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I agree.Part of an interview with Jerrry Countess and Dorothy Eisenberg on October 28, 2014. In this clip, Countess talks about the early days of the Jewish Federation of Las Vegas and an event held by B'nai B'rith.
Jerome Countess oral history interview, 2014 October 28. OH-02177. [Audio recording]. Oral History Research Center, Special Collections and Archives, University Libraries, University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Las Vegas, Nevada. http://n2t.net/ark:/62930/d1668c47j
English
So how did you make it an organization? What were the steps you had to take? They said, "If it won't work...try it, try it, try it." I came from an organization that lived on organization, United Jewish Appeal. They were set up all together. They had a women's division and a lawyers' division and a doctors' division and a this division. They had people in each of those divisions who were competent in what they did, in their own profession. They said, "Okay, that's what we're going to do." So doctors went out and saw doctors, a couple of doctors. They didn't see them all; they only saw some. But after the event, it stopped. It didn't do anything. As Dorothy is saying, the women's division, yes, it did raise some money. Did you start the paper first? Yes. The paper is what he started first. That was one of my early things, yes. The newspaper at that time was called what? The Jewish Reporter, because that could put out what we needed to put out. There was no sense of Jewish community here. There were Jewish people doing things, but it was not a sense of community. Yes, because [Temple] Beth Sholom - there were other synagogues here. So nobody knew what anybody else was doing, even Hadassah or this organization or that organization. B'nai B'rith...the first time I went to B'nai B'rith, they had a dinner and right in the middle of the table was a layer of shrimp. Oh, my. [Laughing] I looked at it. I said, "Is that okay?" They said, "Sure, we always do this." They always did that, but a lot of people didn't come because of that.