Thread by @kilovh

Alright I'll explain the whole "Jewish tunnel in Brooklyn" thing to you with the proper context 🧵

In the beginning, G-d created the heavens and the earth.

This made many people very upset and was generally regarded as a bad move. 1/?

OK for real: once upon a time in Eastern Europe a movement called Chabad was founded. Its founder was Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi (d. 1812). He was many things, among them: a genius talmudist and rabbi, a kabbalist and mystic, and the rarest of things, a true original thinker.

While a true original and one of, in my opinion, the greatest philosophers and theologians in the history of humankind, he was also profoundly devoted to his own teachers, in the Hassidic tradition, and saw himself as their natural successor. The Hassidic tradition was founded a

couple of generations earlier, and one of its emphases is connection and devotion to a Master (in hassidic parlance, Rebbe) above all. Hassidim love and devote themselves to their Rebbe as the one who helps connect the soul of the Jew with G-dliness.

This aspect of Hassidic Judaism made and to a lesser extent continues to make some people nervous, however, it has been extremely thoroughly defended and broadly accepted as a legitimate manifestation of Judaism, which always had its Moses, Rabbi Akiva, Vilna Gaon.

Rabbi Shneur Zalman's Chabad movement is one movement within a much broader Hassidic world, full of dynasties of Rebbes, each with their own rich traditions, ways, etc.

Although it is not a widely studied or always emphasized point, Hassidim as part of their devotion generally see their Rebbe as a messianic figure. This word is loaded and makes people extremely uncomfortable. It may be worth pausing briefly to explain, that Hassidism is seen

by Hassidim since the founding of the movement as a redemptive revelation of Torah, a movement whose entire gist is to raise the Jewish people from the spiritual and physical malaise of exile, and return them to their own deepest soul and identity, a holy nation united with G-d.

The more that holiness and redemptive soul is brought into the world, the more the time of the general redemption, the macrocosm of that inner redemption, draws near. And the Rebbe is a Torah of flesh and blood, that general reality instantiated in a holy and saintly individual.

So much for the brief explanation.

Fast forward to the 20th century. The descendant of Rabbi Shneur Zalman, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak of Lubavitch, survives imprisonment and near-execution by the KGB and the Nazi bombing of Warsaw and after much deliberation moves to New York City.

The known reasons for this choice are varied. Some are spiritual (new york becoming a center of influence on world jewry) and some are very pragmatic (the Jews of the US are already monetarily feeding most of Eastern bloc jewry)

Thus, the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe (Lubavitch is a tiny town in Belarus that was the home of this longest-surviving branch of the Chabad movement from its 2nd through 6th rebbes) comes to Brooklyn and moves into 770 Eastern Parkway, in Crown Heights.

The 6th Rebbe passes away in 1950 and is succeeded by his son-in-law (and distant cousin), Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson (son of Shneur, you see) in 1951. Though he doesn't live in the building, 770 is where his office is located, and remains the HQ of the Chabad movement.

Now you have to understand, the Chabad movement in the US in 1951 can practically fit into a single small room. It is a tiny, poor, immigrant community, remnants of a world that the nazis and bolsheviks destroyed between them.

They had nothing, no resources, no connections, barely any English, a tiny immigrant community in what was then a prestigious middle class Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn.

What they got in 1951 however was capital-L leadership.

The 7th Rebbe (henceforth "the Rebbe") declares in his first official speech as Rebbe that this is the generation that will bring a final end to exile and usher in the Messianic age. He declares this to about a livingroomful of people.

He then sets about changing world Jewry.

Books could be written about the Rebbe, and have been, but suffice it to say, the Rebbe creates from nothing a mass movement devoted to hunting down in love the Jews that Hitler hunted in hatred, with bringing Torah and Mitzvot in love (its Commandments) to every single Jew.

Chabad centers (with no central funding whatsoever, by the way) are opened all over the world. The Rebbe pushes and pushes for a single Jew to perform a single commandment. He seeks to revive a broken and orphaned generation. He expands Chabad into a massive global movement.

All of this is just what an atheist know-nothing can appreciate about the Rebbe. He barely slept and was totally publicly devoted to other people for decades. Stories of Jews and non-Jews' meetings with him are countless. And always, he emphasizes the imminent Redemption and how

to get there.

We now get to a sensitive part of the story, but I'm going to try to stick to simple public fact. The Rebbe's emphasis on Moshiach (the Messiah) grows greater and greater in his final years of leadership. The Rebbe passes away in 1994. The Rebbe's Hassidim very

much believed, and believe, that if anyone in this generation was a candidate to become the Final Redeemer according to Jewish Law and tradition, it was and is the Lubavitcher Rebbe. However, following the Rebbe's passing, as the dust settles there is a bit of a split.

Some Hassidim fervently believe that spreading the awareness of the Rebbe as The Redeemer is a core part of bringing about that redemption. They are "the meshichistim". Their flag is yellow and ubiquitous.

The majority of Hassidim and an ever-growing consolidated core of Chabad official organs believe this is not the Rebbe's will, and that this emphatic insistence is at the very least counterproductive.

Now, another issue - 770 in the Rebbe's teaching, like the home and place of any Tzaddik or righteous individual, is imbued with the holiness of the Rebbe. To the Rebbe, that it was the place of teaching of his father in law, is of paramount importance.

Under the Rebbe's leadership, the synagogue(s) and other facilities at 770 were expanded multiple times, with fanfare, ritual, celebration. The expansion of the building is not merely technical or pragmatic, but a holy undertaking and a Chabad matter in some sense.

Another thing you should know is that even beyond the by-now old distinction between meshichistim and "anti-s" as they are known, Chabad is highly decentralized and full of very typical politics, territorialism, fights over money, and all sort of other very human issues.

It was this way even when the Rebbe was there to talk to the disputants, and now all bets are off (the Rebbe was and is the only *true* authority that to be Chabad is to respect per se; there is no real hierarchy and no replacement).

Since the Rebbe's passing, 770 has been a disputed territory. There are many details and incidents and characters in this saga, and I haven't cared enough to really find out about most of them. However, who controls the synagogue has both practical (eg do we proclaim the Rebbe

to be the Messiah after prayers?) and obviously emotional and religious significance.

In short the legal and official ownership of the building is one group. But they have not been able over years of uneasy truce to deal with the radical meshichistim who've claimed the turf.

These radical meshichistim, who are themselves a minority within that group and a tiny minority in Chabad, are mostly Israelis, and are known as "Tzfatim" after the city of Safed where they have a large yeshiva. They are not above a bit of violence in defending that 770 turf.

And so, to the current contretemps. You have a global decentralized massively successful organization that runs charities and synagogues and helps Jews with problems physical and spiritual all over the world...with an official HQ partially occupied by something like a street gang

The Tzfatim have taken it upon themselves in recent months (unilaterally, as it were) to expand 770. Their way of doing this is to start breaking into an adjoining basement (the main synagogue of 770 is in the basement), an old decommissioned ritual bath or mikveh.

770 is indeed far too small for the massive number of people who wish to pray there, study there, etc. Something that more and more Hassidim have been seeking a proper solution to for years.

However, a bunch of teenagers breaking down walls in their free time...you be the judge.

In any case, this week the actual ownership of 770 called in the cement trucks to repair this damage and stop the progress on the "expansion." the Tzfatim responded territorially. The police then became involved. And you have videos of yeshiva students escaping arrest through

sewer grates.

I think that's most of the factual context, you're welcome.

Appendix A -

Excellent question, no! There is no successor. The more you learn about the Rebbe, the more you realize that no normal human being could fill those shoes; certainly no Hassid would presume to. The Rebbe, to our sorrow, had no children.

Appendix B -

Some more details and elaborations on the "work" that the Tzfatim had been doing.

Appendix C -

If you wish to read more about this thread's topics, here are some good books:

The Philosophy of Chabad by Rabbi Nissan Mindel
The Rebbe's Army by Sue Fishkoff
Rebbe by Joseph Telushkin

Appendix D -

The broad interest in this story on Twitter and beyond is largely antisemitic, with filth like this a dime-a-dozen on the internet.

Appendix E -

Another excellent question! Observant Jews are in the habit of writing God "G-d" out of respect, though to outsiders it may appear otherwise. More info here:

chabad.org/library/articl…

Appendix F -

There is a map.