Tiny New Mexico Jewish community seeks to buy back its historic synagogue building – Jewish Press of Tampa

For the primary time in additional than 60 years, New Mexico’s oldest synagogue could also be returning to Jewish possession. Picture courtesy of Jim Terr

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 group is tiny – Neal’s mom, Nancy Terr, recollects that when her household moved there in 1958, locals joked that they doubled Las Vegas’ Jewish inhabitants.

Nevertheless it’s additionally as a result of Temple Montefiore’s constructing has been a church because the 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 purpose of elevating $200,000 by the top of September.

Already, they’ve raised almost half of the purpose, 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 a casual group for a lot longer, has been fascinated about shopping for the constructing for greater than 20 years, Terr mentioned. Nevertheless it wasn’t made out there on the market till final month, because the native archdiocese scales up its property gross sales with a view 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, properly, 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 applying 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 that 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 in the neighborhood. Half of the individuals who donated to the funds for the Eighties building of the synagogue weren’t Jewish, based on “A Historical past of the Jews in New Mexico” by historian Henry Tobias. The synagogue’s opening was accompanied by a efficiency from a Presbyterian choir. The town’s mayor, Louie Trujillo, informed 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 1800s.”

In 1922, because the Jewish group continued to develop, the constructing was moved to a different location a couple of blocks away. However by 1950, the inhabitants had fallen a lot that the group couldn’t maintain a congregation, and providers at Temple Montefiore have been canceled. The Las Vegas Bible Church bought the constructing for $8,000 in 1957, however because of the want for in depth repairs, the church offered the constructing to the Santa Fe Archdiocese in 1964, and it’s now in use as a campus Catholic group heart at New Mexico Highlands College.

The native Jewish group benefited within the Nineteen Nineties from a sudden phenomenon of individuals discovering their crypto-Jewish ancestry – Jewish households who transformed to Catholicism in the course of 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 providers. They’ve additionally rented the Temple Montefiore constructing for particular occasions, based on Terr, however they needed to cowl crosses and different Christian symbols to take action.

The group at the moment 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 former secretary, moved to Las Vegas within the Nineteen Nineties after visiting and falling in love with the small metropolis. She has been concerned within the Jewish group ever since.

“For me, the Jewish group is an actual blessing,” mentioned Presser, who estimates that there are 20 Jews dwelling in Las Vegas. A core dozen of them, she mentioned, have organized providers through the years, typically utilizing a visiting rabbi and typically on their very own, in group members’ properties or in rented areas.

Now they’ve launched into a way more formidable effort – to boost 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 just 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, based on the federation web site.)

The Las Vegas Jewish group just lately launched a GoFundMe that, as of Sept. 8, had raised almost $100,000. Help has are available in on-line and regionally from Christians who need to see the group thrive, Terr mentioned, noting that they’d profit from accessing native Hebrew courses. The group is assured it could 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 group 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 via crowdfunding.

In a ceremonial signing Aug. 26, the constructing was handed again over to Montana’s Jewish group.