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Dr. Goldman discusses attending services at Temple Beth Sholom and Cantor Joseph Kohn's connections on the Strip.
Digital ID
jhp000613-001
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I agree.Dr. Goldman discusses attending services at Temple Beth Sholom and Cantor Joseph Kohn's connections on the Strip.
I was summer school principal at Basic High School one year and it was like a different clientele. It was from out of the '30s or '40s. I met people there that their grandfathers went to Basic and things like that. One woman said yes, she heard of Las Vegas; she was there once, but they just stay in Henderson. We're talking Henderson Henderson, like way down the Boulder Highway. It was really like that. Sometimes people refer to it as "Hender-tucky." Right. It was definitely a different culture. Some of it was really nice. It was laid back. It was like going back to the '50s. I kind of enjoyed my summer there. It was definitely a different clientele than further east. I just kind of watched the town really grow. We had one temple when I came here and that was Beth Sholom. Everybody belonged to Beth Sholom; that was it, kind of Mafia inspired - the Sedways, the Lanskys, and Dalitz was kind of interesting. Their pictures were in there. They were all known mobsters. Ner Tamid started a small temple right around that time. As far as I recall, it was just the two, the one Reform one, very, very small, and a breakaway from Beth Sholom, and then there was Beth Sholom on Oakey. Slowly others started to emerge, an Orthodox congregation here and there, and now we have twenty [congregations]. Obviously, Beth Sholom was not the only Conservative temple, but back then that was the temple. It was kind of nice. I'll tell you a funny story I remember with that. My friends and I always used to go Friday nights to temple. Even in L.A., the people who went Friday didn't go Saturday and the people who went Saturdays didn't go Fridays. We couldn't believe there was a temple in Las Vegas, so we looked it up. We were staying on the Strip somewhere. We went to services at Beth Sholom on a Friday night. They used to introduce people and they had a nice little Kiddush afterwards. I was introduced to the cantor, Cantor Kohn, and the rabbi. I can't think of his name right now. I can still see him. There were so many of them there. I was there with all of them including this one. After services the cantor said he had a lot of connections on the Strip "You want to go to a show or anything?"" I said, ""Sure."" He said, ""Just a minute."" So Cantor Kohn picked up the phone and called somebody he knew. He said, ""All right, you're all set. Just tell them Cantor Kohn sent you."" It was a nice show at Caesars. In those days the shows had dinners with them. We went to a show that Saturday night. It was on the house. They used to comp things. We got great seats. It was really nice. So then, gee, every time we came here we went to temple on Friday night and Cantor Kohn always picked up the phone and he got us a different show. Not exactly a typical tourist stop. I know. It was like, hey, let's go to temple. ""Oh, we have our guests from L.A. again.""