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Kidnapped

Proclaimed to be a future zaddik, or holy man, a
boy becomes a contested commodity.

SAN DEE BRAWARS KY

Special to the Jewish News

S

hai Fhima was dressed like an
ordinary New Jersey teenager
in high-top sneakers and a
baseball cap when he first met
Rabbi Shlomo Helbrans on a Shabbat
evening in Brookyn's Borough Park in
1992.
The 13-year-old boy, who was visit-
ing relatives, stood out amidst the
Chasidim, all wearing black. Rabbi
Helbrans fixed his gaze on the boy and
called him to sit close to him: He
said that he saw light shining from
the boy's face.
The rabbi's wife, Malka Helbrans,
later explained to Shai's mother,
Hana, that this meant the boy was
special, that he'd be a holy man able
to speak directly to God: a zaddik.
This is the beginning of an extraor-
dinary drama revolving around Shai.
He was kidnapped and secretly shuf-
fled between yeshivot in Brooklyn,
Monsey (N.Y.), Canada and France;
his mother, an Israeli immigrant
divorced from Shai's father, was
accused of abuse.
Shai was thrust to the center of
two ensuing court cases: kidnapping
charges against Rabbi Helbrans and
his wife, and a custody trial pitting
his mother against other rabbis who
wanted to raise her son.
In the first book to deal with this
story, The Zaddik: The Battle for a
Boy's Soul (Prometheus; $26), Elaine
Grudin Denholtz unfolds the com-
plex events and raises significant
questions about what it means to steal
another's soul.
She explores whether Shai was
seduced and brainwashed, or took on a
religious life by choice, or whether he
was an ordinary but troubled boy strug-
gling with existential questions com-
mon to teenagers.
In 1995, Hana Fhima approached
the author, who teaches research writ-
ing at Fairleigh Dickinson University in
New Jersey and has written several
books and plays, about writing this
book.
Denholtz says she hadn't heard of the
case when she met with Hana for the
first time at a New Jersey hotel, along
with the two New Jersey lawyers, Larry

Meyerson and Steve Rubenstein, who
took on Hana's case on a pro bono basis.
"When I looked into her eyes and
saw how distraught she was," Denholtz
says, "I just knew I had to write this."
Denholtz spent six years researching
and writing The Zaddik. She inter-
viewed many of the key players includ-
ing Hana, lawyers on both sides,
judges, an NYPD detective named
Captain Bill Plackenmeyer whose
determination kept the investigation
going, journalists and experts on cults.
She also studied 2,500 pages of court

The Bf!itie for

oV Sou/

'ELAINE GRUDIN DENHOI.TZ

transcripts.
Although she tried to interview
Rabbi Helbrans while he was in prison,
his lawyers turned down her requests,
and she says that it was also not possi-
ble to speak directly with Shai.
Although the narrative includes some
minor inaccuracies about Chasidic life,
the book is compelling reading.
Denholtz does an impressive job of
pulling together the maze-like path of
events from the 1992 kidnapping to
Shai's return to Israel in 1996, where he
joined his father. In between, Shai ran
away several times.
The author is most effective in con-
veying Hana's struggle, the enormous
KIDNAPPED on page 87