Sept. 24, 2007 * THE STRIP SENSE

Oy Vegas! Is Sin City Getting Kosher?

By STEVE FRIESS

My aunt is not of the habit of doubting her rabbi. But on Saturday, as we both were passing time during our traditional fast for Yom Kippur, she called from New York to inquire about something he had said during his sermon earlier that day.

"He claimed that Las Vegas is the fastest growing Jewish population in the country," she said. "That can't be right, can it?"

No, it's not right. But I know where that line comes from. In part, anyhow. Me.

A few years ago, I heard it from a rabbi here in Las Vegas. He was bragging, in fact, that he had recently attended a rabbinical convention that devolved into a bitchfest of sorts with his colleagues all whining that it was becoming more and more difficult to get people to attend synagogue. This rabbi, speaking to a standing-room-only crowd that included me, noted how fortunate the rabbis of Las Vegas were that they were experiencing extraordinary growth.

I was fascinated, and in 2004, I wrote a piece that appeared in major newspapers in three American Jewry hubs, San Francisco, Boston and Chicago about the Jewish explosion in Las Vegas. Several Jewish publications in the U.S. and abroad followed on this story in their own papers, too. For that report, I took at face value the claims of some Vegas Jewish leaders that this city was the biggest Jew-magnet not just in the nation but in North America and, quite possibly, even the world.

It made a certain amount of sense, too, given how many new arrivals were hailing from parts heavily Jewed, namely Southern California and New York. I'd been impressed by the huge crowds that turn out the party for Jews thrown at a Strip nightclub each year on Christmas Eve known as the Bagel Ball. The claims of robust growth also seemed supported by the fact that the city had 18 synagogues, more than double from a decade earlier, as well as a kosher supermarket, pizza and Chinese restaurants, a Jewish congresswoman in Rep. Shelley Berkley and a Jewish mayor in Oscar Goodman. For that story, Berkley told me that no less than then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had commented to her on Vegas' Jewish population growth and she predicted that Vegas "is going to be one of the places people think of when they think of a Jewish community in the western United States."

Of course, it bites when the facts get in the way of a good canard. I don't doubt Sharon told Berkley what she says; the enormous financial support for Israel provided by Sin City's Top Jew Sheldon Adelson surely gives those in government there an exaggerated impression of Vegas Jewry.

Still, just as I have serious doubts about the eternal claims that 5,000 people a month move here - how could that still be so with our home-sales and rental markets both in the shitter? - I might have held off on my story until there were more concrete facts.

But that would've meant waiting almost three years until this past winter when a census conducted by the Jewish Federation of Las Vegas and paid for by Adelson showed this "influx" is actually more like a steady trickle. The Federation's own leadership had told me for my 2004 story that 600 Jews moved here each month; the study showed it was actually about 200. And more than 100 a month leave, probably unhappy as my old friend AP reporter Adam Goldman was, with the lack of solid dating prospects. On balance, the past decade brought an average of 1,200 newbies a year, a tiny fraction of, for instance, the 7,100 Jews moving annually to Palm Beach County, Fla., where they proceeded to accidentally vote for Pat Buchanan in droves and hand the presidency to an imbecile.

So it's not true. With a total population of 67,000 as of 2006, we're 23rd in the U.S. Not bad, but also not much of a slogan.

Yet the thing that's striking is that even at those paltry levels, the Jewish influence here has been astonishing. Remember Bugsy Siegel? Moe Dalitz? Frank Rosenthal? Jerry Lewis? Sammy Davis Jr.? Steve & Eydie? Steve Wynn? Earlier this month, I attended a Rosh Hashanah dinner at Piero's, the classic Italian joint owned by a Jewish family, the Glusmans, who have their chefs prepare a traditional meal of gefilte fish, stuffed cabbage, brisket and rugelach. The dinner tends to attract a who's-Jews of Vegas from those whose names you'd know - Molasky, Gaughan, Greenspun, Mack - and dozens you wouldn't but who have impacted your lives here. Heck, even Roz, my favorite waitress at the Jew-centric hangout Bagelmania, was out of her apron and decked to the nines that night.

What's more, being a Jewish tourist in Vegas has come a long way. The Four Seasons, Rio and Venetian all have kosher kitchens. Several restaurants, including Spago and Simon's Kitchen & Bar, offer special menus for Jews observing Passover. And, perhaps most intriguing of all, the third floor rooms at Adelson's Venetian have non-electronic locks so observant Jews on the Sabbath can avoid using powered objects by walking up just a few flights of stairs and not having to use key cards to get to their rooms.

There is, however, one particular tourist who found Jewish Vegas inhospitable: O.J. Simpson. The armed robbery suspect, acquitted of double murder, ended up with the decidedly goyish Gabriel Grasso as his local counsel. Why? To quote one would-be Robert Shapiro who opted out, "I can't defend him. I think he killed a nice Jewish boy."

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