It's part of a weird culty religious schism.
Basically, the mischievous youth think that their dead chief rabbi is coming back soon as the messiah and they have to prepare for his return by expanding his synagogue.
It sounds bizarre because honestly it is pretty bizarre.
Basically, it's a weird culty religious schism between a group that thinks that their dead chief rabbi is going to come back as the messiah, and those who don't.
So the teens decided to take matters into their own hands by starting the expansion themselves by secretly tunneling over to the synagogue.
Basically, the synagogue is the headquarters of Chabad. It used to be the synagogue of the lubbavitcher rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, before his death in the 90s.
There's something of a schism in Chabad between people who think that the rebbe could have been the messiah but died, wasn't the messiah, that he's going to be revived as the messiah or that he's the messiah but in hiding until the time is right.
The rebbe said a few years before his death that he wanted the synagogue there expanded. After his death, the building's been caught up in ownership disputes between the assorted organizations and factions, preventing any expansion.
Apparently, a bunch of messianic yeshiva students there got fed up with waiting, and decided to start tunneling over to the synagogue, with the idea that the tunnel would be turned into the expansion they need to prepare for (or trigger, I'm not quite sure) the rebbe's return.
Is the increase in accidents even across all road types?
Why don't meters go into light years or parsecs nicely?
Anyways, an acre is the area people would plow by ox in one day. You measured fields by the acre because in a medieval society that said something really interesting about how many farm workers you needed for a given area.
Similarly, a mile comes from the Latin for 'thousand paces', which is a fairly natural way for people on foot to measure distances.
Much like how light year says something scientifically interesting about distances to stars so we use it instead of petameters or zettameters in astronomy, people used acres and miles despite them not going into feet well.
It works because you generally don't convert between light years and meters, or acres and feet. They mostly just exist at different scales.
From what I understand, it's part of triggering the return of the messiah, the late head rabbi of that synagogue. He apparently said something about expanding the building before he died, but there's been no movement on it for assorted reasons like the court cases over the building's ownership.
So the idea was apparently that finishing the expansion would be the easier option once they already tunneled it out.
So the late head rabbi there was beleived by many in his movement to be the messiah. He died in the 90s, and ownership of the building has been tied up in court cases for a while.
He said something about expanding the building before he died, and his messianic followers think that part of triggering the messianic age is fulfilling that. But due to the court cases, that's been impossible.
So the idea the yeshiva students apparently had is that if they hollowed out the basement expansion, the easiest solution would be for the synagogue to just finish constructing it.
In other words, the tunnel isn't really practical. The point of it is just to trigger the messianic age.
This makes about as much sense as saying that a tunnel below a Catholic church or at a boy scout camp must be related to child trafficking because both organizations have had problems with pedophiles in their ranks.
These organizations have been accused of sweeping problems under the rug and protecting pedophiles in their ranks, not of pizzagatey trafficking cabals.
The official story is pretty nuts, though. From the Wikipedia page on that synagogue:
Schneerson died back in 94, for what it's worth, and was the rabbi at 770. He said something about expanding the building before he died, but due to the ownership dispute that wasn't possible.
The building contains a yeshiva, basically the Jewish equivalent of a seminary. A bunch of the messianic yeshiva students decided that they could kick-start the expansion by physically tunneling it out, so then they'd just fill it with the expansion and trigger Schneerson's return and the messianic age. So unusually insane cult-y religious nonsense, but it seems more likely than "pizzagate under a synagogue"
Another hypothesis: American stroads are an unusually deadly design. Before the pandemic, though, rush hour limited speeds and artificially made the roads look safer than they were - it's hard to kill people in stop and go traffic. The increase in hybrid and remote work since the pandemic means rush hour still isn't back to pre pandemic levels.
That doesn't quite work.
Trump's lawyers argument is that presidents are immune from criminal prosecution on any official act, even if that official act is illegal or unconstitutional; that the only remedy is impeachment.
The judge brought up ordering seal team 6 to assinate a rival as an example of an obviously illegal official act. Trump's lawyers response was "obviously he'd be impeached, but yeah, I guess if he weren't he'd be immune from prosecution".
Shooting Trump at the debate would be a prosecutable private action, according to Trump's lawyer. What Biden would have to do is to tell seal team 6 "If Trump gets on this stage, shoot him".
I mean, it's not something he himself said, so they don't even really need to do that.
Basically, what happened was his lawyer was arguing that the only remedy for official actions taken by a president is impeachment; they can't be prosecuted in court aside from that.
The judge said "a president ordering seal team 6 to assassinate a rival is an official act, yes?" Trump's lawyer said "He'd quickly be impeached for that!", then when pressed more, something about Marbury v Madson presupposing something or other, then finally when pressed for a yes or no as to whether he'd be immune from prosecution, said "qualified yes".
The whole exchange is pretty bad and worth a listen.
It's a pretty weird story.
The two important things to add to that is that 1) the rebbe specifically wanted the synagogue expanded, and 2) the people who built the tunnel think the rebbe is the messiah, who is either in hiding until the time is right or is going to be revived at the beginning of the imminent messianic age.