The word ‘Lakewood’ is synonymous across the globe with a community that revolves around the precepts and values of Yiddishkeit, and which places unwavering emphasis on the supremacy of Limud HaTorah.  Many towns and cities have attempted to emulate Lakewood’s “Ihr HaTorah” status, but few have been able to capture the vibrancy that exists in the bustling New Jersey suburb – except for one.  For the past twenty years, Rabbi Aharon Assayag has relentlessly pursued a single objective: creating an oasis of Torah in the desert of Southern Israel. Working quietly but consistently over two decades, he has heroically established a thriving kehilla of thousands of bnei torah families steeped in the sublime splendor of Torah learning in the southern city of Netivot.  Rabbi Assayag’s decades-long efforts to establish a top-down Torah-centered community in Netivot were not without its challenges, but with clear-eyed vision and perspective, remarkable planning abilities, and interminable pursuit of his goal, he not only created the “Lakewood of the South,” but simultaneously – albeit unintentionally – demarcated himself as the de facto leader of Charedi Jewry across the vast Negev region.  But now, Rabbi Assayag’s dream of further expanding the ascendent frum kehilla in Netivot is facing its greatest obstacle. On October 7th, as Hamas terrorists massacred Israelis less than a 10-minute drive from the kehilla, the community celebrated Simchas Torah with dampened spirits. Within days, the entire Netivot was turned into a veritable ghost town, as the families were forced to evacuate – destroying their lives and income, and bringing a forbidding silence to the walls of the shuls, yeshivos, and batei midrashim that Rabbi Assayag had put his all into bringing from concept to reality.  Since that awful day, Rabbi Assayag has been on a mission not only to save his community from destruction, but to restore the mellifluous kol hatorah that pervaded Netivot just three months ago.  The olam hatorah in America is galvanizing to his mission, and with your help, Rabbi Assayag’s continued vision for Netivot can emerge from this unprecedented crisis not only renewed, but stronger than it ever was before.