Brooklyn yeshiva threatened with mass shooting by prison convict

Rocco Parascandola, New York Daily News on Jun 2, 2025

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NEW YORK — A letter traced to a prisoner doing time for setting fire to a rabbi’s home was sent to a Brooklyn yeshiva vowing mass shootings, police sources said Monday.

Convict Matthew Karelefsky, 47, is being investigated for sending the letter from Clinton Correctional Facility to Yeshiva Mikdash Melch on Ocean Parkway near Avenue M in Midwood, sources said.

The letter, reported to police on Sunday, says that “a mass shooting is currently being worked on in three different zip codes.”

Two of the zip codes cited in the letter, 11230 and 11210, cover parts of Midwood and Flatbush and have significant Jewish populations, as does the third, 06710, in Waterbury, Conn.

It was not immediately if the NYPD, already on heightened alert following the latest major U.S. antisemitic incident, a flamethrower attack that injured eight in Boulder, Colo., took additional steps in Midwood and Flatbush. Police in Waterbury did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Karelefsky in March 2024 was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison after he was convicted of attempted murder and arson.

In June 2019, Karelefsky, his arm adorned with a “Kill Rabbi Max” tattoo, torched Rabbi Jonathan Max’s house, the fire spreading to two adjacent homes on E. 17th St. near Avenue N in Midwood.

The blaze sent 13 people — including a 6-week-old child — to the hospital, police said. All the injured survived.

Shortly before his arrest, Karelefsky texted a Daily News reporter: “So many people know that this ‘holy man’ uses his big beard and big hat to cover up the BIG sins that he does in private.”

Karelefsky had accused the rabbi of being a pedophile but the rabbi at the time said Karelefsky was mad that he protected Karelefsky’s wife and children when the couple divorced.

“He needed an idea to get me, and that was the simplest way,” Max said after the fire. “He’s a very, very sick man, and he developed a very good plot.”

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