NEW YORK — On Monday, the New York Police Department (NYPD) was called to seal an illegal tunnel built into the Lubavich movement’s headquarters in Brooklyn. According to witness reports, NYPD prevented a group of young Chabad students from disrupting the sealing of the tunnel.
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The tunnel, reportedly dug in the last year, provided unauthorized access to the synagogue on 770 Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights Neighborhood, where students were allegedly studying Torah inside it, as reported by the Times of Israel.
The police were called to extract the students from the tunnel after arresting some of them. Videos on social media showed chaotic scenes of students attempting to violently protest the police action.
On Tuesday, the Chabad Lubavitch Headquarters denounced the action, calling for an investigation into the vandalism caused by the ‘youngsters.’
While it is not clear why the tunnel was built, an American-Jewish newspaper highlighted that ten arrests were made. According to the community news outlet CrownHeights.info, speculations were made that they had hoped to expand the synagogue. According to Chabad-Lubavitch movement spokesperson Rabbi Motti Seligson in a statement on X, formerly known as Twitter, this move led to a temporary closure of the building, and he added, “Lubavitch officials have attempted to gain proper control of the premises through the New York State court system.” Seligson wrote on X, “Unfortunately, despite consistently prevailing in court, the process has dragged on for years.”
Furthermore, according to Haredi news source Collive.com, the students who tried to stop the filling of the tunnel were mostly from Israel and associated with Chabad Messianism — whose adherents believe that Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the seventh Lubavitcher Rebbe, was the Messiah. The Chabad-Lubavitch movement publicly disavows those beliefs.
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