Young members of the Orthodox Jewish movement Chabad were discovered to have been digging a tunnel underneath their New York headquarters in mid-January, resulting in a conflict between members of the movement and police. The discovery and subsequent fallout have prompted greater awareness of the movement, and begs the question: what drove some of its members to take the apparently bizarre action of constructing a secret tunnel beneath a synagogue?
Chabad is an orthodox Hasidic sect of Judaism that was founded in 1775 with the objective of educating and providing humanitarian aid to other Jews. It became a truly world-wide movement under the tenure of Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who rebuilt the movement after the Holocaust until his death in 1994. He has become a controversial figure in Judaism because some of his followers have come to believe that he is the Jewish Messiah.
Those who believed that Schneerson was the Messiah, tend to also believe that he taught that the movement’s headquarters and synagogue in New York at 770 Eastern Parkway needed to be “expanded.” However, since his death, there has been an ongoing legal battle between the local stewards of the synagogue and the leadership of the whole Chabad movement which stops either group from making alterations to 770 Eastern Parkway.
Certain younger members of the Stewards—referred to as the “Gabbaim”—decided to take the expansion into their own hands and began to dig a tunnel underneath Chabad HQ. When the tunnel—which had expanded to be over 60ft long—was discovered the Gabbaim ordered construction trucks to come and fill the tunnel with concrete. Upon hearing of this, several members of the illegal construction crew ran into the tunnels to stop the destruction of the fruits of their labor. After failing to leave voluntarily the police were forced to make nine arrests and escort these young men out of the tunnel.
The tunnel’s construction was disavowed by key members of the movement, including spokesperson Motti Seligson, who described its masterminds as “extremists who broke through the wall to the synagogue, vandalizing the sanctuary, in an effort to preserve their unauthorized access.”
