Movie-worthy details are emerging about the six “fanatical” young Hasidic Jews who dug a 3-foot-tall, 20-foot-wide, 50-foot-long tunnel at Chabad-Lubavitch's world headquarters in Brooklyn.
Using their bare hands and some crude tools, the rogue members began digging in secret, filling their pockets with dirt to avoid scrutiny from their sect leaders and detection in the community, the New York Post reports, citing an anonymous source in the Orthodox community.
“Have you seen the movie 'The Shawshank Redemption'?” Eitan Kalmowitz, a member of the Lubavitcher community in Crown Heights, told The Post. “That's what these young men did in the beginning: they dug and put the dirt in their pockets.”
Orthodox Jews battle police after HIDDEN tunnel discovered under Brooklyn synagogue https://t.co/Y5hQ74gRyN road @BIZPACRevision
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Obviously, work wasn't going fast enough for the particular group, most of whom were teenagers and early 20s.
Your solution? They made a collection and hired “Mexican” migrants to do it, Kalmowitz said.
Kalmowitz explained that the migrant workers took up residence in a nearby abandoned building that featured a ritual men's bathroom while the work continued.
“The Mexicans lived in the building for three weeks during the construction,” Kalmowitz said. “They slept and ate there because it was a covert operation.”
The tunnel work was done “correctly,” Kalmowitz said, noting that the migrants even installed support beams.
“I was surprised by the stealth and secrecy of it all,” said an anonymous Chabad member. “It's unbelievable to me that they kept it a secret. Yeshiva boys are very idealistic, extreme.”
The effort, according to The Post, was prompted by what the diggers believed was “a religious obligation to expand the holy state.”
A Chabad rabbi who asked not to be named identified some of the students as being from Safed, the Israeli holy city believed to be the birthplace of Jewish mysticism, known as “Kabbalah.” They are, the rabbi said, in the United States on visas.
“They are fanatics,” said the rabbi. “They are part of a small extreme group. 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 these problems. It is a big mistake to let them into the community . The school will now close their visas.”
The students, according to the rabbi, were trying to fulfill a religious promise to Lubavitcher Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, also known as “The Rebbe.”
Six years before he died in 1988, the Rebbe promised that the sect's synagogue would be expanded.
The Ukrainian-born Rebbe is seen by some members of the Chabad community as the messiah. He escaped World War II in Europe and moved to New York in 1941. From there, he launched “a global network of thousands of schools and community centers,” according to The Post.
“Scholar, engineer and visionary leader, the Lubavitcher Rebbe created a plan to spread the love of Judaism.” unpacked he wrote on his YouTube channel. “With their guidance, the emissaries or 'shluchim' have built a Jewish infrastructure around the world, ensuring that Jews from all walks of life have the opportunity to participate in Jewish life, no matter where they are from or where they come from.”
The account calls him “the most shocking rabbi in Judaism.”
(Video: YouTube)
“Extremist students believe redemption will come to them when they carry out their order to expand the group's holiest site,” The Post reports.
“Some were known to be so fanatical that they vandalized a plaque at Chabad headquarters because it referred to Schneerson 'of blessed memory,' a Hebrew honorific for the dead,” according to the outlet. “A part of the extremists believe that the rebbe is a messiah still alive.”
Allan Nadler, a retired rabbi and professor at Drew University, called the students' tunnel vision “crazy” to those outside the island community.
“The picture of the Israelis coming to Brooklyn to build illegal tunnels looks terrible,” he said. “These guys of Israeli army age should be in the army demolishing Hamas tunnels. It all seems a bit crazy.”
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