Interview with Barbara Raben by Barbara Tabach on February 24, 2015. In the first part of the interview Raben discusses her involvement with Hadassah in Southern Nevada, and the various groups within that organization. During the second part of the interview, she talks about her family and her relationship to Judaism, and moving to Las Vegas in 1991. Raben discusses the business she built in Los Angeles and Las Vegas called the Candy Factory. She then talks about the formation of Midbar Kodesh with other families from Temple Beth Sholom. Raben continues to be involved in the Jewish community and the Jewish Family Service Agency.

In 1945, Barbara Raben was born to Kermit and Adele Shulman, children of Eastern European emigrants. She enjoyed a happy childhood in Stamford, Connecticut, and was raised with a strong Jewish identity. After attending college in New Jersey, Barbara married Richard Grisar, and the couple lived in London for a year, before returning to Stamford. In 1975, Barbara and Richard moved to Los Angeles where Barbara owned and operated a very successful candy business, Candy Factory. Sixteen years later, Barbara sold her business, and the family relocated permanently to Las Vegas, where her husband owned radio stations. Barbara has always been an active member of the Jewish community, wherever she lived, giving her time to synagogue, children's day school and service organizations. Upon arriving in Las Vegas, Barbara and her family were members of Temple Beth Sholom, before leaving the congregation to start Midbar Kodesh Temple with a small group of other families. She has been an active member of Hadassah Southern Nevada Chapter for over a decade, helping rebuild the organization locally after participating in the Hadassah Leadership Academy, a program designed to engage a younger generation of members. Currently, Barbara serves as board president and interim executive director for Jewish Family Service. In 2004, then a widow, she married Terry Raben. Barbara has four sons with her first husband: Michael, Andrew, David and Marc Grisar.

Interview with Henry Kronberg by Barbara Tabach in two sessions, February 26 and April 13, 2015. In the first session Kronberg talks about his childhood in Germany and Poland and his experience being imprisoned by the Gestapo, and transported to a concentration camp. He survived the Holocaust and met his wife, and they moved to the United States in 1946. He discusses being reunited with his sister in Las Vegas after decades of searching, and moved his family to Las Vegas in 1962. Kronberg talks about becoming involved with Jewish life here, and his wife, Lillian's involvement at Temple Beth Sholom. In the second session, Kronberg discusses purchasing Stoney's, a loan and pawn shop, including some of the clientele and merchandise. He also discusses other social and environmental concerns like anti-Semitism and water resources in Southern Nevada.

Henry Kronberg was born in 1920 and spent his early childhood in a town on the border of Poland and Germany, about 40 miles from Krakow. For years he felt uncomfortable telling his story of surviving the Nazi concentration camps of World War II. Today his name is linked to the Sperling Kronberg Mack Holocaust Resource Center in Las Vegas. And in his soft-spoken manner, Henry recalls his ordeal of loss of family and survival during this most heinous of situations through backbreaking labor and ingenuity. At the end of the war, Henry met the love of his life, Lillian, also a survivor. The two married in 1946 in Frankfurt and immigrated to New Jersey where she had relatives. He describes their difficulties and the various jobs he held until becoming an excellent baker. Then in 1962 an interesting choice took him to a bar mitzvah in Canada. While there the dinner conversation lead him to a great discovery?his sister Lala had survived and was living in Las Vegas. Soon he moved his wife and daughter to Las Vegas. His first foray into business was with his brother-in-law. However, soon it was important to be independent and to control his own destiny. He purchased a going concern, Stoney's Pawn Shop, from Dr. Alexander Coblentz, one of the city's first doctors. He became the fourth owner of Stoney's and operated it until selling it to Steven Mack in 1998. Henry and his wife were active in the Jewish community. They joined Temple Beth Sholom and became fast friends with many of the early leaders of Las Vegas and became a respected member of the secular and Jewish communities.

In 1961, at the age of thirteen, Gerald ?Jerry? Gordon became a bar mitzvah. This typical coming of age celebration was unusual in that he had simultaneously studied in both his home state of California and his adopted home of Las Vegas, where he spent summers with his grandparents. 1961 is also the same year that the Gordons made Las Vegas their permanent home. Jerry graduated from Las Vegas High School, attended University of Nevada, Las Vegas and earned his law degree from University of California, Los Angeles. His gregarious and trustworthy personality led him to career building steps in the legal community of Las Vegas that included illustrious names such as Louis Wiener, Jr., David Goldwater, Neil Galatz, and many others. His personal law specialty became bankruptcy, especially dealings with hotel/casinos. As a member of the Jewish community, Jerry?s energy and expertise to organize was instrumental in the construction of Congregation Ner Tamid, the reform synagogue, at its site on Valle Verde and I-215. It was a multi-year process and includes a vast array of stories?a cash donation from Moe Dalitz, finalization of receiving of a donation land from the Greenspun family during the High Holy Days, and the ongoing challenges of a building campaign during a recession. In addition, he explains that CNT included two unique negotiations: 1) a cell tower and 2) a solar field on the synagogue?s property. Jerry and his wife Yvonne met while attending UNLV. Yvonne taught math at various levels in the Clark County School District. They raised their two children, Sara and Jeffrey, in Las Vegas, and forged an important role together in Congregation Ner Tamid. In April 2017, they were among those honored for their work with the synagogue.

Jacque Dvorak was born in London, England, in 1944. Two years later, her family immigrated to Canada and then in 1953 they fulfilled their dreams to reside in the United States. The Dvorak family settled in Long Beach, California where Jacque?s brother was born. In 1957, the Dvorak family relocated to Las Vegas when Jacque?s father, Sam, opened a 24-hour barbeque restaurant in Market Town with his brother Harry. While growing up in California, Jacque enjoyed dancing and being on stage. She found herself drawn to performance much like her mother, Irene, who was an entertainer in Great Britain. This enthusiasm served her well in her future retail career which included the opening of the MGM. Jacque attended Las Vegas High School and graduated in 1962. Taking full advantage of being a teenager in Las Vegas, Jacque remembers the days when the need to lock your doors didn't? exist. Though, Jacque describes being keenly aware of being Jewish and forming strong bonds within the Jewish community through BBYO and other Jewish organizations. She also recalls protesting during school prayer recitations in the 1960s. In this interview Jacque gives an insider?s perspective of growing up in Las Vegas and Jewish life in the city. Her stories range from tales of teenage fun to dealing with modern anti-Semitism in Las Vegas to the joy she has found in friendships in the community. Jacque has two children, Harry Fagel and Lisa Sokoloski.

Bruce Isaacson was born in 1956 in Castro Valley, California to Betty Griffin and Bernard Isaacson, and spent his childhood in Oakland. He received his bachelor?s degree from Claremont McKenna College with majors in economics as well as drama, and continued studying for his Masters of Business Administration at Dartmouth College. After receiving his MBA, Isaacson started a career in finance, focusing on mergers and acquisitions. In 1995, he moved to Las Vegas to pursue a real estate career alongside his father. In June 2015, Isaacson became Clark Country?s first poet laureate to encourage poetry as an art form in Southern Nevada. Although Isaacson began writing poetry at a young age, he wanted to develop his craft further. So he attended Brooklyn College for a Masters of Fine Arts and studied with famed poet Allen Ginsberg. Isaacson is known in the San Francisco Bay Area as organizer and poet in the Cafe Babar readings in the 1980s. He is also a co-founder of Zeitgeist Press, where he remains publisher and co-editor. In this interview, Isaacson discusses his childhood and how he maneuvered his career path from finance into poetry. He talks about applying for and serving as the county?s first poet laureate, and describes the programing he?s started in this capacity. Isaacson also speaks about his earlier involvement with Bay Area poetry scene as well as the impact of his Jewish upbringing on his life and his art.

Sanford Akselrad is the rabbi at Congregation Ner Tamid. In this interview he describes his rabbinical training, coming to Las Vegas, and the growth of the congregation.

More inclined in his youth to pursue a career as a scientist than rabbi, Sanford Akselrad (1957- ) became the rabbi at Congregation Ner Tamid in 1988. Turning his tenure, Rabbi Akselrad has lead the congregation through its move from Emerson to Street to its permanent home on Green Valley Parkway and I-215 and shares a fun story about buying desks and chairs from the Clark County School District. He talks about many of the milestones including: Project Ezra which he started during the 2008 recession to help Jewish community members find jobs; the NextGen program which was initiated to bring young adults in their twenties and thirties back to the temple. For over twenty years Rabbi Akselrad was a member of the board of the Nevada Governor?s Council on Holocaust education, a topic that was the focus of his rabbinical thesis. He was the founding president of the Clark County Board of Rabbis and has served on the boards of the Jewish Federation of Las Vegas, Jewish Family Services, and the Humana Hospital Pastoral Advisory Board. He was also the chair of the Federation?s Community Relations Council (CRC). Rabbi Akselrad is a board member of the Anti-Defamation League Nevada region office and the Interfaith Council of Southern Nevada. Sanford Akselrad was born on October 6, 1957 in Oakland, California and raised in Palo Alto. He attended the University of California, Los Angeles and then went to graduate school at the Hebrew Union College Jewish Institute of Religion. He spent the first year of his graduate program in Israel, the next two in Los Angeles, and the final two years in Cincinnati, Ohio. Rabbi Akselrad met his wife Joni in Reno, Nevada and married her during his third year of rabbinical school. The couple has two children, CJ and Sam. After his ordination in 1984, Rabbi Akselrad was associate rabbi of Temple Israel in Columbus, Ohio, one of the largest Reform congregations in the Midwest. His choice of career was inspired by his father, Sidney Akselrad, who was a prominent rabbi involved in social justice issues and the Civil Rights Movement. Sanford Akselrad has followed his father?s example of community involvement, both in Las Vegas and on a national level: he served on the board of the National Conference of Community and Justice (NCJJ), he was chair of the NCJJ's Inter-faith Council, and he is active in the Union of Reform Judaism (URJ).

On February 24, 1979, collector Elyse Rozinsky interviewed file clerk, Janet Garry, (born on November 24th, 1927, in Louisiana) at her home in Bonanza Village Trailer Park in Las Vegas, Nevada. This interview covers the growth of Las Vegas from 1952 to 1979. Janet recalls the early years of the television and the telephone. She also discusses her own personal experience of raising a family in Las Vegas.