Leader of polygamous Jerusalem cult found dead in prison cell
4 min readA polygamous cult leader was identified lifeless in his mobile at the Ayalon Prison in Ramle on Friday morning, the Israel Prisons Services said.
Paramedics that ended up rushed to the scene declared Daniel Ambash lifeless immediately after resuscitation endeavours experienced failed.
The prisons company states Ambash’s household was educated of his death and that the instances would be examined.
In 2013, Ambash was sentenced to 26 a long time in prison on 18 fees ranging from sexual offenses, abuse of minors, incarceration and sadistic violence in what has been explained as a person of the most shocking abuse conditions in the country’s background.
He was slated to be freed in 2037. In accordance to Channel 12 news, the parole board experienced been thanks to convene following week to deliberate Ambash’s ask for for an early launch.
A Bratslav extremely-Orthodox Jew, Ambash headed what arrived to be recognized as the “Jerusalem cult.” He was married to 6 wives and had 14 youngsters, who were all held by Ambash and his assistants in slavery ailments, forcibly confined and routinely punished with rape, electric powered shocks and beatings.
According to the court docket ruling, on one particular event, Ambash took one of his wives outside the house the property, naked, in the middle of the night, and splashed water on her and dragged her by the hair. In an additional incident, he shoved the head of just one of his wives into the rest room and flushed it as she suffocated.
ראש הכת הירושלמית דניאל אמבש נמצא מת בתאו בבית הסוהר איילון, לפני הדיון בשחרורו @Heller_shlomi pic.twitter.com/mrIpOBdijR
— וואלה! (@WallaNews) June 10, 2022
He also raped his daughter on an additional occasion in entrance of his full relatives, together with numerous small children, declaring it was “part of her duty in spouse and children everyday living.”
The situation was exposed in 2011 after a person of Ambash’s wives spoke out about what was happening in the cult.
But most of his wives have never renounced Ambash. They still dwell jointly, check out on their own as his wives and revere him, saying the overall situation towards him was fabricated.
In 2018, four of them demanded that Israel grant them conjugal visits, declaring it was their “basic right” to fulfill Ambash and have additional kids with him.
The ask for was mainly denied, with the prisons support noting that the females are regarded as victims of an offense by the law and that their ask for was consequently invalid, in accordance to the Walla information internet site. Ambash experienced appealed the final decision.
The Israel Prisons Provider also charged that Ambash was “taking edge of his legal rights as a prisoner and preserving handle of his cult through telephone calls.”

Women from the Ambash cult converse with reporters at the Knesset as they arrive to existing their electoral slate to the Central Elections Committee on August 1, 2019. (Noam Revkin Fenton/Flash90)
In 2019, the four wives officially registered as a political celebration to operate in that year’s September elections, jogging on a political platform that advocated for personal freedom.
“We think that if the Torah provides men and women the ability to choose their have lifetime, the point out has no put to intervene and avert that. And we will fight for that suitable,” Ayelet Ambash, a single of the 4 wives, mentioned at the time, in an clear reference to polygamous relationship.
Their bash, Kama, which aimed to avoid authorities intervention in Israelis’ non-public lives, fell very well quick of the minimum vote overall needed to enter the Knesset.