On Monday in New York there were clashes between the police and some members of a Hasidic Jewish community (ultra-orthodox branch of Judaism), after the discovery of an unauthorized underground tunnel dug under a historic synagogue in Brooklyn, one of the boroughs of city. The synagogue is the main headquarters of the Hasidic Jewish movement Chabad-Lubavitch. Almost nothing is known about the tunnel: who dug it, when and with what objective: the clashes began after the arrival of a group of bricklayers sent to close the entrance. In all, the police arrested 9 people from the Jewish community.
The synagogue in question is located at 770 Eastern Parkway, in the Crown Heights neighborhood: often referred to only as “770”is one of the most important religious places for the Jewish community, also as the headquarters of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, which is widespread throughout the world.
One hypothesis as to the reason for the tunnel is that it was built by a group of young extremists of the movement convinced that the expansion of the synagogue was a goal requested by the movement’s leader, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who died in 1994 and is considered one of the most influential people of the 20th century. According to some radical members of the movement, Schneerson is actually the Messiah, that is, the manifestation of God in human form: in the movement there are also those who believe that Schneerson never actually died.
The tunnel discovered under the synagogue connects the building to at least one adjacent property, and also has an entrance from the street, under a grate. The videos circulated so far show an internal entrance to the synagogue, with a very steep flight of stairs leading to a system of tunnels and rooms full of building materials, buckets, clothes and other objects, some of which are still covered in earth and rubble. In a video you can see a further very narrow and even more rudimentary tunnel starting from a hole dug in a wall of one of the rooms.
According to local Jewish press the tunnel was discovered last December, although the leaders of the movement they didn’t want to say from what they knew of its existence: Motti Seligson, spokesperson for the movement, defined the digging of the tunnel as a “deeply painful event for the Jewish community around the world” and accused a group of “extremist students” of having dug it.
Monday’s clashes began after the first arrest. After the construction workers arrived on site, a group of synagogue-goers tried to intervene to block the work to close the tunnel entrance. The police intervened in the afternoon, when part of the group began to break through a wall. For several hours the officers tried to verbally convince those present to leave the tunnel entrance free to allow the work to be carried out, and then intervened more directly, in the face of various refusals, covering the tunnel entrance with a white curtain and entering inside to arrest the people who were there.
“When they took the first person out, all hell broke loose,” he said Associated Press Baruch Dahan, a student who attended the synagogue and filmed the clashes. At that point some of those present started screaming, overturning tables and throwing prayer books all around.
The arrested people are between 19 and 22 years old and are accused of various crimes including damage and obstruction of public administration, according to police. In the meantime, the synagogue was temporarily closed for security reasons.