Maya Pontone
Hyperallergic, Jan. 10, 2024
“… if you don’t know 770 Eastern Parkway, then you’re going to walk by the building or drive by it, and you’ll never see it … But to the Lubavitcher, it’s very exciting to them and it means only one thing.”
A historic synagogue in New York City made headlines earlier this week when videos captured a dispute between Jewish worshippers and local authorities over a makeshift tunnel that had been dug into the side of the brick building. The altercation erupted on Monday afternoon at the Chabad Lubavitch World Headquarters in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood after construction workers arrived at the scene to fill the underground passageway with cement. Footage shared by witnesses to social media shows police officers clashing with a group of Hasidic worshippers inside a man-made dusty cavern while bystanders can be seen throwing seats and shoving other officers; nine people were arrested and charged with criminal mischief, reckless endangerment, and obstruction of governmental administration.
While the bizarre dispute between authorities and congregation members over the illegal excavation has led to a slew of memes and antisemitic conspiracies, 770 Eastern Parkway was famous long before it became a trending topic on social media. The Collegiate Gothic Revival building has long been an iconic emblem for the Lubavitch Hasidic faith, replicated dozens of times around the world.
As the epicenter for the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement, the three-story red-brick building has been a historic landmark for the ultra-Orthodox sect of Judaism since March 1940, when it became the home and synagogue of the sixth rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, and later the location of the offices of his son-in-law and the seventh rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson.
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