A plaque commemorating the late Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson hung outside the Chabad headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway for nearly a decade after his 1994 death.
The plaque was notable less for what it said than what it had said, before vandals chiseled out the phrase: “Of blessed memory.”
It’s a ubiquitous honorific across the Jewish world. But in Chabad ranks, when it came to Schneerson, the seventh Lubavitcher rebbe, it was a political statement, as the movement split over whether he was the Messiah, and therefore about to return to Earth — if not still alive. Those who maintain that belief are known as Meshichist — Yiddish for Messianist — and have long been ostracized by Chabad-Lubavitch leadership.
The rift is most apparent at 770 Eastern Parkway, which houses both the Chabad administration that disavows Meshichist ideology and a synagogue adorned with a huge banner emblazoned with what’s known as the Yechi, the eight-word Meshichist credo.
That division burst into public view this week with a tumultuous confrontation over a secret tunnel under the headquarters by Meshichist students that led to the arrests of nine men and the temporary shutdown of the iconic 770 building.
Much remains unclear about who built the tunnel and why. Two yeshiva students who said they were involved with the project but spoke on the condition they not be named for fear of arrest said they were taking initiative on a long-deferred synagogue expansion. But some see it as part of a Messianic quest to build a Third Temple — not in Jerusalem but in Brooklyn.
“The Messianic significance of 770 is underscored by the fact that it actually needs to be expanded,” said Ezra Glinter, who is writing a biography of Schneerson. “And not only does it need to be expanded, but in a manner of totally breaking through a barrier.”
Hellbound and Down 