The Chabad-Lubavitch headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway. Photo by Roy Rochlin/Getty Images

By Louis Keene January 8, 2024

It took months, perhaps years, for a small crew of Lubavitchers to dig a secret passageway underneath the famed headquarters of the Chabad movement. They would not let it be filled so easily.

The New York Police Department was called Monday to 770 Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood, where a number of Chabad students — most in their teens and early 20s — mounted a last stand against construction crews called to fill in the tunnel connecting the synagogue at that location to the defunct Chabad mikvah around the corner.

In videos circulating on community news sources and social media, Lubavitchers can be seen ripping down the wood paneling on the south wall of the synagogue, revealing a cavernous concrete space about 20 feet wide underneath the women’s section. Several young men were sitting or standing in the space — apparently to prevent it from being filled — as scores of others watched or recorded video on their phones.

A New York Police Department spokesperson said police arrested 12 people and that there were no injuries. Charges include criminal mischief, reckless endangerment, disorderly conduct and attempted hate crimes — though the spokesperson did not have further information on the nature of the alleged hate crimes. The suspects were all between 19 and 22 years old. Video showed several men in Lubavitch garb being led out, their wrists bound with zip ties.

The images of destruction inside a sacred space at the center of Chabad spiritual life were painful for many Lubavitchers, who rushed to condemn it.

“Whose hand did not shake and tremble when they touched those walls — when they took a hammer to those walls?” Rabbi Yosef Braun, one of the heads of the Crown Heights Beis Din, said Monday in an audio recording posted to CrownHeights.info. He added: “It is as painful as can be.”

Locked in litigation

The chaos at 770 — the former home of the late Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, the sixth Lubavitcher rebbe — was the culmination of a controversy that began when the tunnel was discovered in early December, and the latest chapter in a multi-year battle between the Chabad-Lubavitch movement and synagogue leadership for control of the iconic building.

Chabad-Lubavitcher movement spokesperson Rabbi Motti Seligson said in a statement posted to X that the actions of “extremists” had forced the temporary closure of the building pending a structural safety review.

“This is, obviously, deeply distressing to the Lubavitch movement, and the Jewish community worldwide,” Seligson wrote. “We hope and pray to be able to expeditiously restore the sanctity and decorum of this holy place.”

It was unclear what motivated the creation of the tunnel and why some students reacted so strongly to the arrival of a cement truck Monday morning to fill it. Reports said the people behind the tunnel’s excavation — it was unconfirmed who or how many people that was, but sources tended to agree they began within the last year or two — had hoped to expand 770, but it was not obvious how the tunnel accomplished that.

A video posted on the CrownHeights.info Instagram in December showed a dark, dirt-walled crawl space allegedly beginning in the recesses of a now-closed men’s mikvah nearby. Large dirt mounds obstruct much of the basement.

After the tunnel’s discovery, the leadership of Beis Chayeinu — the Chabad synagogue that meets in 770 — hired structural engineers to determine the extent of the damage and the safety issue it posed, and eventually moved to fill it.

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.

But the movement, despite holding the title to the property at 784-788 Eastern Parkway, does not control the sanctuary that spans the space below it. It has been locked in litigation with Beis Chayeinu over control of that space for decades.

“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.”

Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky, Chabad-Lubavitch chairman, issued a statement Tuesday thanking the NYPD for their assistance.

Beis Chayeinu could not be reached for comment.

JTA contributed to this report.

Correction: This article previously misstated which Lubavitcher rebbe resided at 770 Eastern Parkway. It was Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, not Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson. 

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

The coming year promises to be filled with more complex and historic developments. We are entering an era where independent, fact-based Jewish journalism will be more important than ever. We need to be ready for whatever 2025 will bring, and with your help, we can be.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

$36 $500

$120 $180 Other amount