waited, for two and a half hours, while Arthur ate, prayed and sang with Debbie's group...
...Perhaps he could talk Arthur out of this perverted nonsense, we thought...
...As we got into our car, the Moonies were gathered in small circles on the lawn, listening to leaders ranting emotionally about Moon's teachings...
...His parents refused Arthur's offer to deprogram him...
...My husband had received his PhD in chemistry when our children were five and eight...
...We have to pay indemnity, because they didn't believe in Jesus when He came...
...To understand me you must accept my desire to be free...
...that the time is nearing which will see all men free, tyrants disappearing," it suddenly occurred to us that during this traumatic ordeal, we had forgotten, for the first time, all about Chanu-kah...
...When I asked a lot of questions, they said if I stayed as their guest for the weekend, I would have the answers...
...He had spent a summer in a kibbutz in Israel...
...You are not my parents any more," he said...
...Since deprogrammers never touch their subjects, we must have more help...
...But three weeks later, at a Moonie workshop, a leader spotted Arthur sketching and severely reprimanded him...
...I stayed because they were so nice, so loving, so caring...
...They have taught him a perverted religion, given him guilt feelings for sins he never committed, and will be sending him—this talented, sensitive young man—out to peddle on the streets...
...Let me elaborate on one word: FREEDOM...
...Its purpose, they claimed, was to bring Jewish culture to Jewish youth...
...he wrote...
...We cannot go in without a warrant," the police told us...
...It's a trap," Arthur said...
...We found out later that he was told to say this...
...Debbie, having faith in Arthur, agreed...
...But they don't listen...
...Their artificial plastic smiles and Dale Carnegie handshakes gave us the uneasy feeling that we were about to be sold that extra vacuum cleaner we didn't need...
...What have they done to our son...
...It was my best friend, John Lowen, who invited me in...
...I may find out in the three-week workshop in Barrytown, N.Y., where I'm going next...
...Broken hearted, lonely, and attracted by an inviting smile, he readily accepted her invitation to Camp Mazunder...
...Seventy pairs of shoes were lined up in the entrance...
...I am giving up everything I love for Moon and his Divine Principle—my art, my drums, my apartment...
...Arthur: All of them, back to Adam and Eve, especially the Jews...
...But we refused to give up...
...I will be home for Rosh Hashanah...
...After Arthur's deprogramming we found the above words, almost verbatim, in Master Speaks, a series of published lectures given by Moon and his followers...
...And a cult, at that...
...Yet, two weeks after he became a Moonie, he wrote, in a letter to us: "The Jews were God's chosen people...
...In desperation we flew one of Arthur's deprogrammers out, and it took all of us, including Debbie's parents, a full 24 hours to get her out of her stupor...
...These practices are justified by the group as 'heavenly deception.'" "Without exception," say Carrol Stoner and Jo Anne Parke in their book All God's Children (Chilton), "former members say they were deceived and duped into contributing to one of the biggest con jobs in history...
...In California, one young man who has been in the Unification Church for ten years (two deprogrammings failed) "runs five businesses, earning $10,000 a week for Moon," according to his parents...
...We've got to start with the young...
...Our house of prayer and worship has become a center of anonymity...
...Thus, under the guise of "working for God," young people, sometimes vulnerable, but more often not, are pulled into the movement under any pretense that will work...
...We're the ones who love you.' At each meal," Arthur continued, "someone always said a prayer aloud, focusing on one Moonie's problems, which makes one feel very important...
...The children . . . have no identity as far as Judaism is concerned...
...that we were alone with our problem until one morning, on a TV program, we heard a reporter interviewing ex-Moonies and their parents...
...Then we began to call, clear across the country, for deprogram-mers...
...By killing Jesus, the Jews had to suffer for 2,000 years...
...Arthur's and Debbie's recruitment was unusual...
...The doors of these churches are never locked...
...Absolutely," he said emphatically, "but I prefer not to...
...Impossible...
...In college he had once become so engrossed in a sculpture piece he was working on that he almost got locked in the building for the weekend...
...You'll be able to see Arthur every day," John told Debbie...
...The night of Arthur's arrival, Carl and Charles waited for Arthur to come upstairs, where I lay in bed on the ruse that I was still ill...
...Sexual displays are absolutely forbidden," they were told...
...The first lectures tend to be little more than denunciations of the impersonality and immorality of modern life...
...Arthur: From the Divine Principle...
...Ten days after Arthur was 'in,' he and John visited Debbie at her apartment...
...In high school Arthur had been one of the most diligent art students in his class, staying after school until 6 p.m...
...Here recruiters use sexual charms for proselytizing...
...We had given our children high principles to live by...
...Nevergive up," we told our children...
...I didn't recognize Arthur," Debbie told us later...
...They don't care if John is a member, so the church allows him to live on the outside...
...When we finally located him on the telephone, he told us that he had joined the Unification Church...
...Heavenly Deception' had done its job...
...No you haven't," he said, his eyes glistening...
...They started to cry and soon I, too, cried...
...All I need is a half hour with her and she'll be out...
...Then, Rabbi Kutner believes, they will not be susceptible to cults...
...Her leader, suspicious of Arthur's behavior (apparently it was not Moonie-like), told Arthur that Debbie was not going with him...
...Our telephone bill amounted to $650 before we were able to find two young men, Carl W. and Charles P. "Deprogramming is like coming out of a drug addiction," Carl explained...
...A telephone call to the rabbi gave us the information we needed...
...Why don't these young people just leave...
...Moon's businesses, licensed under the name of individual Moonies, pay regular taxes...
...Do they suffer a special lack of religious upbringing...
...We preach that each human life is of infinite worth and preciousness, and then we reduce the believer to a nameless handshake at the end of the service...
...When they met at a Moonie Festival and greeted each other with hugs, they were scolded...
...Listen to us," adds Arthur...
...Rabbi Bernard Spielman, then rabbi of our temple, offered to accompany us on the four-hour trip...
...Even when I got there I did not know, and besides, I had never heard of Moon...
...we asked...
...No one listens...
...I am a self-educated freelance writer...
...We were ushered into a private room and, every ten minutes for the next two hours, were treated to the pressured politeness of the young woman who knocked, and then, without waiting to be invited in, entered with "Are there any questions...
...Arthur: We do, by fund raising...
...The long telephone discussions with other parents of Moonies, the tears and the anxiety, brought on chest pains that interfered with my breathing...
...They don't listen to our needs and our hopes and our torments and our dreams...
...Emotionally spent, I stayed in my bedroom and wept—for joy that Arthur was home at last, in sadness for the deceit we were forced to engage in, fearful for what still lay ahead...
...If either one of us wants to leave after a few weeks, the other will follow...
...How could he have given up all that he loved for a perverted religion...
...In Arthur's case it was brought out with much emotion and happy tears when we were invited, immediately following his deprogramming, to attend Sabbath services with Rabbi Davis, without whose help we would not have been together...
...After interviewing over 100 ex-cultists, and reading widely on the subject, we have come to recognize that it is Heavenly Deception that is the noose that pulls young people in, and is the same invisible noose that prevents them from leaving...
...The name of Rabbi Maurice Davis, of White Plains, N.Y., was mentioned...
...The subjects often become violent...
...I'm going to be trained for the fund raising at the workshop...
...This reminds me of my days in a Nazi concentration camp," said Rabbi Spielman...
...Which ancestors...
...In the Unification Church they listened—at least until they destroyed our identity by drowning us in their brainwashing...
...If we give our children a real Jewish identity they won't join cults...
...Outside, a Moonie walked the street, camera in hand, peering into every car...
...When I questioned and doubted their way of life, they told me they would give me an art studio and all art materials, and I could sit and paint all day...
...When she arrived, Arthur's planned "half hour" turned into five hours...
...When Arthur realized what was going on, he screamed and tried to escape, but he was restrained by his father and our two friends...
...he was the head of a parental group engaged in rescuing their children...
...Once in, they were separated and sent to different centers...
...Rabbi Marc Tannenbaum, National Director for Inter-Religious Affairs of the American Jewish Committee, has said, "It's not a yen for religion that gets young people into cults...
...His father is dean of science at one of the state universities in New York...
...They talk, and they preach, and they scold, and they correct...
...After the nightmare of getting Arthur and Debbie out had subsided, we began to speak at synagogues, churches and organizations to explain the dangers of cults...
...Arthur: I pray most of the time...
...But since profits go to the "church," they are tax deductible, and the extra money goes straight into Moon's coffers...
...All four had connections to Moon, connections they vehemently denied...
...Or would he be recaptured once again and be put under their mind control...
...Certainly Debbie's Orthodox Jewish upbringing did not help her resist the cult...
...But taking into consideration that Jews are only three percent of the U.S...
...Our son join a church...
...What aren't we giving our children that they can so easily be deceived...
...population today," says Rabbi Bernard Spielman, "having ten percent of cult members Jewish is something to be concerned about...
...Debbie, also an art student, came from an Orthodox Jewish family, and she, too, had spent a summer on a kibbutz...
...Still unable to grasp what Moonies were all about, we spent several days of futile calling to Tarrytown, N.Y., the church center, begging Arthur to come home, but got nowhere...
...Arthur's freedom to leave when he pleased was put to a test several weeks later...
...Would Arthur be thrown out bodily, as other rescuers have...
...What do you do all day...
...He had emphatically stated that he believed in God (though not in organized religion...
...His rendition of Kiddush on Friday nights with my husband was a weekly ritual...
...Arthur and three clean-shaven young men, all in ties and jackets, and a young woman in a long skirt, all of them incongruously shoeless, greeted us on the front stoop of the former Bronfman mansion...
...And what was the church all about...
...My eyes blurred as I thought of the High Holiday weekend we spent with him and our daughter, her husband and our grandson...
...What happens once they are in...
...Whatever I do toward my art career must be done by me, for me, or it has no meaning...
...Our son was brought up in a home filled with Jewish books and Jewish music...
...When I was admitted to the hospital with a possible heart attack, Arthur, despite several phone calls from my husband and the rabbi, refused to come home, saying he had no shoes...
...John and I used to spend hours discussing philosophy and religion...
...From the first grade on, through high school, Arthur had won almost every art award offered, and had then entered Pratt on a scholarship...
...Arthur had overheard her say she would be returning there for her belongings...
...1977), Richard Delgado, an attorney and assistant professor of law at the University of Washington in Seattle, states...
...deception continues after the youth has been attracted into accepting his first contact with the group...
...We decided to visit him...
...Why must you pray all day...
...Our fears that Debbie and the Moonies would pull him back in were squelched...
...Arthur: I'll begin with the fall of man, when Satan seduced Eve...
...In his brainwashed, childish state of mind he believed us and took up our offer for my husband to go into Brooklyn with a U-Haul to help him bring home his cat, his belongings and more than 100 oil paintings...
...In a 98-page article, "Religious To-talism: Gentle and Ungentle Persuasion Under the First Amendment" (Southern California Law Review, Nov...
...One was Dr...
...He decided that the only way he could get Debbie out would be to go back into the church, pretend he was still a Moonie, and invite her out for a walk...
...The Moonies got me to talk about childhood incidents, like when I was two and a half and Mom was too busy to hold me on her lap...
...How can you build a perfect society by living in a closed community and praying...
...We were duped...
Vol. 7 • June 1982 • No. 6
