The "Jewish tunnels" in NYC refer to an incident that unfolded in late 2023 and early 2024, not a couple of years ago—since today’s date is April 2, 2025, it’s actually just over a year old. The situation centered around the global headquarters of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, a Hasidic Jewish group, located at 770 Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood.

Here’s what happened: A group of young Chabad students, driven by a mix of religious zeal and a desire to expand the overcrowded synagogue, secretly dug a 60-foot-long, 8-foot-wide tunnel connecting several buildings in the complex. They believed they were fulfilling the wishes of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the movement’s revered leader who died in 1994 and had spoken about expanding the space. Some in the group, particularly a faction known as the "Tzfatim" from the Israeli city of Tzfat, saw this as a messianic mission tied to their belief that Schneerson is the Messiah.

The tunnel was discovered in late 2023 after construction work raised concerns about structural damage. When Chabad officials and city authorities moved to fill it with concrete in January 2024, a chaotic clash erupted. Students protested, some breaking through walls with tools, leading to a brawl with NYPD officers. Nine were initially arrested, and later, 13 faced charges like criminal mischief and reckless endangerment. Four of those charged are still awaiting trial as of early 2025 after rejecting plea deals.

The tunnel itself was a shoddy, unauthorized job—dug without permits, compromising nearby buildings’ stability. Official reports say it linked four properties in the Chabad complex, not a children’s museum or anything more sinister, despite wild rumors. Speaking of which, the internet went nuts with conspiracy theories—claims of child trafficking, stained mattresses, and bones found in the tunnel spread like wildfire on X and elsewhere. There’s no evidence for any of that. The mattresses? One video showed a single mattress being pulled from a wall during the melee, likely debris from the excavation, not proof of some underground lair. Bones? Pure fiction from social media hype.

The real story is simpler but still messy: a rogue group of students took a religious idea too far, broke the law, and sparked a legal and PR nightmare for Chabad, which distanced itself from the "extremists." The synagogue’s been partially closed since for repairs, and the incident’s left a lingering debate about internal Chabad dynamics. That’s the deal—less a grand mystery, more a case of zealotry meeting bad engineering.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5691447&forum_id=2#48806023)