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(JTA) — Neal Behrendt’s bar mitzvah was the primary Jewish coming-of-age ceremony celebrated inside Temple Montefiore in Las Vegas, New Mexico, in additional than 75 years.
That’s partially as a result of the native Jewish neighborhood is tiny — Neal’s mom, Nancy Terr, remembers that when her household moved there in 1958, locals joked that they doubled Las Vegas’ Jewish inhabitants.
But it surely’s additionally as a result of Temple Montefiore’s constructing has been a church for the reason that Fifties.
Now, Terr and others in Las Vegas, New Mexico, a metropolis of about 13,000 roughly an hour’s drive from Santa Fe, need to purchase again Temple Montefiore, the primary synagogue within the New Mexico Territory. They’ve launched a crowdfunding marketing campaign to do exactly that, setting a aim of elevating $200,000 by the tip of September.
Already, they’ve raised almost half of the aim, bringing in lots of of donations from everywhere in the United States and past after their plea unfold on social media this week.
The Las Vegas Jewish Group, an official nonprofit since 2010 however an off-the-cuff group for a lot longer, has been taken with shopping for the constructing for greater than 20 years, Terr mentioned. But it surely wasn’t made out there on the market till final month, because the native archdiocese scales up its property gross sales to be able to compensate survivors of sexual abuse by members of the clergy.
When the church introduced that it will be promoting the property, rumors swirled {that a} native college wished to buy the land and, nicely, flip it right into a parking zone.
“That despatched us right into a tizzy to think about that happening,” mentioned Terr, who says she has begun however not but accomplished the appliance course of to get Temple Montefiore on the Nationwide Register of Historic Locations.
Devoted the week earlier than Rosh Hashanah in 1886, the synagogue constructing was established because the creation of the railroad introduced Jewish retailers, largely of German ancestry, out west.
Although Jews have been by no means an outsize inhabitants in Las Vegas, they have been well-regarded locally. Half of the individuals who donated to the funds for the Eighteen Eighties building of the synagogue weren’t Jewish, in keeping with “A Historical past of the Jews in New Mexico” by historian Henry Tobias, and the synagogue’s opening was accompanied by a efficiency from a Presbyterian choir. Town’s mayor, Louie Trujillo, instructed the Las Vegas Optic in March, “This city wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for the Jewish retailers who settled right here within the 1800’s.”
In 1922, because the Jewish neighborhood continued to develop, the constructing was moved to a different location just a few blocks away. However by 1950, the inhabitants had fallen a lot that the neighborhood couldn’t maintain a congregation, and companies at Temple Montefiore have been canceled. The Las Vegas Bible Church bought the constructing for $8,000 in 1957, however as a result of want for intensive repairs, the church bought the constructing to the Santa Fe Archdiocese in 1964, and it’s now in use as a campus Catholic neighborhood middle at New Mexico Highlands College.
The native Jewish neighborhood benefited within the Nineties from a sudden phenomenon of individuals discovering their crypto-Jewish ancestry — Jewish households who transformed to Catholicism through the Spanish Inquisition, however who secretly maintained Jewish customs — and embracing their Jewish heritage.
However for 65 years, native Jews have needed to journey to Santa Fe, the place there are a number of synagogues, for normal companies. They’ve additionally rented the Temple Montefiore constructing for particular occasions, in keeping with Terr, however they needed to cowl crosses and different Christian symbols to take action.
The neighborhood as we speak is small however nonetheless presents programming for Jewish locals, together with Israeli dance classes, social occasions, Hanukkah celebrations and cleanups on the historic Montefiore Cemetery, one of many first Jewish cemeteries established west of the Mississippi River. It additionally holds occasions for worldwide college students at United World School of the American West, a boarding college that’s a part of a community initially funded by the Jewish businessman Armand Hammer.
Diana Presser, the group’s president who moved to Las Vegas within the Nineties after visiting and falling in love with the small metropolis, has been concerned within the Jewish neighborhood ever since.
“For me, the Jewish neighborhood is an actual blessing,” mentioned Presser, who estimates that there are 20 Jews residing in Las Vegas. A core dozen of them, she mentioned, have organized companies through the years, typically utilizing a visiting rabbi and typically on their very own, in neighborhood members’ houses or in rented areas.
Now they’ve launched into a way more formidable effort — to lift the funds wanted to take again possession of Las Vegas’ historic synagogue. The group has additionally gotten one bridge mortgage in addition to ongoing funding from the Jewish Federation of New Mexico. (The federation has lately confronted turmoil after lots of its board members and its CEO resigned amid allegations of harassment and mismanagement towards the CEO. Terr is a present board member, in keeping with the federation web site.)
This week, the Las Vegas Jewish Group launched a GoFundMe that, as of Thursday, had raised almost $100,000. Help has are available in on-line and domestically from Christians who need to see the neighborhood thrive, Terr mentioned, noting that they’d profit from getting access to native Hebrew lessons. The group is more and more assured that it may possibly purchase the constructing — however the price of sustaining the 136-year-old constructing stays a priority.
The group has some fashions to take inspiration from. Simply final month, the Jewish neighborhood of Helena, Montana, closed a take care of the Catholic Church after a months-long effort to purchase again the state’s first synagogue — additionally supported partially by means of crowdfunding. In a ceremonial signing Aug. 26, the constructing was handed again over to Montana’s Jewish neighborhood. Terr hopes her neighborhood in Las Vegas can have an identical consequence and cooperation from the church.
“It’s all the time been a dream to have it again,” Terr mentioned about Montefiore Temple’s constructing. “Wouldn’t or not it’s nice to have that?”
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