Dennis and Roberta Sabbath Papers (MS-00731)

Dennis Sabbath (1943-2000) was a prominent lawyer and community leader in Las Vegas, Nevada. Born July 17, 1943 in New York City, he grew up in Washington, D.C. He attended the University of Maryland and the University of Chicago Law School. In 1967 he married Roberta Sterman. The couple moved to Kodiak, Alaska in 1969 where Dennis performed legal services such as marriages, guardianships, and adoptions through the programs Legal Aid and Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA). After about two years in Alaska, the Sabbaths moved to Las Vegas. Dennis Sabbath was a lifelong Democrat and actively involved in politics. He ran for Nevada State Senate in District 5 in 1986, but lost to Republican Bill O'Donnell. He was member of the Jewish Federation Young Leadership group and was chairman of the board of the Hebrew Academy. He also practiced law, representing the Culinary Workers Union, and later, the Musicians Union and the Steelworkers Union. In 1991 he co-authored the Chemical Catastrophe Prevention Act after several chemical accidents occurred in Henderson, Nevada in the late 1980s and early 1990s, including the PEPCON explosion in 1988.

Roberta Sterman Sabbath is an Assistant Professor of English in Residence at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) and an active member of the Las Vegas, Nevada Jewish community. Sabbath was born on December 23, 1943 in Richmond, Virginia. She received her bachelor's degree in French from the University of Maryland, College Park in 1965 and married Dennis Sabbath in 1967. The couple spent two years in Chicago before moving to Kodiak, Alaska in 1969, where she started an adult basic education program and a youth program. After about two years in Alaska, Sabbath and her husband moved to Las Vegas. They both became involved with the Jewish Federation of Las Vegas, and she was president of the Federation's Women's Division from 1982 to 1984. Roberta Sabbath founded the UNLV chapter of Hillel in 1976 and was administrator of the Hebrew Academy for three years in the late 1990s. She also served on the board of the Las Vegas Anti-Defamation League. Sabbath received two master's degrees from UNLV, one in Educational Counseling in 1976 and one in Theater in 1990. She earned a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Riverside in 1994. Sacred Tropes: Tanakh, New Testament, and Qur'an as Literature and Culture, edited by Sabbath, was published in 2009.

Source:

"Roberta Sabbath." Women's Research Institute of Nevada. Accessed June 11, 2015. http://wrinunlv.org/new-leadership-nevada/voices-of-new-leadership-nevada/roberta-sabbath/.