What we know about the car ramming at Chabad-Lubavitch Headquarters in Brooklyn

Chabad Lubavitch headquarters in Brooklyn on Jan. 28. Photo by Louis Keene

By Louis Keene and Jacob KornbluhJanuary 29, 2026

CROWN HEIGHTS — A driver crashed a car into an entrance of the Chabad-Lubavitch world headquarters in Brooklyn on Wednesday night, damaging the building on a night thousands had gathered there to celebrate.

Video circulating online and verified by eyewitnesses shows a vehicle repeatedly driving into the building’s doors at 770 Eastern Parkway in the Crown Heights neighborhood, the main synagogue of the Chabad movement and one of the most recognized Jewish institutions in the world. One witness said the driver had yelled at bystanders to move out of the way before he drove down a ramp leading to the doors.

Police arrested the driver at the scene and the synagogue was evacuated as a precaution.

Rabbi Motti Seligson, a spokesperson for the movement, said on X that the ramming “seems intentional, but the motivations are unclear.” But he said the evening’s festivities would carry on elsewhere undeterred. Rabbi Mordechai Lightstone, Chabad’s social media director, said in a post on X that the attack did not appear to be antisemitic.

The incident occurred on a festive evening in the Chabad world — Yud Shevat, the day that Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson took the movement’s reins in 1951. Chabad revelers from around the globe travel to Crown Heights each year to celebrate the occasion at farbrengens, or toasts, that are spread out in Chabad homes all over the neighborhood. The largest one is held at the movement’s iconic headquarters — Schneerson’s former home — with as many as 3,000 people in attendance.

Avrohom Pink, a 19-year-old Chabad yeshiva student, said the group had concluded watching videos of the Rebbe for about an hour and were filtering out of the building when the incident occurred.

He and a couple dozen others stood near the top of a ramp down to the pair of doors, a sedan turned into the driveway. Its driver — Pink said looked like he was in his late twenties or early thirties, with shoulder-length hair — yelled at people to get out of the way.

“He was trying to pull in, yelling at everyone to move out the way, interestingly — didn’t want to run people over, I guess,” Pink said. “Everyone moved out the way, and then he just drove down the ramp, rammed his car into those doors.”

While the car managed to push in the wooden doors, there was nobody in the anteroom they led to. The approximately 1,000 people Pink estimated were still in the building were behind another pair of doors on the other side of that room. Over the din of their celebration, they couldn’t hear what was going on, Pink said.

The incident is being investigated as a hate crime by the NYPD Hate Crimes Task Force, Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said.

During the election campaign and since taking office, Mayor Zohran Mamdani has repeatedly said he is committed to protecting Jewish New Yorkers and ensuring security around synagogues and other houses of worship.

The attack follows a rash of antisemitic incidents across the city. On Tuesday, a rabbi was verbally harassed and assaulted in Forest Hills, Queens, and last week, a playground frequented by Orthodox families in the Borough Park neighborhood in Brooklyn was graffitied with swastikas two days in a row. In both incidents, the suspects have been arrested. Antisemitic incidents accounted for 57% of reported hate crimes in 2025, according to the NYPD.

While the driver’s intent remained unclear, condemnation poured in from elected leaders.

City Council Speaker Julie Menin called it a “horrifying incident” and a “deeply concerning situation.” New York State Attorney General Letitia James, who has close ties to the community, posted on X, “These acts of violence against our Jewish communities, and any of our communities, need to stop. Now.”

Mayor Zohran Mamdani arrived at the scene about two hours of the incident being reported and denounced the attack. “This is deeply alarming, especially given the deep meaning and history of the institution to so many in New York and around the world,” Mamdani said in a statement, standing alongside Tisch, who is Jewish. ”Any threat to a Jewish institution or place of worship must be taken seriously.” The mayor added that “antisemitism has no place in our city” and expressed solidarity with the Crown Heights Jewish community,

During the election campaign and since taking office, Mamdani has repeatedly said he is committed to protecting Jewish New Yorkers and ensuring security around synagogues and other houses of worship.

The incident came during a rash of antisemitic incidents across the city. On Tuesday, a rabbi was verbally harassed and assaulted in Forest Hills, Queens, and last week, a playground frequented by Orthodox families in the Borough Park neighborhood in Brooklyn was graffitied with swastikas two days in a row. In both incidents, the suspects have been arrested. Antisemitic incidents accounted for 57% of reported hate crimes in 2025, according to the NYPD.

Pink, who lives in Crown Heights but originally hails from England, said he had flown in the previous four years for Yud Shevat celebrations.

On the day of his inauguration 74 years ago, Schneerson gave his speech declaring that the seventh generation of Chabad — his generation — would be the one that brings about the Messiah.

“It’s almost like the Rosh Hashana for us, for Lubavitchers,” Pink said.

His reaction to the crash was less fear than outrage.

“This is one of the holiest shuls in the world,” Pink said, “the shul of the Rebbe, on Yud Shevat, where thousands of people have flown in to be with the Rebbe in the Rebbe’s shul on this special day, and he’s going to drive in and destroy the Rebbe’s shul? How dare he?”

Others were inclined to see the timing as auspicious.

Izzie Gurevich, 21, had walked to the headquarters to take in the scene with two classmates from Machon L’Yahadus, a Chabad women’s yeshiva nearby. The trio were carrying tambourines — a ubiquitous women’s accessory on Yud Shevat that references Miriam the prophetess, who danced with the instrument after the crossing of the Red Sea in the Book of Exodus. Schneerson had implored his followers to prepare their tambourines for the day the Messiah arrives.

Gurevich and her classmates said the crash was a sign of the coming of the Messiah.

“The things that are happening the world right now — the wars and all the other bad things — we have a lot of prophecies that tell us that before Mashiach comes, that will happen,” said Faiga Banina, her classmate. “Now we see this attack on the Jewish people, and it’s one more sign.”

When Banina told Shirly Grobninski, her roommate, she didn’t trifle with the details. “She came into the room saying, ‘Mashiach is coming, Mashiach is here. The car went into the door, and the door for Mashiach is open,’ Grobninski said. “I said, ‘My bag is packed.'”