The discovery of a secret tunnel eventually led to a massive brawl
inside a 100 year old synagogue in Brooklyn, New York, known as 770.
The synagogue serves one of the largest groups of Hasidic Jews in the world.
Now, luckily, no injuries were reported from this brawl, believe it or not.
But what the hell sparked it?
What is behind the brawl in the first place?
What got people so fired up?
Well, it was all over the discovery of a tunnel and an attempt by authorities
to fill it with cement.
So you see a gentleman coming out of that tunnel?
This is.
This isn't in the Middle East, guys. This is in Brooklyn, okay?
This is in Brooklyn.
So the tunnel was discovered just last month when neighbors to the synagogue
reported suspicious sounds coming underneath their homes.
They're like, there's some stuff happening under our homes.
We don't know what this is. So they reported to the authorities.
At that point, the tunnel is discovered.
They discovered it in late 2023, when a project to upgrade the building
or the building's plumbing was underway, and so neighbors of the building reported
suspicious noises under their homes.
With the discovery of the tunnel, many began to fear that it was actually
leading to, you know, an unsafe structure, that there was going
to be damage to their homes if they didn't do something about these
underground tunnels under their homes.
And by the way, the tunnel stretched under at least one other building.
Now, following the discovery of the tunnel, authorities were called
and the authorities were there to basically fill the tunnel with concrete.
And apparently that is what led to the brawl.
And I want to be clear, there's been conflicting reporting on this story.
When I was reading about it recently, there were claims that the tunnel was
built specifically to skirt Covid orders that closed down religious buildings and
and that, you know, people wanted to continue worshiping.
And so they needed a secret pathway or passageway into the synagogue.
But I don't think that's really what's going on here.
So why was the secret tunnel built in the first place?
This is where it gets complicated, and I hope that I'm pronouncing names correctly.
But apparently members of the Chabad Lubavitch movement have reportedly been
digging out a tunnel underneath Crown Heights Synagogue for nearly a year.
The Jewish outlet forward reported that it was apparently designed
to reach an abandoned women's mikvah, or ritual bath, around the corner
and expand the synagogue.
Now, expand the synagogue is one of the reasons that you might find
in the reporting on this story.
And apparently the riots came amid ongoing disputes
over who legally owns the property.
So in a statement following the altercation, Chabad Lubavitch Rabbi Moti
Selig Seligson noted that a sect of the messianic Chasidim movement has attempted
to gain proper control of the premises through the New York state court system.
Unfortunately, despite consistently prevailing in court,
the process has dragged on for years, and Israel National News also reported
that authorities found that large underground tunnel in the main study hall,
which several students claim to have dug in an attempt to expand the building.
Now, people did get arrested for this.
It is a confusing story, and to be quite frank, I am completely
unclear over what the real reasons for this tunnel happen to be.
Again, conflicting reports, but let's get to the arrest.
So the synagogue leader, Rabbi Yosef Braun, urged other members
of the Jewish community to call them out in all possible ways and strong terms.
Ron was horrified that they defaced the shul or synagogue,
saying to demolish and destroy a shul.
Never mind the dangerous aspect, never mind the religious aspect
is mind boggling.
They need to be put in their place, put in their place
in so many meanings of the word.
And at least a dozen men were taken into custody.
According to the New York Post, ten received criminal misdemeanor charges,
another was charged with obstructing government administration,
and one other received a summons for disorderly conduct, according to sources.
So some are arguing that this was really about a property ownership dispute
and that there was an effort to expand the property, obviously illegally,
and that when authorities were called to fill the tunnel with cement, the brawl
broke out in response to that because they did not want the authorities to do it.
So was as a New Yorker, you noted that there are, you know, you're
involved in some chats with with people, you know, lighting up messages with this.
So what do you think is behind it?
You know, man, I think people don't have a hard time understanding, especially
because, like, I feel like a lot of.
Jewish related issues have been in the news for a while now.
There was, of course, the nonsense with Kanye West and his anti-Semitism.
Kyrie Irving stuff in the NBA that was like big in the news.
And obviously the war that's happening on the Gaza Strip,
has been in the news since October 7th, and there's been a lot of stuff in there.
And I think a lot of people.
Don't understand that there are there's a diverse set of Jewish people, right?
- Totally. - Yep.
There's like Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David, like very famous Jewish people
who, you know, were, you know, I guess pretty secular Jews, if you will.
And then there's these ultra orthodox Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn.
And if you have had any experience
or contact with that sort of community
in Brooklyn, oftentimes they can feel very hermetically sealed.
It's it's almost like it's a city or a colony or a state within the state itself.
Like, and often times it feels like they play by different rules.
Right?
People will note that they have, you know, public school busses and,
public schools that are strictly ran and attended to by only Hasidic Jews.
Like, there's this idea that they're this extralegal group in the city,
whether that's true or not.
Right. I don't know.
I can't pretend to know the ins and outs of how they marry,
their, you know, religious identity in the city of New York with, you know,
being part of a state, a city, whatever.
I don't know the ins and outs of how that marries each other, but but people from
the outside looking in, it's just like, bro, could you imagine anybody else
making tunnels in New York City?
Like, it's just not a thing that you could even think of.
And so, you know, I have a hard time believing
that the NYPD could even crack this case.
Like I said, this is a very close knit, closed off community.
Like, like like this.
This is not in it's in conversation with the rest of the Jewish community in
New York, but it's its own separate thing.
You think that's the reason for the weird, conflicting reporting?
Because none of this has been clear to me, right?
Like, I've read so many different reports on what transpired, and each
report seems to have a different reason for why the tunnels were built.
And I apologize to our audience for not having the clarity that I
typically like to have when I cover these types of stories, but I just felt like it
was an interesting enough story to share, which is why I'm doing it.
But there's there's a massive downside to the lack of clarity with this story
that I've been noticing on social media.
I'm wondering if you noticed as well, was where some of the more
conspiratorial minded people.
- Assume some of the worst stuff. - Yeah, yeah.
And so I'm seeing.
Oh, they're they're housing little kids in there.
They're doing sex, bad sex stuff, blah blah, blah blah, blah.
I like I have no reason to believe that that's the case.
Like that's, you know, that's a crazy leap in my opinion.
However, what I will say, because again, of the nature of the that community
in New York City is it's closed off.
So I'll give you an example.
Let's just say the cops bust, you know, some drug ring in Crown Heights,
which is a traditionally, West Indian neighborhood, Caribbean
neighborhood, people from the West Indies, and also a lot of Hasidic Jews as well.
Right.
Like they bust some black guys selling drugs.
You know what?
They have contacts uptown with the Dominicans,
with the Cubans or the Colombians, where they might purchase their drugs from.
And those people have this like they have like, sort of other people
who might know things about what's happening within that group of people.
- They branch out. - They that they can talk to.
They who how is the NYPD going to figure out
what's happening within that community?
It's not a thing. They do their own thing.
It's a very, you know, to the point, honestly.
And a lot of people don't know this. Like when.
When you're black, you know, a lot of people will attribute your
problems for being black with you're not doing it like the Jews, which obviously
is a very anti-Semitic statement.
We know that.
But there's this idea that especially black New Yorkers like,
if we would just get our shit together like the Jews got it,
they got their own schools, they got their own carpenters, they got their own lives.
They do everything together.
There's this racist trope that a Jewish dollar takes, you know,
12 years to leave the community.
A black dollar leaves the community in four hours, blah, blah, blah.
All of these tropes and these stereotypes come out of the fact that that, like,
these folks are doing their own thing, you know, and I just, I don't I just don't
know how you get good reporting from that.
You know what?
I shouldn't say that there are a lot of people who have left the community.
Documentaries have been made about them.
There's been decent reporting about people who have left,
and they can tell you some of the stuff, some of the problems within the community.
But I really do wonder how they get
information, when, you know, again, like,
there's not a Hasidic desk at the New York Times, you feel me like it's just not.
- Yeah. - Yeah, it's a really good point.
And it at least sheds light on why I had so much difficulty
figuring out what was what was really behind this story and those tunnels.
But just real quick, going back to what you said about some
who lean into those tropes, urging members of the black community to basically like
self-segregate, I hate I hate all of that.
- I hate it so, so much, and I do. - Socialism is gonna save us.
And because the allegedly that's what the Jews did.
I just I don't think that it's helpful.
And I don't think that urging communities to self-segregate based on their race
is going to be helpful in any way.
It just continues to divide us.
And I do see, like, you know, I don't think it's a huge contingent
of progressives, but I do see some progressives leaning into that as well.
And guys, don't take that bait, okay? We need to bring people together.
We need to build broad coalitions.
We should appreciate each other's cultures, at least the good elements
of people's cultures.
Obviously, there are some cultures that have some elements that aren't so good,
and I don't want to celebrate that.
But, you know, overall segregating communities isn't helpful,
and we shouldn't be working towards something that, you know,
in generations and decades prior we were working so hard to move away from.
But here we are.
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