When the Lakewood Cheder started with ten children in 1966, no one dreamed it would one day become the largest Orthodox elementary school in the world. Today, as it’s consolidating its three locations into one massive campus, this veritable indoor city — with 99 classrooms, 40 resource rooms, two dining rooms, and a wedding hall — is redefining the word “school.”
How is a former US base of a major German manufacturer being transformed into a historic makom Torah? A walk through the gigantic commercial building at725 Vassar Avenue inLakewood gives its own testimony.
Dozens of workers are on site daily operating tractors laying bricks mixing cement breaking open concrete welding iron pulling wires and more in order to construct the largest Orthodox Jewish boys’ elementary school in the world.
The noise is loud the air dusty and the massive price tag self-evident but those in charge of the Lakewood Cheder’s new building project mill about the construction site with an aura of serenity and pride. And they’re staying warm. It doesn’t matter what’s falling from the sky or how cold the weather is outside.
“It’s like building an indoor city” says Rabbi Yosef Posen executive director of the cheder and its girls’ elementary twin Bais Faiga.
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