DAMOJO Spotlight: Ohel Yaacob - Ike S. Franco

All right, good morning everybody. We are here today, August 22nd, 2025. It's a historic day for the community. I'm standing here with my very good friend Ikeil Franco in the oil yakov synagogue, better known as the Lawrence Ahul. Uh today we're celebrating the groundbreaking of the new Kakamaru Torah Center, which will be going up uh hopefully in the next few months. Iiki, give us a little background. You really you spearheaded the project in Nishul a couple of years ago. Uh you built it. It's serving the community in an amazing way. And now we're going to the next phase. Tell me a little bit what we should expect. >> Well, 10 years ago around this exact time, we stood on a land that was just dirting doing a groundbreaking for this synagogue, this holy synagogue that Kamaroo was the rabbi of that synagogue. Kamaruk's house was right behind us here. And he spent hour days upon days spent many hours consulting with people giving direction to community leaders and helping keep the community together as one great kahal. When he passed, it was a big loss for us. And uh with the permission of the family, I asked if we could build a Torah center in his name on the very property where he once lived. To me, that's the best way that we could show our gratitude for all the things that this rabbi, this giant of a rabbi did for us. >> What should we expect in this new building? We this will become the center a beacon of Torah learning and it will house close to 300 people that could be learning in a bed midrash. We'll have several classrooms. We'll have a multi-purpose ballroom. We will have many shiim uh a lot of simot and what I could tell you that it will just also be a extension of the great things that we're doing in this shul it's only going to now allow our kahal to have a lot more room to enjoy their tora learning sot and prayers. When we built this shul 10 years ago when we started that project there were many people who said why do you need such a big shul we have enough shools in the Jersey shore you don't have such a big kahal 10 years later with Hashem's help with our great leadership in our rabbis led by Rabbi Eli Mansaw and Rabbi Mala and Rabbi Cohen I should name every one of them Rabbi Eli Cohen Rabbi Joey Mizrahi Rabbi Elbazi by Shelby. Every one of these rabbis have created a need for us to expand. The expansion is here today because of the merit of all the rabbis of our kaha. They made this shul flourish with tora learning with many different programs. We have every single day during the summer 250 campers coming to the shul praying here getting some Torah getting some nourishment and they go to camp. We have at night a kids program that 180 kids are coming to Rabbi Shelby's programs every night. All of these things we didn't anticipate when we built the shul. Today will be the we'll be embarking on this monumental day to have the expansion but more importantly the ability to continue to grow and we're so thankful that we have this opportunity but it wouldn't be possible if it wasn't the zoot of our great rabbi. >> When should we infect the building up? Next week >> give it a year. Another year come back and see me if the building Ike it'll be up in 6 months. So I thank you for everything you're doing for the for the community and best of luck. Always good peace.