Chabad Tunnels

Crown Heights, January 8: Hasidic Jews and the NYPD get into an altercation after unauthorized tunnels are found under a synagogue. Arrests are made, and news spreads, but very few know the real reason for these tunnels. What people don’t see is that this is a story of multi-generational division and tension in the Chabad community, a community that most see as homogeneous but has a lot more nuance than meets the eye.

You may have seen these signs (pictured above) around the city. This man is Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, former leader of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement. But he passed away in 1994, so why do these signs say, “Messiah is here!”? The answer is that they are put up by Meshichists, a sect of Chabad—the same sect that made the tunnels—who believe Schneerson is the Messiah and will come back to life.

The Crown Heights Chabad Headquarters has looked like disputed gang territory for many years. Fights and yelling are a commonplace between the Meshichists and Anti-Meshichists. Since Schneerson’s death in 1994, no successor rebbe has been agreed upon. In the midst of infighting and a lack of progress in the temple, Meschichists began building the tunnels around 2018 to honor Messiah Schneerson’s goals of expansion. They were caught, and the tunnels were blocked off, but the Meschichists didn’t give up. They tried to break back into the tunnels, but at that point police were called and the whole story unsurfaced.

There is no question that these tunnels were illegal and dangerous to the structural integrity of the surrounding buildings; however, there is no evidence that they were used for anything illicit. Many anti-Semites have used this event to justify their conspiracies and hateful views, and it must be made clear that there is no justification for those views—this is a story of religious infighting and conflicts within Chabad.