Melee over secret tunnel at Brooklyn Chabad headquarters ends in 12 arrests

NEW YORK — A dozen students at Brooklyn’s Chabad Lubavitch World Headquarters were taken into police custody as they tried to stop attempts to block a secret tunnel they had dug in a bizarre attempt to expand the house of worship, officials said Tuesday.

Cops were called to the famed headquarters on Eastern Parkway near Kingston Ave. in Crown Heights around 6 p.m. Monday when several Orthodox students began breaking a cement wall with hammers.

Earlier in the day, Chabad administrators had ordered the tunnel the students had made in a basement study hall be sealed.

Students were attempting to build a tunnel from the synagogue to a closed Chabad mikvah, or bath house, located around the corner, the Jewish Forward reported.

Motti Seligson, a spokesman for Chabad headquarters, said students had started building the tunnel from the closed mikvah “some months ago.”

But their attempts to dig the tunnel made the building, which had been on Eastern Parkway since the 1930s, unstable, forcing administrators to seal the tunnel, officials said.

Outraged that the tunnel was being sealed up, students tried to block the cement installers from filling in the entrance to the tunnel, leading to the police to be called.

“Students broke through a few walls in adjacent properties to the synagogue to provide them unauthorized access,” Seligson said on X. “A cement truck was brought in to repair those walls. Those efforts were disrupted by the extremists who broke through the wall to the synagogue, vandalizing the sanctuary, in an effort to preserve their unauthorized access.”

Video of the interaction shows cops trying to push people back from the mouth of the tunnel, which at some points was covered with a sheet.

Additional videos show students pulling wooden paneling from the wall and using hammers to break the cement blocks.

Police said that a dozen students were taken into custody. Charges were still pending Tuesday morning although at least five will face criminal charges.

Synagogue leaders called the students who tried to build the tunnel “messianic student extremists.”

“The Chabad-Lubavitch community is pained by the vandalism of a group of young agitators who damaged the synagogue below Chabad Headquarters,” Chabad Chairman Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky said in a statement. “These odious actions will be investigated and the sanctity of the synagogue will be restored. Our thanks to the NYPD for their professionalism and sensitivity.”

The building was closed “pending a structural safety review,” Seligson said.

Department of Buildings inspectors will be visiting the property Tuesday to see if the building is stable, an agency spokesman said.

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