Identity
Cheder seeks to imbue its students with PRIDEFUL IDENTITY, deriving from a deep understanding and abiding commitment to the mission of the Jewish People for which we were chosen at Sinai:
Chosen-ness is a deeply misunderstood concept. In the context of the Jewish people, to be ‘chosen’ means to be entrusted with a role, a task, a mission that is greater than any small self as an individual. This chosen-ness imbues the Jewish nation, wherever its people may reside, with purpose and destiny. The mission is our life. It is who we are. We can’t walk away from who we are.
When it all began, Heaven was here on Earth. The physical plane, more than any of the higher spiritual worlds, was the place where the Divine Presence yearned to be. But Man, step-by-step, banished the Divine Presence from its home, with a tree of knowledge, with a man who murdered his brother, with all those things that human beings do...
Since a man chased the Divine Presence away, only Man can bring It back. This restoration began with Abraham, who extolled the Divine Unity to all of his world. And it ends with us. Our generation is capable of dissolving the veils that separate Heaven from Earth.
G-d desired to have a Dirah Betachtomim, that is, “a dwelling place in the lower realms”. All of existence, including the highest spiritual worlds and their celestial inhabitants, were created in service of G-d’s inscrutable desire to be known and to be found in even the most mundane aspects of physical existence.
The process of returning the Divine Spirit to earth, in full expression of G-d’s Essence, was initially given to the Patriarch Abraham and his family. Abraham was chosen for humanity’s Great Mission, because of his commitment to educate his children in the ways of G-d.
With the giving of the Ten Commandments at Sinai, this tradition of the Abrahamic family became enshrined in an eternal covenant with an entire nation, the Children of Israel. With the immortal words “We will do and we will understand”, the Children of Israel accepted the role as G-d’s priests, with an unbreakable commitment to place faith before intellect.
Thus, at Sinai, G-d constituted and chose a people whose identity would be inextricably bound up with its Divine mission. Faithful adherence to the mission would require a single- minded approach to education, one which emphasised the paramountcy of defining and strengthening identity.
The Torah makes quite explicit that Jews were divinely chosen for a very specific mission, existential in nature and vast in scope. (It is open to every human to be a Jew, should they wish it. They need only to enter into the same covenant as the Jewish people did at Sinai, in the same way as they did).
The task imposed upon the Jewish people – to create faith in the existence of an invisible Supreme Being, to share G-d’s plan for humanity with all mankind, and to ready the world for the coming of the Messiah – is a formidable one to say the least. The Jews believe that reverting Heaven to Earth entails ushering in a time of everlasting peace and harmony, when (to put it simplistically) there will be no death, no wars, no sickness, no envy, no competition, and the knowledge of G-d will be as apparent to humanity, as the water which covers the ocean beds.
To assist this mission, G-d gifted the Jews with the Torah, His blueprint for humanity. The Torah describes how the world was created, why it was created, and how humans can live their lives to achieve their highest potential. And, in each generation, the Jewish people is blessed with a righteous leader, a shepherd of faith, possessing unparalleled powers of prophecy.
Cheder Levi Yitzchok was established in service to this, the mission of the Jewish people. We honour the Almighty by educating our students in the ways of Torah, as expounded by the righteous leader of this generation, the Lubavitcher Rebbe.
Adapted from an article by Rabbi Tzvi Freeman, published on www.chabad.org