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A convention at North Brunswick's Cheder Menachem school on Yud Shevat, the Hebrew date when Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson took leadership of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement 60 years ago, celebrated children of Chabad emissaries as community leaders in their own right.

Cheder schools from Queens, Long Island, Philadelphia, Yonkers, N.Y., and Stamford, Conn., traveled on Jan. 25 to Congregation B'nai Tikvah in North Brunswick, home of Cheder Menachem, for the second annual gathering of its kind. Pre-K to 3rd grade students from the participating schools, all children of Chabad shluchim (emissaries in various communities), took part in prayers, performances, and workshops paying tribute to Schneerson, the seventh and final "Lubavitcher Rebbe."

In 1950, Schneerson's father-in-law Rabbi Yosef Yitzchok Schneersohn, the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, died on the 10th of the Hebrew month Shevat, and on the same day Schneerson began his leadership. Schneerson, who had no children, died in 1994.

Goldie Azimov of Chabad of South Brunswick and Chanie Zaklikovsky of Chabad Jewish Center of Monroe are the coordinators for Cheder Menachem. Azimov said the convention shows how children of shluchim -- who need Cheder Menachem's education because they are often raised in remote communities with small Jewish populations where their parents are performing outreach -- are a key part of Chabad's mission.

"It's these children that are going to perpetuate the Rebbe's legacy," Azimov said.

The conference, held last year in Yonkers, is an important experience not only for students but for their families, explained Rabbi Zalman Markowitz, who works as an education consultant at Chabad headquarters in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn and travels the world to support shluchim in remote places.

"The power behind all what these families are doing, to leave metropolitan communities and go to smaller remote communities, to bring the message of Judaism and chassidus in the world, all of this is influenced by the spiritual leadership of the Rebbe," Markowitz said. "Today, being that it marks 60 years of [the Rebbe's] leadership, it's a time for these families to reconnect with the Rebbe in order to get more fuel to perform their work."

In a workshop for 3rd grade boys, Rabbi Sholy Cohen led a Jeopardy-themed game show called "The Challenge," with final categories including Yom Tovim (Jewish holidays), Chabad History, and Who's Who in Chabad. Afterwards, Markowitz led the boys in a series of Hassidic niggunim (traditional melodies).

"I was going to speak to you, but it's so lovely to listen to you," Markowitz told them.

Kindergarten students played a Chabad version of bingo, placing candies on the appropriate spaces on their boards based on the questions of teacher Chana Rivkah Zaklikofsky. The students also decorated dioramas of Chabad headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn, to serve as boxes to hold their siddur, tzedakah, chumash, tehilim books, and Tanya, the central text of Chabad.

Teacher Chaya Glick led 1st and 2nd graders in a session called "Lighting up the World," during which students made signs for their bedroom doors by gluing colorful tissue paper and a picture of the Rebbe, and putting a sticker that said "Cheder Tzivus Hashem" (a room of worship to God), on a wooden plaque. The purpose of the plaques was to help bring about mashiach by transforming one's room into a mikdash me'at, or small temple, Glick told the students.

Pre-K students made a "mitzvah garden" by pasting pictures of three mitzvot of their choice onto construction paper flowers. On Yud Shevat, teacher Chaya Feigelstock explained, the Rebbe urged the Jewish people to perform mitzvot to make the world a place God wants to live in again, namely like the Garden of Eden during creation.

"Ultimately, that's where we want to get back to," Feigelstock said. By decorating candlesticks and pasting personal resolutions onto them, such as helping those in need or respecting others, 3rd grade girls connected to the Rebbe's mission of spreading Torah and mitzvot throughout the world, teacher Shayna Matusof said.

During the main program, students watched a film clip of the Rebbe on Yud Shevat 60 years ago, recited the 12 verses the Rebbe designated for children to say each day, and put on several performances with their respective schools.

Azimov stressed that even though Cheder Menachem has a total of about 40 students, the children come from a diverse cross-section of nine communities in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, based on the needs of Chabad emissaries in those areas.

Rabbi Eliezer Zaklikovsky, co-director of Chabad Jewish Center of Monroe with Chanie Zaklikovsky, said Cheder Menachem provides Chabad children with a "tailor-made" education that meets their needs as a peer group facing the same challenge -- being children of shluchim in communities without large Jewish presences.

"The children play a pivotal role in the schlichus (emissary) work," he said.