Eliza Shapiro and Katherine Rosman
NY Times, Jan. 9, 2024
“They did it to expand 770 and make it bigger. They have come to fulfill the rebbe’s wishes.”
A decades-old fight about the direction of one of New York’s most prominent Hasidic Jewish groups tipped into chaos this week, when one faction clashed with the police over a tunnel that had secretly been built to the movement’s main synagogue.
The tunnel, a passageway between the headquarters of the group, the Chabad-Lubavitcher movement, and at least one adjacent property, was first discovered late last year, according to local news reports. But on Monday afternoon, after a cement truck was brought in to fill it, some Hasidic men attempted to block that effort.
The police were called, and officers said they found a group of men breaking through a wall of the prayer space that led to the tunnel. After a resulting confrontation, which included skirmishes with officers, nine people were arrested, according to the Brooklyn district attorney’s office.
Rabbi Motti Seligson, a Lubavitcher spokesman, described those who had created the tunnel as a group of “extremist students.” ‘This is, obviously, deeply distressing to the Lubavitch movement, and the Jewish community worldwide,” he said in a written statement.
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