Thirteen young Orthodox Jews were arraigned Wednesday and pleaded not guilty to charges related to the bizarre January incident at a Brooklyn synagogue involving an illegally dug tunnel.
The men, who range in age from 18 to 21, pleaded not guilty to charges ranging from criminal mischief to obstruction of government administration in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn on Wednesday.
Four defendants are currently in Israel – where he said all but one are from – and were not present at the hearing, lawyer Levi Huebner said, adding that “no one is trying to flee” and that they will return to face the charges. charges.
The youths were ordered to surrender their passports, but did not agree to prosecutors’ demands to bar them from the Crown Heights synagogue in question.
None of these young people have been accused of carrying out the excavation.
Thirteen young Orthodox Jews were arraigned Wednesday and pleaded not guilty to charges related to the bizarre January incident at a Brooklyn synagogue involving an illegally dug tunnel.
The men, who range in age from 18 to 21, pleaded not guilty to charges ranging from criminal mischief to obstruction of government administration in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn on Wednesday.
Six of the defendants face obstruction of a government administration and 11 face felony charges of criminal conduct, the New York Post reported.
‘Violence and destruction are anathema to everything the Rebbe taught. We pray that they see the error of his ways,” Rabbi Motti Seligson, spokesman for the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, told New York Times.
The accused men all belong to that movement.
Wild scenes erupted at a Brooklyn synagogue in early January after construction workers arrived to fill in an illegally dug tunnel that was being used by young Orthodox Jews in an attempt to link the building to a nearby ritual bath.
Chaos erupted at the Chabad Lubavitch world headquarters in Crown Heights at 770 Eastern Parkway.
In December, the rabbi discovered that youths had dug tunnels under the building to access another property on the same street.
It is unclear why the youth are so attached to the property they allegedly accessed illegally: They have been at odds with the synagogue for years over who owns the main property, but the appeal of the ritual bath, or mikvah, is unclear. .
The wooden walls of the synagogue are shown destroyed, in scenes that the rabbi said were “amazing.”
The NYPD was called to try to remove the youths from the tunnels and allow the hallway to be filled with cement.
Synagogue members tore off wooden panels from inside to reveal the entrance to the tunnel and entered to prevent the tunnels from filling.
When cement diggers and construction crews turned up last night to fill the tunnel, youths protested and threw themselves in the road to block their efforts.
It took the New York police to forcibly remove them. Videos of the incident were later shared on social media.
Chabad-Lubavitch members have been digging tunnels under the synagogue for many months.
Young members of a Hasidic group in Brooklyn secretly hired immigrant workers to dig a tunnel beneath their Brooklyn headquarters when their elders refused to expand the sanctuary.
Six members of the Chabad-Lubavitch group first began digging on their own, using crude tools and their bare hands, stuffing dirt in their pockets to hide the project from their synagogue leaders, according to the New York Post.
‘Have you seen the movie ‘The Shawshank Redemption’? That’s what these young people did at the beginning: they dug and put the dirt in their pockets,” Eitan Kalmowitz, a member of Chabad-Lubavitch, told the outlet.
The youths then reportedly took up a collection to pay the immigrants to finish the work they started, and the workers lived in the abandoned building next door while the project continued.
Followers of the late Rabbi Schneerson, seen as the Messiah by many in the group, told DailyMail.com that they believe redemption will come to them when they fulfill his order to expand his most sacred site – his former home in 770.
The photo shows young men being arrested, handcuffed and taken away by the NYPD.
Scene at 770 Eastern Parkway following a fight inside Chabad headquarters that resulted in several arrests.
The NYPD worked to empty the building of people so construction crews could work.
Frustrated by what they saw as the unwillingness of synagogue leaders to work to carry out the order, young Chabad members independently began tearing down walls to connect the synagogue, which is located in a basement and already covers two buildings, with a third building next to it.
Chabad leaders are in litigation over control of the building, which is currently empty but served as a bathhouse more than 30 years ago.
But the unapproved project was discovered in December after neighbors reportedly complained and the synagogue leaders themselves moved to shut it down. When workers showed up to fill the space, some Hasidic youth refused to let them, and some of them were seen on video smashing a wall of the sanctuary with hammers.
An investigation by the city’s Department of Buildings discovered a 60-foot-long, 8-foot-wide, and 5-foot-high tunnel located beneath the world headquarters of the Chabad Lubavitch movement. New York building officials have issued emergency work orders to stabilize a historic synagogue and its neighboring structures.
A tour guide at Chabad headquarters who asked to be identified only as Baruch told DailyMail.com that most members of the group agree that the synagogue should be expanded, but think the boys did it “in the wrong way.” .
‘Thousands of people come here every year. It’s impossible to fit everyone in, especially during the Christmas holidays; We’re talking about five or 10,000 people squeezing in here. I have been here. It’s something painful. Just sweating. It’s very, very difficult.
Zalmy Grossman, one of the Chabad members, agreed with Baruch, and was even upset when he saw Chabad media director Motti Seligson deny that the group is looking to expand 770 because, he explained, that is one of their beliefs. fundamental.
“There’s a big hole in the ground that we can connect the two buildings from both sides and it becomes one big giant place, the whole underground, to connect them, to make them bigger, bigger, bigger,” Grossman said outside of the 770. .
Wild scenes secured inside Crown Heights building in early January
A police cruiser is seen outside the building, at 770 Eastern Parkway.
An NYPD officer is seen speaking with a community member.
Seligson had previously issued a statement denouncing the youth, whom he described as a minority in the synagogue.
“Students broke down some walls on properties adjacent to the synagogue to provide unauthorized access,” Seligson posted on X.
‘They brought a truck of cement to repair those walls. Those efforts were interrupted by extremists who breached the synagogue wall, vandalizing the sanctuary, in an effort to preserve their unauthorized access.’
The synagogue has been closed until inspectors determine its structural safety.
The building at 770 Eastern Parkway was the home of the movement’s leader, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, and attracts thousands of visitors each year. Its Gothic-style façade is immediately recognizable to followers of the Chabad movement and replicas of the revered building have been built around the world.
Schneerson led Chabad-Lubavitch for more than four decades before his death in 1994, revitalizing a Hasidic religious community that had been devastated by the Holocaust.
The headquarters was also the epicenter of the 1991 Crown Heights riots, which began after a seven-year-old boy was hit and killed by a car in the rabbi’s motorcade.