Extremist students from an ultra-Orthodox Hasidic group are secretly hiring foreign labor to help them build a controversial tunnel at the sect’s world headquarters in Crown Heights — all to fulfill what they feel is a religious obligation to expand the holy site, The Post has learned.
Six members of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic rebels secretly began digging a 3-foot-tall, 20-foot-wide, 50-foot-long tunnel by themselves, using crude instruments and their hands. They put dirt in their pockets so their work goes unnoticed by sect leaders and the wider community, sources in the orthodox community told The Post.
“Have you seen the movie ‘The Shawshank Redemption’? That’s what these young men did in the beginning: They dug up and put dirt in their pockets,” said Eitan Kalmowitz, a member of the Lubavitcher community in Crown Heights.
Then, the men, mostly in their teens and early twenties, pick up the slack and hire a group of foreign laborers to complete the job, Kalmowitz said, describing the workers as “Mexicans.”
Nine men — including Henachem Mulakando (left) and Shmuel Malka (center) — have been arrested for criminal mischief and reckless endangerment after the NYPD tried to stop the construction of a secret tunnel under a Chabad-Lubavitch synagogue in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Extremist yeshiva students William C Lopez/New York Post initially used their hands to dig tunnels as part of their religious mission to expand the headquarters of Chabad-Lubavitch, the sect’s holiest site. The tunnelers, described by one source as “part of a small extremist group,” then hired migrant laborers to work on them, according to community sources.
The workers lived in an abandoned building containing a men’s ritual bath near Chabad’s world headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway — known as 770 in the community — during the period of the secret work, Kalmowitz said.
“The Mexicans stayed in the building for three weeks during the work,” Kalmowitz said, adding that the migrants did the work “correctly” and installed the support beams. “They sleep and eat there because it’s a covert operation.”
Another Chabad member said he was shocked at how they managed to hide it.
“I was shocked by the secrecy and secrecy of it all,” said a 38-year-old Chabad member who did not want to be identified. “It’s incredible to me that they hid it. Yeshiva boys are very idealistic, extreme.”
A view of Chabad-Lubavitch’s world headquarters in Crown Heights, where a group of extremist students dug the controversial tunnel. Gregory P. Mango
Some of the students got visas from Safed, a holy city in Israel considered the birthplace of Kabbalah, or Jewish mysticism, said a Chabad rabbi who declined to be named.
Controversy over the secret construction project erupted earlier this week when community members discovered the tunnel and brought in cement workers to fill it. On Monday, wild scenes broke out when the NYPD was called after several students tried to prevent laborers from entering the tunnel. Nine men, aged 19 to 21, were arrested for criminal mischief and reckless endangerment.
“Some time ago, a group of extremist students broke down several walls in the area adjacent to the synagogue at 784-788 Eastern Parkway to give them unauthorized access,” Rabbi Motti Seligson, a spokesman for Chabad-Lubavitch, said in a statement to The Post on Tuesday. He did not return a follow-up request for comment Wednesday.
Lubavitcher Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson — the Rebbe — vowed to expand the synagogue at 770 Eastern Parkway in Crown Heights in 1988, six years before his death. Alamy Stock Photo
As a result, leaders will no longer sponsor educational visas that allow foreign students to attend yeshiva in Brooklyn, said a Chabad rabbi who declined to be named.
“They are fanatics,” said the Chabad rabbi. “They are part of a small group of extremes. The concept of Chabad is to be nice to everyone, and we are nice to them, but we never thought for a second that they would make such a problem. It would be a huge mistake to allow them into the community. The school will now close their visas.”
The Chabad rabbi told The Post that the students were trying to fulfill a religious promise to Lubavitcher Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson — known as the Rebbe — who vowed to expand the sect’s synagogue in 1988, six years before his death.
A conference of rabbis gathered for a photo in front of Chabad-Lubavitch’s holiest site in Crown Heights. Leaders worry that the controversy surrounding the tunnel is bringing unwanted scrutiny to the insular community. Alamy Stock Photo
Schneerson, who is buried at Montefiore Cemetery in Springfield Gardens, Queens, known as Ohel, is seen as a messiah by some members of the Chabad community. Argentina’s president-elect Javier Miele visited the grave days after his election in November.
The Rebbe, as he is known to followers of the Chabad movement, was born in Ukraine and became one of the most important Jewish leaders of the twentieth century. He fled the war in Europe, settled in New York in 1941 and created a global network of thousands of schools and community centers.
Extremist students believe that redemption will come to them when they fulfill his orders to expand the group’s holiest site.
Images of the late Rebbe are plastered throughout the Crown Heights community, where Chabad has its world headquarters. Alamy Stock Photo
Some were so notoriously fanatical that they vandalized a plaque at Chabad headquarters because it referred to Schneerson’s “blessed memory,” a Hebrew honorific for the dead. Some extremists believe that the rebbe is a living messiah.
Now, the tunnel has exposed deep-rooted divisions within the messianic movement and brought unwanted attention to a deeply isolated community, one expert told The Post.
“The image of the Israelis coming to Brooklyn to build an illegal tunnel looks horrible,” said Allan Nadler, a retired rabbi and professor emeritus of Comparative Religion/Jewish Studies at Drew University in Madison, NJ. “These boys of Israeli military age should be in the army that demolishes the Hamas tunnels. It all seems a bit crazy.”
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
