Article: https://forward.com/fast-forward/575528/arrests-at-chabad-770-secret-tunnel/?amp=1
It took months, perhaps years for a small crew of Lubavitchers to dig a secret passageway underneath the famed headquarters of the Chabad movement. They would not let it be filled so easily.
The New York Police Department was called Monday to 770 Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood, where a number of Chabad students — most in their teens and early twenties — mounted a last stand against construction crews called to fill in the tunnel connecting the synagogue at that location to the defunct Chabad mikvah around the corner.
In videos circulating on Chabad community news sources and social media, Lubavitchers can be seen ripping down the wood paneling on the south wall of the synagogue, revealing a cavernous concrete space about 20 feet wide underneath the women’s section. Several young men were sitting or standing in the space — apparently to prevent it from being filled — as scores of others watched or recorded video on their phones. The length of the tunnel is unclear from the videos.
NYPD eventually made 10 arrests, according to community news outlet CrownHeights.info. Video showed several men in Lubavitcher garb being led out, their wrists bound with zip ties.
Chabad-Lubavitcher movement spokesperson Rabbi Motti Seligson declined to comment.
It was unclear what motivated the creation of the tunnel and why some students reacted so strongly to the arrival of a cement truck Monday morning to fill it. Reports said the people behind the tunnel’s excavation — it was unconfirmed who that was, but sources tended to agree they began within the last year or two — had hoped to “expand” 770, but it was not obvious how the tunnel accomplished that.
A video posted on the CrownHeights.info Instagram in December showed a dark, dirt-walled crawl space allegedly beginning in the recesses of the former Chabad Women’s Mikvah, located at 1506 Union Street. Large dirt mounds obstruct much of the basement.
After the tunnel’s discovery, the leadership of Beis Chayeinu — the Chabad synagogue that meets in 770 — hired structural engineers to determine the extent of the damage and the safety issue it posed, and eventually moved to fill it.
According to Haredi news source Collive.com, the students who tried to stop the filling of the tunnel were mostly from Israel and associated with Chabad Messianism — whose adherents believe that Schneerson, the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, was the Messiah. The Chabad-Lubavitch movement publicly disavows those beliefs.
But the movement, despite years of litigation, does not control 770 Eastern Parkway, though it owns the title. It has been locked in litigation with Beis Chayeinu over control of the building for decades.
It took months, perhaps years for a small crew of Lubavitchers to dig a secret passageway underneath the famed headquarters of the Chabad movement. They would not let it be filled so easily.
The New York Police Department was called Monday to 770 Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood, where a number of Chabad students — most in their teens and early twenties — mounted a last stand against construction crews called to fill in the tunnel connecting the synagogue at that location to the defunct Chabad mikvah around the corner.
In videos circulating on Chabad community news sources and social media, Lubavitchers can be seen ripping down the wood paneling on the south wall of the synagogue, revealing a cavernous concrete space about 20 feet wide underneath the women’s section. Several young men were sitting or standing in the space — apparently to prevent it from being filled — as scores of others watched or recorded video on their phones. The length of the tunnel is unclear from the videos.
NYPD eventually made 10 arrests, according to community news outlet CrownHeights.info. Video showed several men in Lubavitcher garb being led out, their wrists bound with zip ties.
Locked in litigation
The chaos at 770 — the former home of the late Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson — was the culmination of a controversy that began when the tunnel was discovered in early December, and the latest chapter in a multi-year battle between the Chabad-Lubavitch movement and synagogue leadership for control of the iconic building.Chabad-Lubavitcher movement spokesperson Rabbi Motti Seligson declined to comment.
It was unclear what motivated the creation of the tunnel and why some students reacted so strongly to the arrival of a cement truck Monday morning to fill it. Reports said the people behind the tunnel’s excavation — it was unconfirmed who that was, but sources tended to agree they began within the last year or two — had hoped to “expand” 770, but it was not obvious how the tunnel accomplished that.
A video posted on the CrownHeights.info Instagram in December showed a dark, dirt-walled crawl space allegedly beginning in the recesses of the former Chabad Women’s Mikvah, located at 1506 Union Street. Large dirt mounds obstruct much of the basement.
After the tunnel’s discovery, the leadership of Beis Chayeinu — the Chabad synagogue that meets in 770 — hired structural engineers to determine the extent of the damage and the safety issue it posed, and eventually moved to fill it.
According to Haredi news source Collive.com, the students who tried to stop the filling of the tunnel were mostly from Israel and associated with Chabad Messianism — whose adherents believe that Schneerson, the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, was the Messiah. The Chabad-Lubavitch movement publicly disavows those beliefs.
But the movement, despite years of litigation, does not control 770 Eastern Parkway, though it owns the title. It has been locked in litigation with Beis Chayeinu over control of the building for decades.
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