Las Vegas' sage of the Strip
By Richard Abowitz, Special to The Times
March 11, 2007
A few blocks from the home I moved into last month is a synagogue. This is certainly not surprising, as Las Vegas has one of the fastest-growing Jewish communities in the U.S. But a little over a decade ago, the area I am living in now was empty desert. So how, among the cloistered, gated subdivisions, did a synagogue appear between my house and the nearest gas station? In his 2002 book "Neon Metropolis: How Las Vegas Started the Twenty-First Century," historian Hal Rothman, in a chapter titled "Community From Nothingness," records the story of the creation of Midbar Kodesh (Holy Desert). In fact, Rothman, who died of Lou Gehrig's disease last month at 48, was one of the synagogue's founders.
It isn't every academic historian whose work takes on such personal terms. Yet Las Vegas just passed the century mark, with its astronomical growth and constant change defining the last two decades, and Rothman recognized that history is being created right now by those who live here, even historians.
Rothman came here in 1992, not to make the town his subject but to teach at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, in his areas of academic interest: environmental history and the National Park Service. However, he arrived just in time to watch the mega-resort era unfold. As the new Vegas shot up around him, he was smitten.
...more - (Dead link: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-ca-vegas11mar11,1,2068514.story)
By Richard Abowitz, Special to The Times
March 11, 2007
A few blocks from the home I moved into last month is a synagogue. This is certainly not surprising, as Las Vegas has one of the fastest-growing Jewish communities in the U.S. But a little over a decade ago, the area I am living in now was empty desert. So how, among the cloistered, gated subdivisions, did a synagogue appear between my house and the nearest gas station? In his 2002 book "Neon Metropolis: How Las Vegas Started the Twenty-First Century," historian Hal Rothman, in a chapter titled "Community From Nothingness," records the story of the creation of Midbar Kodesh (Holy Desert). In fact, Rothman, who died of Lou Gehrig's disease last month at 48, was one of the synagogue's founders.
It isn't every academic historian whose work takes on such personal terms. Yet Las Vegas just passed the century mark, with its astronomical growth and constant change defining the last two decades, and Rothman recognized that history is being created right now by those who live here, even historians.
Rothman came here in 1992, not to make the town his subject but to teach at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, in his areas of academic interest: environmental history and the National Park Service. However, he arrived just in time to watch the mega-resort era unfold. As the new Vegas shot up around him, he was smitten.
...more - (Dead link: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-ca-vegas11mar11,1,2068514.story)