PURIM NEWS: Rabbi admits to digging ‘tunnel’ near York U

Rabbi Herschel Herschenhorn
Rabbi Herschel Herschenhorn

TORONTO — An elderly Toronto rabbi has admitted to digging the recently discovered tunnel near York University, saying he took it upon himself to start rebuilding the Bathurst Jewish Community Centre because he got fed up waiting for construction to begin.

The tunnel, which is actually more of a seven-metre-long, three-metre-deep bunker, was discovered in January by a conservation worker.

It took three years to dig out “literally with my own two hands,” said Rabbi Herschel Herschenhorn, 95, rabbi emeritus of Beth Aaron Bais Chaim Hebrew Men of Oshawa.

“I’m in pretty good shape for a man my age, but it was a big job, and none of my former congregants wanted to help,” he said.

“Just wait until they ask me to officiate at their grandkids’ bar mitzvahs, just because they don’t like the new guy and how he keeps sermonizing about shmittah and the laws of family purity. I can tell you right now what my answer will be.”

The 50-year-old BJCC was torn down in 2009 and was originally scheduled to have been replaced by 2011 with a $150-million facility, but the start date has been repeatedly delayed after community officials failed to raise the funds needed to break ground on the project.

Only the first phase of the new centre has been completed, leaving what Rabbi Herschenhorn calls a “forlorn, seemingly endless patch of green grass” covering most of the land where the BJCC once stood. “It’s like the empty shmittah fields my successor keeps yapping about.”

The rabbi said he purposely chose the wooded area near York University and the Rexall Tennis Centre because it physically resembles the West Don Valley floodplain where the old BJCC was located, and not because he was confused or suffering from dementia (though he conceded that he does get lost in Earl Bales Park from time to time).

He also denied choosing the location because he was planning to disrupt competition at the nearby tennis venue for this summer’s Pan Am Games, but said his choice of location was oddly appropriate for reasons other than geography.

“Tennis is about the only thing in the Pan Am Games that even remotely interests me,” he said, noting that he tries to play two or three times a week, and that before becoming a ba’al tshuvah and entering the rabbinate in the early 1960s, he once barnstormed Europe with Bobby Riggs as half of a tennis hustling team that specialized in swindling female members of European royal families out of their inheritances.

When asked how he had managed to excavate such a large hole without being detected, Rabbi Herschenhorn said he carried the dirt away from the site using his tallis bag, so as not to arouse suspicion among nearby residents or the small army of security personnel readying the Rexall site for the Games.

“They [the security people] didn’t seem like the sharpest knives in the drawer. I certainly wouldn’t have believed my story about holy dirt,” Rabbi Hirschenhorn said.

“After speaking to those shmoes, I’ve lost all confidence in the security for the Games. I told my grandkids to stay away from the popular events like tennis and basketball, and stick to the velodrome or Ping-Pong if they absolutely feel the need to go see something.”

He said he has since written to Games organizers suggesting they use the Jewish Defence League for security.

“Those guys have real dirt in their tallis bags, if you know what I mean,” he said cryptically.

Rabbi Herschenhorn said he hadn’t abandoned the effort when he stopped digging in late December, only that he was taking a rest. “Give me a break. I just turned 95. And like I said, my former congregants are lazy.”

He figures that at the rate he was going, he could rebuild the entire BJCC before he turns 105, which, he emphasized, is still sooner than the latest official projected completion date of June 2030.

Toronto Police and CSIS refused to comment on the rabbi’s admission, saying the investigation is ongoing, while a spokesperson in the prime minister’s office said it was too early to rule out Islamic extremism.

The York Federation of Students responded with a statement blaming Israel, because, it said, Israel is responsible for everything.