Cops clash with dozens of Orthodox men in synagogue as riot breaks out over secret underground tunnel
An unholy riot broke out in a historic Brooklyn synagogue when a group of rogue members armed with shovels dug a secret tunnel to gain access — and cops and hardhats tried to thwart them.
Young renegades from the Chabad-Lubavitch movement wielding “very elementary tools’’ began religiously digging the tunnel under the sect’s world headquarters in Crown Heights on the Eastern Parkway during the pandemic because higher-ups were dragging their feet on expanding the synagogue’s sanctuary, sources said.
The idea was to force the establishment into growing the space by essentially starting the effort for it — beginning with the roughly 3-foot-high, 20-foot-wide, 50-foot-long tunnel, sources said.
“The crowd keeps getting larger,’’ a source somewhat sympathetic to the rebels’ cause told The Post on Tuesday. “It’s packed on Shabbos, and during the High Holidays, it’s unbearable.”
The rebels, described as in their teens and early 20s, first gained entry into an abandoned Jewish men’s mikvah, or ritual bath, around the corner on Union Street.
They then broke through a roughly 2-by-2-foot metal gate in the former bath’s basement wall and tunneled their way under a sanctuary space reserved for women next-door to the synagogue.
Then they breached the synagogue’s main massive sanctuary.
The private pathway was discovered last month when neighbors reported suspicious noises underneath their homes, Israel National News said.
“For about a year, they were doing the digging out of the private mikvah,’’ a source told The Post of the upstarts.
“They were using very elementary tools — shovels and pickaxes, sledgehammers, stuff like that. No professional equipment. None of this was sanctioned by any authority.”
Video footage revealed the bizarre tunnel — and at least one beer can in it along with hanging electrical wire.
Also shown was a dirt-filled room in the abandoned bath and clothes and other items scattered around it.
Videos and photos captured the wild scene Monday when the diggers tried to thwart cement-truck workers attempting to undo their work at the request of synagogue authorities.
The rogues were filmed tearing down wood panels and wooden support beams as they desperately tried to get into their tunnel to protect it.
NYPD officers arrived at the scene about 3:30 p.m., and a dozen men were taken into custody.
“Some time ago, a group of extremist students, broke through a few walls in adjacent properties to the synagogue at 784-788 Eastern Parkway, to provide them unauthorized access,” Rabbi Motti Seligson, spokesman for Chabad-Lubavitch, said in an e-mailed statement to The Post.
“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.
“They have since been arrested and the building closed pending a structural safety review.”
Another statement from the headquarters added that “the group of young agitators” were primarily in the US on student visas.
“These individuals have been squatting in the synagogue and attempted to take control by demolishing walls to connect the basement to the adjacent building, intending to ‘expand’ the sanctuary,” it said.
“Steps are being taken to revoke their student visas and repatriate them to their countries of origin.”
The busted young men were charged with a variety of offenses including criminal mischief, attempted hate crime, attempted criminal mischief and reckless endangerment, cops said.
All of the suspects live in Brooklyn.
“They opened up a wall,” said Berel Bendet, 30, a congregation member, of what he witnessed Monday, noting that the diggers caused “significant enough damage.”
Some of the rioters jeered the cops and filmed their efforts to get inside the tunnel, according to Forward.
Officers were also seen holding back men outside the synagogue, the headquarters of one of the largest groups of Hasidic Jews in the world.
But Bendet said it was only a “small minority that have acted very badly” and caused the destruction.
After several hours, footage showed officers taking the men out of the tunnel in handcuffs.
No injuries were reported in the brawl.
“It is very sad,” Bendet said. “There are thousands of people who come here to pray every day. Thousands who come to learn, also.”
“You would see hundreds of people right now going to pray, but they’re all standing out here in the rain because no one can go in today.”
Synagogue leader Rabbi Yosef Braun urged other members of the Jewish community “to call [the diggers] out in all possible ways and strong terms.”
Braun was horrified that they defaced the “shul,” or synagogue, saying to that “demolish and destroy a shul — never mind the dangerous aspect, never mind the religious aspect — it’s mind-boggling.
“They need to be put in their place, put in their place in so many meanings of the word,” he said.
The riot came amid ongoing disputes over who legally owns the property.
Seligson noted that the movement has “attempted to gain proper control of the premises through the New York State court system.
“Unfortunately, despite consistently prevailing in court, the process has dragged on for years,’’ he said.
