Tunnels

Sermon Parshat Va’era 5784, Rabbi Sam Cohon, Congregation Beit Simcha, Tucson

 There was a strange incident last week at Chabad headquarters in Brooklyn.  For reasons that remain unclear, a group of young Chabadniks had illegally constructed a significant tunnel under the center for Lubavitch international at 770 Eastern Parkway in Crown Heights.  Police accounts say it was over 60 feet long, and while it was empty, it was some 8 feet wide.  It was apparently designed and built by a group of fanatical 19 to 21 year-old young men who believe that the late Rabbi Schneerson, the last Lubavitcher Rebbe who died in 1994, was the Messiah.  T

This passageway started in the basement of an empty apartment building behind the headquarters, snaking under a series of offices and lecture halls before eventually connecting to the Chabad synagogue.  This allowed the young diggers to have unauthorized access to the Chabad shul so they could pray and study at unusual times that they favored.

The current Chabad leadership characterized the tunnel’s construction as a rogue act of vandalism committed by a group of misguided young men, condemning the “extremists who broke through the wall to the synagogue, vandalizing the sanctuary, in an effort to preserve their unauthorized access.”

Those who dug and supported the tunnel, meanwhile, said they were carrying out an “expansion” plan envisioned by the former head of the Chabad movement, Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson.  They felt the Chabad headquarters synagogue should expand outward and encompass the surrounding the properties.

When a cement truck hired by the Chabad leadership at 770 Eastern Parkway arrived to fill in the tunnel, some of the young fanatics refused to leave the tunnel and had to be forcibly removed.  Nine of them were arrested by police and are being charged with various forms of malicious mischief and other crimes.

Look, when something weird happens in Chabad it should not surprise anyone.  Chabad’s understanding and practice of Judaism is, frankly, very close to the practices of a bizarre cult.  Their version of Judaism includes hanging photos and pictures and samplers of the late Lubavitcher Rebbe everywhere in their homes, businesses, and synagogues, a direct contradiction of the 2nd Commandment in the Torah.  They focus their studies not so much on traditional texts such as the Torah or Talmud as on the Tanya, a text written by the founding Lubavitcher Rebbe that mixes Mussar teaching, an idiosyncratic version of highly simplified Kabbalah mysticism and a preference always for the spiritual greatness of Jews over non-Jews.  Chabad sends out its emissaries, shlicihim, quite young and barely trained rabbis, with orders to bring Jews into their synagogues—and they eagerly seek to take Jews away from other non-Chabad synagogues whenever they can, and of course to raise money from them to support their eternal efforts at expansion.  No one outside of Chabad knows the value of all the real estate they have amassed over the last few decades, because of course it is a registered non-profit—but it’s huge. 

And religiously speaking, Chabad has many, shall we say, unique practices that are not aligned with other Orthodox Jews, let alone liberal or progressive Jews.

Still, tunneling under the Chabad headquarters in Crown Heights at 770 Eastern Parkway is not something we would have suspected of even the most fanatical and weirdest Chabadnik—nor is the Lubavitcher leadership calling the police and having its own people charged as “extremists” something we see every day; or ever.

But it did trigger for me, at least, an exploration of how much we have been hearing about tunnels lately, and their import and impact for Jews.

Of course, in Gaza the Israel Defense Forces have been confronted with a complex network of underground fortifications, that is, a tunnel network nearly as extensive as the New York subway system.  This has required a complex way of fighting the Hamas Palestinian terrorists who built it over the past 17 years; mind you, they built it mostly by using international aid resources intended for humanitarian use and redirected it—that is, stole it—in order to construct this deadly system of fortifications.  Israel has been fighting in these tunnels now since October 7th—and in reality, Israel has been dealing with terror tunnels for nearly two decades.  And now recent reports highlight that Hezbollah in Lebanon has an even more extensive and much more sophisticated tunnel system on the northern border of Israel, protecting its own terrorist leadership from both scrutiny and attack while allowing it to prepare for war with an Israeli military establishment that is located aboveground.

You see, in today’s world you use tunnels when you want to do something others don’t know about…

This is not exactly a new practice, of course.  At my recent ONEG conference this past week one of the topics we explored was the ways that museums are sometimes today being forced to return artifacts taken—well, kind of stolen—from other countries.  It took a while for the museums involved—which, it turns out, includes the most famous and prominent museums in the entire world—to steal—er, acquire—these treasures from former conquests and colonies, or sometimes to buy them from the people who stole or extorted them in the first place.  While much attention has been paid to the incredible treasures that the British Musem and the Louvre have in their collections—I believe that the British Museum should really be renamed “The Museum of Imperial Kleptocracy”—and the fact that they are quite unwilling to return them to their countries of origin, one of the most interesting objects of all, taken in a pretty typical act of colonial theft, sits in the Archeological Museum of Istanbul. 

That Turkish museum is utterly fascinating, containing incredible treasures taken by the Ottoman Empire from the many lands it conquered and controlled, including wonderful Greek sarcophagi, great Roman sculptures, incredible Byzantine mosaics, and artifacts taken from everywhere in the Middle East.  Of particular Jewish interest is a plaque located, when I last visited, on the third floor next to an open window.  It’s quite old and famous in archeological circles, as well among those of us who love Jewish history.

If you have ever visited Israel, particularly if you have gone on an Israel pilgrimage with me in the past, you have probably walked through Hezekiah’s Tunnel, cold water rushing over your sandalled feet as you went from Jerusalem to the source of the water.   That tunnel was built when Jerusalem was about to be attacked by the powerful and terrible Assyrian Empire in the 8th century BCE, 2700 years ago.  Hezekiah’s tunnel was constructed to give the city of Jerusalem a steady supply of water from the Gihon Spring, allowing it to survive the siege of Assyrian general Sennacherib’s army, and for the nation of Judah to survive and keep Judaism alive.  King Hezekiah ordered the construction, and it worked, an incredible feat of engineering, a tunnel that was used not to kill but to save lives.  When the workman hacking out the rock with axes, coming from both directions to save time, somehow managed to reach one another and open the tunnel they celebrated.  We know this because a plaque commemorating this incredible event was carved and put up in the tunnel itself.  It was discovered back in the 19th century by archeologists—and the Ottoman Empire government was so impressed with this plaque, which had been underground in the tunnel for over 2500 years back then, that they grabbed it and stuck it into the Istanbul Archeological Museum.  Where it still lies, its ancient Hebrew inscription testifying to the fact that there was a Jewish state in Israel for a thousand years.  The plaque has been radiocarbon dated to 700 BCE, the time of King Hezekiah.

That plaque also testifies to the fact that this tunnel brought water to Jerusalem and saved the country of Judah, and all Judaism, from the Assyrian Empire 2700 years ago.  Because, you see, tunnels can save, too… More recently there was the tunnel system—really, a reuse of the underground sewer system—that was used by the Jews during the Warsaw Ghetto uprising against the Nazis, and allowed some of the survivors of that heroic doomed fight to survive; there, tunnels were used to escape captivity and death.  And I’m told that for the superrich today, including Jews like Mark Zuckerberg, when they construct their own private compounds they inevitably include a fortified secret tunnel network so that they can survive the inevitable end of civilization. 

Now, for those of us who are not in the process of building out own survivalist compounds, tunnels can also be a kind of powerful metaphor.  Tunnels can be used to hide, and to damage; but they can also be used to save and protect, or as a means of escape.

So, in your own lives, what sort of tunnels have you constructed?  Have you built private, secret networks to hide your worst tendencies from others, and from the world?  Are you utilizing these inner tunnels to protect aspects of your life that you don’t want others to know about?  Are you hiding things, perhaps even from yourself, that you would be better off dealing with openly?  Are these tunnels below the surface concealing problems you really should seek to solve?

Or are you using these tunnels to escape from a harsh reality in your own life, an area of challenge or even danger that would be better addressed above ground?  Are you tunneling out from under the pressure of daily life as you seek a different reality?  Or are you simply using those tunnels to hide?

I suspect that none of us will be arrested for trying tunnel into the Chabad headquarters’ synagogue any time soon.  But perhaps over this Shabbat we can all examine the ways in which we use our own subterranean spaces for our benefit—and the ways in which we might change from the ways we are using them to our own detriment.  For only when we bring those things to the surface, and face them honestly, can we repair ourselves, and begin to repair our world.