The schism at the end of the tunnel

The discovery of a secret tunnel attached to a Brooklyn synagogue earlier this month quickly went viral, fueling antisemitic conspiracy theories that long predate the internet. Endless Thread host Ben Brock Johnson and producer Grace Tatter dig into why this group of Brooklyn yeshiva students actually got into extracurricular excavation.

Show notes

This content was originally created for audio. The transcript has been edited from our original script for clarity. Heads up that some elements (i.e. music, sound effects, tone) are harder to translate to text.

Ben: Endless Thread producer Grace Tatter.

Grace: Endless Thread host, Ben Brock Johnson.

Ben: You're on the tunnel beat.

Grace: Yes. A shared beat.

Ben: It is a shared beat. We have two tunnel episodes from Endless Thread. It's just, we're in a tunnel moment, you know.

Grace: Yeah, but it's nice to be talking to you today from the safety and warmth of my own home, because last time we spoke, I was calling you from the great outdoors here in central Brooklyn, and it was very cold.

[Ben: What's your location? 

Grace: I am at 77 Eastern Parkway, in Brooklyn, New York. The world headquarters of the Chabad Lubavitch movement.]

Grace: I didn't see anything, which was disappointing, despite your best prompting and trying to get me to just observe my surroundings.

[ Ben: Where's the tunnel? Is the tunnel there? You see the tunnel?  

Grace: You can’t see a tunnel from above ground, and it looks like just a normal day.

Ben: No sign of a tunnel?

Grace: No sign of a tunnel.]

Ben: So you didn't see evidence of the tunnel.

Grace: That is the thing about secret tunnels, right? They're, they're not easily detectable. That would kind of defeat the purpose –

Ben: Of the secret tunnel. What was the news story that happened that led to this discussion?

Grace: OK, so a few weeks back you sent me this Out of the Loop Reddit post of somebody saying “what’s the deal with these secret tunnels in New York.” And literally as I received this message from you –

Ben: I was texting you when I probably shouldn’t have –

Grace: I’m always happy to receive text messages about tunnels. You can literally text me about them any time, Ben.

Ben: Perfect, Perfect.

Grace: Because I was literally talking about this story as you texted me. I was already obsessed with it.

Ben: You had already gone deep down the Rabbit Hole…which let’s be honest is another word for Tunnel…. On the secret Tunnel being dug in the basement level of a Synagogue in New York City. And you were telling your friend about it–

G: Who was fascinated by it, because it’s a fascinating story, so I couldn’t stop talking about it. This story involves Chabad which is one of the world’s largest Hasidic movements and groups. The word Chabad is actually an acronym of three Hebrew words meaning Wisdom…Understanding…and Knowledge.

B: Alright, Grace, let’s get some wisdom, understanding and knowledge about why there’s a secret tunnel in Chabad headquarters and why there are already a bunch of conspiracy theories and news stories about it.

Grace: Let’s start with the news story, which was a brouhaha at this building, 770 Eastern Parkway, which is the world headquarters of, as we've mentioned, the Chabad movement. This commotion occurred when a cement truck came in to fill a tunnel that had been covertly dug in the basement of the building without the owners of the headquarters even realizing it.

Ben: So this is not up to code. This has not been approved by a city organization

Grace: Oh yeah, the New York City building inspector was not happy.

Ben: As with so many living spaces in New York, uh, something slightly under the radar may be going on here.

Grace: Exactly. So a few months ago, a neighbor had contacted the owners of the building to say, hey, I'm hearing like, weird sounds coming from underground. Not weird in a normal New York way, like something else is going on. The leadership looked into it and they found this huge tunnel, this 60-foot tunnel.

Ben: 60 foot. That’s Shawshank Redemption level. That is like a serious tunnel situation.

Grace: So, the tunnel was connected from this building, from a synagogue in the basement of this building to a deserted mikveh, which is a ritual bath for women. Again, the mikveh was deserted. It hadn't been used for like 10 years.

Ben: Why do you think this went so viral? Because it really went crazy viral.

Grace: Yeah. I mean, I feel like I was tickled by it. I think tunnels are so appealing to us because it's like something that's like, right there, right beneath your feet. This idea, it just adds a little mystery and intrigue to your life to feel like I could just be living my normal life and kids could be digging a tunnel right beneath my apartment building, who's to say? I mean, that's exciting.

Ben: Is it? Is it exciting or concerning?

Grace: Maybe if it's right underneath my apartment building, it's concerning.

Ben: So the cops showed up and were like, listen, you can’t be doing this.

Grace: Yeah, you can't be digging tunnels and we gotta fill it in. And the, this tunnel was dug by young people, by I'll say men, not boys, around the ages of 18 to 22, and yeah, they did not take this filling in well. Here’s a video that someone posted online of the incident.

[Sound from video]

Ben: Well, it's a lot of work. I did a lot of work to dig this tunnel out. You're telling me you're going to fill it in now? Come on!

Grace: No, I get that, but then they were like taking sledgehammers to the wall and kind of like making the opening, exposing the tunnel further.

Ben: They were like, guys, guys, it's not a tunnel. It's not a tunnel. It's just like, uh, it's just like a little bit of a, it's a, it's a reading nook.

Grace: See, doesn't that capture your imagination? A secret reading nook? That's the thing. We all want a secret place to hide from the world sometimes. That is, like, so relatable.

Ben: That is very relatable. That is true.

Grace: So, yeah. The young people did not take it well. They built, like, barricades out of, what looks like pews to me.

Ben: Benches. Long benches.

Grace: Yeah, lots of shouting and screaming and eventually, though, nine of the men were arrested. Three more were charged with, disorderly conduct and the tunnel was not long for this world. It's being filled in.

Ben: So very soon after this happened, the conspiracy theories began to pop up. and I sent you another post, Grace, from Reddit from the r/conspiracy community that was basically like don't believe anything that USA Today is saying. Which is, for some reason, humorous to me. Anyway, all of these things, all like, the truth is being scrubbed from the internet.

Um, USA Today, like, had a reporter talk to, somebody about the apparent mattresses that were supposedly, part of this whole tunnel thing, but the mattresses don't exist, according to USA Today, and the conspiracy people were like, don't listen to USA Today, they're erasing the evidence of the tunnels from the internet, and the, like, and the fact that this is all part of a child sex trafficking ring, a la QAnon.

Grace: Right. So I can say from – Not that my investigation walking around was, deep investigative journalism, but I did not see any mattresses, um, that has been debunked. Also like there'd be lots of reasons to have a mattress. If you're building a tunnel you need like a soft – there's a lot of reasonable explanations to use a mattress if you're building a tunnel. I don't know that from experience. But –

Ben: Sure, Grace. Whatever you say. Whatever you say. Yeah, you want to put your knees down in a way that feels comfortable and is not, like, hurting your knees. I mean, these are old people considerations, but still. You dig a tunnel without something to sit on or kneel on.

Grace: Yeah, even if you're a young yeshiva student. But antisemitism on the internet feels like it's at an all time high right now. There's a lot of reports suggesting that it is at an all time high. It doesn't help that, X, or the social media network formerly known as Twitter is completely unmoderated, and so it's really, these theories have just flourished.

But one way to fight conspiracy theories is facts, right? So let's talk more about what we actually know about the why of how this tunnel, or why this tunnel was dug after the break.

(Sponsor break)

Grace: I have a question down memory lane for you. Did you go on any strange field trips when you were a kid?

Ben: Strange field trips?

Grace: Yeah. Any, like, field trips that are just, like, very distinctive to, like, where you lived?

Ben: Ha, ha! I did the Washington D. C. trip, and you know, that was strange because of 8th grader hijinks, I suppose.

Grace: I also went to D. C., but my most memorable field trip was when I was a junior in high school. The school I went to, it was all about experience based learning and using New York City as a classroom. So it was in a suburb north of the city, so we took a lot of field trips around the city. But the one that I remember the most is we had this project on the concept of assimilation. And my group, I think there were six of us, was decided to go out to Crown Heights in Brooklyn, um, to spend the afternoon with the Chabad Lubavitch community.

Ben: Okay. Alright.

Grace: And, um, because there were some Jewish students in my group, the rabbi we were meeting with didn't want us to take the train home on Shabbat. So we actually ended up spending the night there. So I spent like 25 hours in this very specific

Ben: In this building? Okay.

Grace: I did go into the building.

Ben: Okay.

Grace: Are you familiar with Chabad?

Ben: Not at all. It's all totally alien to me. Every once in a while I'd make a mistake going from one part of Brooklyn to another part on my bike and I would by accident ride through, the Hasidic neighborhood and be, uh, you know, uh, amazed that it exists in this insular community exists in, in Brooklyn, but beyond that, no.

Grace: Yeah. No, I mean, it really feels like you're in kind of another world. when you're in some of these neighborhoods. So Hasidic people are ultra Orthodox Jews. They adhere to rules and customs that most Jewish people don't. They have a very distinctive style of dress, which is how, you know, when you're on your bike and all of a sudden you're in one of these neighborhoods,

Ben: The big round furry hats, etc.

Grace: Exactly. Yeah. Long black coats. And even if you've lived in New York your entire life, even if you just live a few blocks from one of these neighborhoods, it's entirely possible you might not ever really know a Hasidic person because they have their own schools, their own places of worship, their own ambulance service. It really does feel like this, like parallel society within the city.

Ben: I was like, all the women have the same haircut. And the same hair. And then I realized that they're all wearing wigs. Which is wild.

Grace: And there's also a lot of gender segregation, right? Certainly gender segregated schools, but men and women also, if you're not in the same family, you're not going to touch.

Ben: And I would also say like, I guess like a thing that I struggle with as somebody who lived adjacent to these neighborhoods in Brooklyn. I think like for a long time, I was like, okay, you do you, you know, like, I'm not trying to yuck somebody else's yum religiously, like, okay, go on with your bad self, Hasids. But then, like, I started to learn a little bit about how women are treated in this, like, community. and I was like, oh no, this is, this is not actually, this is, this is problematic, actually. I don't know. I guess I'm just saying that out loud.

Grace: Yeah, and there are different sects within the Hasidic community. So, how women are treated or educated in one community might be very different than another just a few blocks away. The Lubavitch are different than a lot of the other, um, groups of Hasidic Jewish people in Brooklyn because they're actually a little less insular. So they're known for their outreach to the broader Jewish community, to promote Jewish knowledge and tradition. So there are Chabad centers. all over the world on a lot of college campuses. and maybe because of this mission of just like outreach and of promoting Jewish culture. I think that that's why, I mean, like, we really didn't know this rabbi. And he was just like, yeah, like you kids, like you can just. Why don't you just sleep over at my house with like my kids like that's not actually the picture of like insularity, right?

Ben: No, it's not.

Grace: But yeah, when I went on this, we weren't allowed to carry our phones with us because on Shabbat there's a prohibition on carrying things, so we were just, like, totally out of contact with everyone for 24 hours, which now I feel like teachers and parents wouldn't have gone for it, but it was a different time.

We were there in October. So it was around the high holidays. And so lots of Lubavitchers from all over the world had gathered here because 770 Eastern Parkway, the world headquarters where this tunnel is built is kind of, um, almost like a sacred space for their movement. So there are people from all over the world. And at one point, um, the teenage daughter of the family we were staying with took us inside. It's kind of a Gothic style building. It looks like something you'd see on Harvard's campus. Like, it looks very scholarly. And it's not actually that big. Like I'm trying to think of a comparison. I don't know – from the outside, it kind of just looks like a school and it like is maybe even smaller than like a lot of high schools are in New York City. It's not huge. It was just absolutely bursting with people. I was up on the balcony with all of the women because again, men and women aren't together. The girls were just trying to press as close to the window so they could see what was going on below, which was a lot of singing and dancing and the women were singing too, but they were so close to each other, you couldn't really dance. It was kind of a mosh pit situation.

So I didn't realize until this story, that within Chabad, within this building, there's actually been this long internal struggle so The Worldwide Chabad Lubavitch Movement, as I keep saying, owns the building, it's their headquarters, legally, but there's an offshoot of Chabad that operates another synagogue within the building, and that's where the tunnel was dug.

Ben: Aha.

Grace: The leaders of Hasidic movements are called Rebbes. And the last Lubavitch Rebbe was hugely influential. His name was Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, and he died in 1994, but he’s never been replaced.

[Mourning the death of the Lubavitcher rabbi has been difficult for his followers because they believe he would  never die...]

A lot of Lubavitchers – including the ones who operate the synagogue in 770 where this tunnel was built –  believe that the Rebbe is going to  come back; that he's the messiah. Some people even believe that the Rebbe didn't actually die, and that he's still alive and in the building. They set up his prayer lectern and clear a path for him to enter and exit every prayer service.

Ben: There’s some strong Jesus vibes here. Resurrection, never really died…

Grace: Yeah, the messianic tropes. The lawyer representing some of the students who dug the tunnel said that they thought they were fulfilling the Rebbe's mission to make the synagogue bigger, and that they were just a little overly enthusiastic and that they “have beautiful ideas of the world and it doesn’t exactly comport with reality.”

Ben: They're like, let's dig a tunnel, man. We gotta make more space for all these people coming into our congregation. That's, that's the idea. That's the story.

Grace: Yeah.

Ben: What if you're, but what if you're like a new member of the congregation and they stick you in the tunnel? That's, that doesn't sound good.

Grace: Yeah, I don't know what the seating chart, the seating chart was, and the official spokesperson for Chabad Lubavitch, so again, worldwide organization does not, does not believe that the Rebbe was the Messiah, so are at odds with these young people, but they said, “it is a juvenile fantasy to think that a dugout 450 square foot, five foot high crawl space is some kind of grand synagogue expansion.” So I – it doesn't sound to them like a nice place to sit or a good plan. But yeah, so that's what we actually know. Which I think is still a pretty  interesting story. I think that you can have a lot of drama without getting into conspiracy. I love a schism.

Ben: I love a schism, she says. Can we talk a little bit more about the conspiracy piece of this though? Like, why, why all the conspiracy theories about this, do you think?

Grace: I mean, there's been anti-semitic conspiracy theories for centuries, right? So I think that a lot of times when there's certain keywords that are just going to activate really harmful narratives, and I think unfortunately, especially right now, tunnel, Jewish, like for a lot of people on the internet who are already often perpetuating mistruths and spreading hate, that's just like catnip to them.

Ben: Yeah.

Grace: There’s also been a lot of discussion about the tunnel system in the Gaza Strip. And in addition to the definitively hateful conspiracy theories about child trafficking and blood libel there were people drawing false comparisons between Hamas and how they use their tunnels to these young people in Brooklyn.

Ben:  It's a weird tense global moment, that is like connected to all these really terrible things that are happening in the world. It’s a strange thing.

Grace: Yeah, and maybe mistrust is kind of at an all time high. I think specifically with this conflict, like, I think a lot of us are confused about which news sources to trust.

Ben: Yeah. Secret tunnels are like a key ingredient for believing that nobody really knows what's going on because they're like, you know, they're, they're hidden. They're, they're underground. And so like, there, there's like a literal version of that that we think about and then there's like a, whatever, a philosophical version of that that we think about. And If we're all feeling like we can't trust what we see in plain sight, what's in front of us, then we're all thinking about, in a weird way, we're all thinking about secret tunnels.

What’s happening next in this story, do you think? So, like, did the, did the cement truck show up? Like, is it actually filled in? What, like, where is this going?

Grace: My understanding is that the cement truck came and filled it in. It affected the structural integrity of like some of the buildings around it. But the world headquarters is fine and can still be in use. So I guess one of my bigger questions, which now I will be paying attention to is what's going to happen within this community. I mean, talk about like awkward roommates, um, they already had a schism and now the owners got fined a bunch of money for this tunnel being built that they didn’t even want built.

Ben: The passive aggressive notes left on the fridge in this building are gonna be off the charts. Please refrain from digging tunnels without telling me. It's not cool. Signed, other congregation.

Grace: Exactly. So every time now I walk by there, every time I get off the subway stop, I'll, I'll be trying to pick up on the mood, pick up on the vibes.

Ben: All right, keep us posted on the vibes.

Grace: Absolutely, will do.

(credits)