Few modern American cities have been so profoundly influenced by the arrival of Jews as Las Vegas. What was once a dusty stop along a railroad line flourished into a city that is at turns compelling, tawdry and rich in history.

Documentation is scarce from the turn of the century, but conventional wisdom holds that Jews were among these early Las Vegas business proprietors. Names like Berg-man and Berman listed in the 1910 Las Vegas census further corroborate the assumption. The 1920 census lists a Goldring family that, lore recounts, opened a dining establishment that served kosher food and hung a certificate in their restaurant announcing the birth of their newest child, who they claimed was the first Jewish baby born in Las Vegas (that distinction is up for debate; at Temple Beth Sholom, a black-and-white photo circa 1933 also trumpets the first Jewish baby in Las Vegas).

Jewish professionals and more merchants arrived in the 1930’s, but none could have predicted the impact that legalization of gambling in 1931 would bring to the town. On the miles-long gauntlet of hotels known as the Strip, the Frontier opened in 1941; and Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel’s Flamingo Hotel, opened in 1946, revolutionized gambling venues and changed Las Vegas forever.

Siegel, a Brooklyn-born troublemaker who morphed into a serious criminal at an early age, was already living in Los Angeles working for gangster Meyer Lansky when he began to sense the incredible gaming money ripe for the picking in Las Vegas. After the star-studded debut of his Flamingo, the first modern Las Vegas resort complete with Hol-lywood-style entertainment, the casino closed, yet eventually reopened to turn a profit within a few months. Siegel was murdered in 1947—the crime has never been solved—but the list of owners and managers of the Flamingo through the years reads like a who’s who of Jewish Vegas mobsters: Gus Greenbaum, Davie Berman, Morris Lansburgh, Sam Cohen, to name a few.

Many were drawn to what they considered the last bastion of hand-over-fist profiteering opportunity. The mobsters, seasoned professionals underground in their hometowns, already knew how to run the rackets in Vegas, so why not give it a try? Greenbaum, Berman, Lansburgh and company at one time had a hand in managing most of Las Vegas’s major legal gambling joints—and not a few illegal ventures along the way. Over the decades, as major corporations took over many of the resorts and old-school Jewish crime bosses faded, Jews assumed less unsavory posts as owners and chief executives of some of the city’s grandest establishments, as well as employment outside of the gaming industry altogether.

Community:
< As the fastest-growing city in America, Las Vegas has seen its population reach nearly 1.5 million, an astounding increase of 85 percent since 1990. Until the past decade, the city was one of America’s last with a substantial Jewish working class comprised of cab drivers, mechanics and poker dealers.

With the wave of new Las Vegas residents, more professionals reside in and around the city. Although the religious Jewish community in Las Vegas is growing, the Jewish population is to a large degree unaffiliated and intermarried.

Wealthy suburbs and subdivisions are cropping up at breakneck speed, and many of the city’s Jewish residents now live in upscale neighborhoods like Sumerlin, Green Valley and Seven Hills, outside of Las Vegas proper. The Jewish population is 55,600, although some estimate it to be more.

Sights:
< While no Jewish neighborhood exists in Las Vegas, the city has several sights of Jewish interest. Temple Beth Sholom (702-804-1333), located in the suburb of Sumerlin, about 45 minutes off the Strip, is the city’s oldest synagogue. Founded in 1956, it recently completed a magnificent $10 million structure and community center. Local artist Rita Abbey’s stained-glass windows flank the Jerusalem- stone sanctuary. A small collection of black-and-white photos lining one of the hallways chronicles the community’s history and is a welcome bit of Jewish lore in a city whose modern Jewish story has, until recently, largely gone unrecorded. Most Las Vegas synagogues are recent. In 1992 there were five—Temple Beth Sholom, Ner Tamid, a synagogue used by casino guests for high holy days and two Orthodox synagogues.

Fremont Street, which was home to some of Las Vegas’s earliest Jewish merchant outposts, as well as the first legally sanctioned gambling spots, is today the nexus of an ongoing downtown revitalization project meant to siphon some of Las Vegas’s prosper-ity away from the Strip and the suburbs back to the city’s original center. Catch the nightly Fremont Street Experience, a pulsating sound and light show set under a $70 million canopy boasting 2.1 million individual lights. Also near Fremont Street is the Neon Museum, an on-street retrospective of some of Vegas’s most famous luminous landmarks; think of it as a public retirement home for neon signage.

The Flamingo Hilton’s expansive back gardens are impressive, and nestled between the pools sits a small bust and plaque commemorating Flamingo founder Bugsy Siegel who, it is estimated, donated $50,000 to the Haganah to buy arms for Israel in its fight for independence. Herman “Hank” Greenspun, publisher of the Las Vegas Sun, was convicted of running guns to Israel in 1948.

New York-New York Hotel’s food court, which is styled after a Man-hattan neighborhood, has a kosher-style deli, Greenberg’s, complete with neon Stars of David. A closer look beyond the Manischewitz and Dr. Brown’s sodas reveals the decidedly nonkosher combination of roast beef and cheese in the deli case.

GENERAL SIGHTS

The world-famous Strip, also known as Las Vegas Boulevard and flanked by dozens of themed hotels, is Disney-land for adults. While each hotel has its unique design, several stand out. The Bellagio Hotel, built at a cost of $2.1 billion (the most expensive hotel ever built), makes no apologies for its overindulgences and delivers for sheer jaw-dropping luxury. A nightly water show on the Bellagio’s 11-acre manmade lake is a popular and worthwhile tourist diversion. A $10 million glass ceiling sculpture was commissioned from famed artist Dale Chihuly, whose glass exhibit at Jerusalem’s Tower of David Muse-um was a hit in Israel last year. The Luxor’s Egyptian theme, complete with Pyramid and sun gods, evokes either amusement or amazement, depending on your perspective.

Also worth a stop is the deliciously kitschy Little White Chapel, the first Las Vegas wedding chapel to feature a drive-through wedding window. While everyone from Joan Collins to Michael Jordan has tied the knot here, Jewish notables have also consecrated their vows. A Reform rabbi can be commissioned for $250, and a huppa and glass to break are also provided (Elvis impersonator available, but at an extra cost).

Personalities:
< Chic Hecht, whose family members were early merchant arrivals to Las Vegas in the 1930’s, was a successful businessman who served as a United States senator and, later, ambassador to the Bahamas in the late 80’s. Las Vegas’s current and hugely popular mayor, Oscar Good-man, was an infamous defender of mob figures, including Tony “The Ant” Spilotro (see profile, page 47).

Beginning with Bugsy Siegel, who only lived in Las Vegas for a few years but will forever be linked to the city, a roster of Las Vegas gaming and hotel industries can read like the membership list at the Jewish Com-munity Center.

Moe Dalitz, the notorious “boss gambler” from Cleveland who moved to Las Vegas in 1950 to run the Desert Inn, reinvented himself in later life as an elder statesman of Vegas and was a major contributor to Jewish causes. There is even a school building named after him. At a dinner in 1970 he received the City of Peace award of the State of Israel “in recognition of distinguished service to the people and the State of Israel.” The governor of Nevada, United States senators and court justices attended the event.

Mobster Mickey Cohen held a fund-raising affair for the Irgun in 1947. Leading underworld figures from Las Vegas attended and, according to Cohen and some others there, more than $500,000 was raised. Moe Sedway, an associate of Siegel’s, revealed to the Kefauver Committee that he was chief fund-raiser for the United Jewish Appeal in Nevada.

Las Vegas’s most powerful newspaper, the Las Vegas Sun, is owned and operated by the Greenspun family, longtime residents of the city. More recent hoteliers like Steve Wynn, builder of the Mirage and the Bellagio, and Sheldon Adelson of the Venetian are well-known Las Vegas personalities.

Books and Film:
< Easy Street (Dial Press) is Susan Ber-man’s wonderful story of life as the daughter of Jewish crime boss Davie Berman. In a bizarre postscript, Berman, who was in no way involved in her father’s line of work, was mysteriously murdered in 2000; the crime remains unsolved.

The Money and the Power: The Making of Las Vegas and Its Hold on America, 1947-2000, by Sally Denton and Roger Morris (Harcourt), is a comprehensive look at Las Vegas and its vices, including in-depth profiles of most of the Jewish gangsters and hoteliers. A fantastic article, “Orthodox in an Unorthodox Place,” by Stephen Dubner (Las Vegas Life magazine, August 2000), brilliantly illuminates the inherent conflicts between Las Vegas’s gambling industry and its burgeoning community of religious Jews.

Hal Rothman’s Neon Metropolis: How Las Vegas Started the 21st Cen-tury (Routledge Press) will be published in February 2002. Deke Castleman wrote the comprehensive Compass American Guides: Las Vegas (Fodor’s).

Bugsy (1992), starring Warren Beatty and Annette Bening, chronicles Siegel’s zealous pursuit of a new kind of American city where gambling and other vices would be provided in a first-class—and ostensibly legal—setting.

Recommendations:
< Sholom Hunan (4850 West Flamingo Road; 871-3262) serves Chinese fare at reasonable prices. Most convenient is Las Vegas Kosher Deli (3317 Las Vegas Boulevard; 892-9080) just north of the Venetian Hotel on the Strip. Albertson’s Market has an ex-tensive kosher section (2550 South Fort Apache; 242-1138). And the Four Seasons Hotel, which recently installed a $400,000 kosher catering kitchen, is not open for a quick bite, but perfect if you’re putting on a wedding for 400. For more information about Jewish life, call the Jewish Federation of Las Vegas at 732-0556.

Though it is doubtful that a Jewish-themed hotel will open any time soon—think ice sculptures of the Western Wall and a chopped-liver re-creation of the parting of the Red Sea—anything is possible in the city where the line between the real and surreal is blurred.