What's Under Your Feet in New York City?

hotstickyballs•about 2 hours ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_synagogue_tunnel...

dataviz1000•about 2 hours ago

Meanwhile in place of power, cable, and phone lines there is a related 18 mile translucent line hung in order to turn the entire city into one big happy home called a *eruv* -- following the law of the highest of high courts to the letter. [0]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSldb9IMDVU

woodruffw•about 1 hour ago

AFAIK the eruvim are not dictated by “high courts” (there is no “high court” at all), but are instead constructed and maintained by various Orthodox groups. Not all Orthodox groups agree about their propriety either, so the presence of an eruv doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s recognized.

(Also pedantic, but it’s not the entire city: there’s a Manhattan eruv that covers a large part of Manhattan, while Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx have separate smaller eruvim.)

masfuerte•41 minutes ago

It's quite frustrating. The story ends with:

> four defendants refused to accept a plea deal and were set to be tried in April 2025

I can find loads of stories reporting those facts, but I can't find an account of what happened next. Did they change their pleas? Were they tried?

cogman10•about 1 hour ago

This is a very weird story.

Religious infighting with 2 fundamentalist sects that somehow boiled down to some people digging a tunnel connecting 2 buildings because of... reasons? Like it seems like they thought that if they built the tunnel that'd magically lead to everyone deciding "You know what, this expansion project is a good thing!"

Very bizarre.

Regardless, I'm glad it got shut down before a collapse killed someone.

woodruffw•about 1 hour ago

> Religious infighting with 2 fundamentalist sects that somehow boiled down to some people digging a tunnel connecting 2 buildings because of... reasons?

The very short version is that both groups claim ownership of that building, and one of them wants to expand it significantly. Neither group is allowed to modify the building because of a court order, so the one that wants to modify it did it surreptitiously in an attempt to create facts on the ground that would modify the status quo.

(Obviously none of this is sensible, but the actual reasons are pretty quotidian.)

rdtsc•about 1 hour ago

An illegal tunnel in a densely populated city like that is a bold move.

This was unexpected though:

> stills taken from videos of the synagogue's interior as well as the room leading to the tunnel, which showed a stained mattress and high chair, respectively, fueled antisemitic conspiracy theories

> A USA Today fact-check stated that the stained mattress seen in viral videos had been removed from behind wood paneling of the synagogue rather than from the tunnel itself, undermining online speculation that the mattresses were in the tunnel

zkmon•9 minutes ago

Fascinating. Anything that grows up above ground has a proportionate growth below ground as well.

mike_hock•about 1 hour ago

That's where the mutants live. Also, there's a thousand year old, old New York City buried underneath that had bathroom booths with phones in them.

What's Under Your Feet in New York City?

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