Word: ratzon
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Dates: during 2010-2010
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...Goel Ratzon's Facebook profile shows the bespectacled Israeli with shoulder-length white hair and neatly trimmed beard and says he is currently dating and has 36 friends. His real status is somewhat more complicated. When Israeli police raided the self-styled healer's four homes in Tel Aviv last week they found two legal ex-wives, plus another 30 women as well as 89 children - all reputedly his. Ratzon was arrested on suspicion of enslavement, rape and sexual abuse and remanded in custody by a local magistrate...
...Ratzon's unusual domestic arrangements first came to light in a documentary broadcast on Israel's Channel 10 in January 2009. It showed Ratzon's "wives" cooking, cleaning and shopping together, eagerly anticipating the arrival of "Daddy" and competing over whom he would choose to spend the night with. On the show, Ratzon explained the secret of his magnetic attraction was that he was "perfect." "I have everything a woman wants, all the qualities a woman wants. I give women the attention they want. It's made of many things, but fortunately, I have everything," he said. Because there...
...women, too, appeared to be content, if not happy. They wore modest clothing that neighbors likened to those of religious Muslims, and they had Ratzon's image tattooed on their bodies. The children's names all included a version of Ratzon's own. One wife had Ratzon's portrait tattooed on her upper left arm, his head surrounded by snakes with the legend "Goel Ratzon, my love forever." A similar tattoo on her upper right arm portrayed him with a cobra crowning his head and the legend "My Goel, my love." Her neck was inscribed twice: "To Goel, with love...
...love like we have here. I went through a lot before I arrived here and he is the ultimate for me," she explained on television. One of the other women defended Ratzon's little kingdom, saying, "People think we are in a place where we are imprisoned and forced to become some kind of poor Cinderella. They don't understand that there is humanity, respect. He has something special and good." Said one of her companions: "He's the Messiah that everyone talks about. The day he decides to reveal himself, this country will see it." (See the 25 crimes...
...Ratzon had built a reputation for spiritual redemption (which is what goel means in Hebrew) by way of a center in Tel Aviv that combined teachings on the Kabbalah with healing. In 2000, he told a reporter that he had had a vision of a "soul" appearing to him and telling him that the secrets of the Torah would be revealed to him, allowing him to no longer work hard in his life. He became known as a healer for young women, some of whom fell in love with him. One of his "wives" said she was smitten after...