Young members of a Hasidic group in Brooklyn secretly hired migrant workers to dig a tunnel under their Brooklyn headquarters when their elders refused to expand the sanctuary.
Six members of the Chabad-Lubavitch group first began digging on their own, using crude tools and their own hands, stuffing dirt in their pockets to hide the project from their synagogue’s leaders, according to the New York Post.
‘Have you seen the movie ‘The Shawshank Redemption’? That’s what these young men did initially: they dug and put the dirt in their pockets,” Chabad-Lubavitch member Eitan Kalmowitz told the outlet.
The young men then reportedly took up a collection to pay migrants to finish the work they started, and the workers lived in the abandoned building next door while the project continued.
In the building next door, an abandoned ritual bathhouse, the boys hoped to expand their synagogue at 770 Eastern Parkway, as directed by the sect’s “Messiah” Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson.
Members of the synagogue on Monday tore away interior wooden panels to reveal the entrance to the tunnel and entered to prevent the tunnels from being filled.
Police returned to the shelter on Wednesday evening to protect the workers who filled the spaces with young men and migrant workers
Kalmowitz’s claims could explain the mattresses and other items seen on viral videos of the tunnels, sparking numerous conspiracy theories online.
Followers of the late Rabbi Schneerson, seen by many in the group as the Messiah, told DailyMail.com they believe redemption will come to them if they fulfill his command to expand their holiest site: his former home at 770.
Frustrated by what they saw as the unwillingness of the synagogue’s leadership to work to carry out the order, young Chabad members independently began tearing down walls to protect the synagogue, which is in a basement and already two buildings to be connected to a third building next to it. Chabad leaders are embroiled in a lawsuit over control of the building, which is currently vacant but served as a bathhouse more than 30 years ago.
But the unapproved project was discovered in December after neighbors reportedly complained, and the synagogue’s leaders themselves tried to shut it down. When workers showed up to fill the space, some young Hasidic men refused to let them in, and some were seen on video breaking through a shrine wall with hammers.
A dozen young men, all Chabad students, were arrested Monday but released shortly afterwards. According to the NYPD, three of them were issued summonses and six were criminally charged with mischief and reckless endangerment.
Police returned to the shelter on Wednesday evening to protect the workers who filled the spaces with young men and migrant workers.
An investigation by the city’s Department of Buildings revealed a tunnel 60 feet long, 8 feet wide and 5 feet high, located beneath the global headquarters of the Chabad Lubavitch movement. Construction officials in New York have issued emergency work orders to stabilize a historic synagogue and adjacent structures.
A tourist guide at Chabad headquarters, who only wanted to be identified as Baruch, told DailyMail.com that most members of the group agree that the synagogue needs to be expanded, but think the boys are doing it “in the wrong way.” way’ have addressed.
Kalmowitz’s claims that migrant workers lived in the space could explain the mattresses and other items seen on viral videos of the tunnels, leading to numerous conspiracy theories online
Followers of the late Rabbi Schneerson, seen by many in the group as the Messiah, told DailyMail.com they believe redemption will come to them if they fulfill his command to expand their holiest site – his former home at 770, seen above.
The synagogue is closed until inspectors determine its structural safety
‘Thousands of people come here every year. It’s impossible for everyone to fit in, especially during the holidays. We’re talking about five thousand people coming in here. I was here. It’s painful stuff. Just sweat. It’s very, very difficult.
Zalmy Grossman, one of the Chabad members, agreed with Baruch and even became upset when he witnessed Chabad media director Motti Seligson’s denial that the group wants to expand 770 because, he explained, this is one of their fundamental beliefs.
“There’s a big hole in the ground that allows us to connect the two buildings from both sides and it becomes a big gigantic place, the whole underground – to connect them together, to be bigger, bigger, bigger,” Grossman said outside 770.
Seligson had previously issued a statement denouncing the young men, whom he described as a minority at the synagogue.
“Students broke through some walls in adjacent buildings of the synagogue to gain unauthorized access,” Seligson wrote on X.
‘A cement truck has come to repair those walls. Those efforts were disrupted by the extremists who broke through the synagogue wall and destroyed the sanctuary in an attempt to maintain their unauthorized access.”
The synagogue is closed until inspectors determine its structural safety.
The building at 770 Eastern Parkway was once home to the movement’s leader, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, and attracts thousands of visitors every year. The Gothic Revival facade is immediately recognizable to followers of the Chabad movement, and replicas of the revered building have been built around the world.
Schneerson led the Chabad-Lubavitch for more than four decades before his death in 1994, revitalizing a Hasidic religious community devastated by the Holocaust.
The headquarters was also the epicenter of the 1991 Crown Heights riots, which began after a seven-year-old boy was struck and killed by a car in the rabbi’s motorcade.