I remember when I was a kid at Hebrew school, I had one teacher, a young rabbi, who had worked for a few years rescuing kids who had been brainwashed by cults. Kids who would disappear, leaving their family to join some religious sect, these rabbis would answer the call of their parents like the A-Team but with beards and black overcoats. They would track the kids down and kidnap them if they had too, then spend days, or even months if necessary (although I doubt that was really necessary too often) trying to “re-program” the kids to come back to regular society. Often I’d sit at our morning meetings while the sales manager harangued away in his daily pep talk and wish that a squad of highly-trained rabbis would swing down on ropes from the next rooftop, break through the plate glass windows, and take me away. [Read more…]