Motti Seligson, a spokesperson for Chabad, said a “group of extremist students” had secretly broken through the walls of vacant building behind the headquarters, creating an underground passage beneath a row of office buildings and lecture halls that eventually connected to the synagogue. […] The property’s manager brought in a construction crew Monday to fix the damaged walls, leading to a standoff with those who wanted the passageway to remain.
I’m sorry, wtf? While admittedly cool, wtf do you need a secret passageway through the basements of multiple buildings into your synagogue? And they completely gloss over what we on the other end of the secret passage - was it hidden behind a dumpster, a fake wall inside a speakeasy, someone’s basement?
To smuggle out the circumcisions… or in
Ding ding ding
saw one video where a Hasidic man was crawling out of a broken sewer grate. These guys were planning something else, doesn’t feel like this level of secrecy is needed just to practice your religion, even during the lockdowns.
I also can’t figure out why they’d need a secret passage, wtf?
Having a secret escape route should there be an attack isn’t exactly insane for a group of historically persecuted people when a different part of the same group is murdering a part of a rival group that is their main antagonist throughout history.
Idk a secret tunnel accessible through multiple adjacent buildings seems like more of a security risk than an asset.
If the tunnel is secret, it isn’t.
They control both buildings and someone would have to tell an enemy about it or the enemy would have to happen upon it while in the other building.
An article I read said it seemed to start at a now defunct mikvah and lead to the synagogue under the Chabad HQ.
Why? I’m not sure, but it seems like these “extremist students” are part of the small group of Lubavitcher’s who believe the previous rebbe was literally the Messiah.
The lubbavitcher rebbe said a couple years before he died that he wanted his synagogue expanded.
There’s been a bit of a power vacuum since he died, and expanding the building hasn’t been possible due to court cases over the building’s ownership.
A bunch of the students think that the rebbe is coming back as the messiah, were bored and decided that they could start the expansion by tunneling into the basement from a couple buildings over.
They like to enter via the back passage
