In this interview, Gil Shaw recalls milestones at Congregation Ner Tamid?first bat mitzvah?and anecdotes about leaders, first rabbis, donation by Moe Dalitz, services being held in Protestant churches, and even a controversy over colors for the new temple building of Ner Tamid.

Music brought Jay Poster to Las Vegas for a brief time in 1974. Jay wanted to pursue a musical career and his cousin was a professional musician with the Nat Brandwynne Orchestra at Caesars Palace. To Jay?s disappointment, within a few months his cousin Jack Poster left Las Vegas for a road tour. So Jay decided his best strategy was to return home to San Diego and his studies at San Diego State University. It would be over a decade later before Jay returned to Las Vegas to live and this time it became permanent. This time it was not for music. For beyond his musical talent, Jay had a gift for connecting with people of all of ages and walks of life. He was good at sales and his day job selling office furniture offered him the opportunity to transfer to Las Vegas in 1986. Within a few years, however, it was a recruiter for Palm Mortuaries who introduced Jay to his defining career moment and to Allen Brewster, a prominent Jewish leader and founder of King David Cemetery and Mortuary. It was 2001. Jay has been King David?s ever since and is the General Manager. In this interview, Jay describes his personal and spiritual growth through his career in funeral services and his respect for the Jewish traditions of burial and grieving. In addition, his passion for music has also soared and he talks about his participation in the Shabbatones at Congregation Ner Tamid and Desert Winds, a community based performance organization. He shares his love of traditional Jewish klezmer music and the Meshugginah Klezmorim.

In this oral history, the long married couple Henry and Anita Schuster recall the history of the 1930s and how they eventually met and created a life together. Their childhoods were distinctively different, but charter a future where they would inevitably meet. Born in Germany in 1926, Henry recalls the dawn of Hitler and the Nazism. His mother would arrange for his evacuation to France, where he would not know her fate or that of his two sisters for a number of years. Along with hundreds of other displaced children, he escaped to America and lived with relatives in Louisiana where he finished his schooling and joined the US Army. Anita on the other hand grew up with her family in New York. They share the story of meeting when she was 16, falling in love and marrying in 1948. They had four children and moved several times before settling in California. They retired to Las Vegas in 1993. Henry's recollections include childhood memories of the Holocaust and its affect on his family, including the loss of his mother and one of his sisters. Finding his surviving sister Bertel (Betty Kale) after the war is a heartwarming tale of survival. The Schusters are part of the approximately 300 members of the Holocaust Survivor Group that has settled in southern Nevada and Henry was President Emeritus of the group. He published his memoir, Abraham's Son-the Making of an American, in 2010.

In this interview, Burton Cohen discusses his involvement in the Las Vegas casino industry, including booking entertainment for various hotels.

Burton Cohen's long casino executive career began in the mid-1960s when he accepted a proposition to become involved with the transformation of the Frontier Hotel. He left his south Florida roots and law practice to become a co-owner/general manager of the Frontier Hotel. Thus, began his highly regarded Las Vegas presence. For nearly four decades he served in the management of some of the Strip's most famous casinos: Flamingo, Dunes, Circus Circus, Caesar Palace, Thunderbird and the Desert Inn, which remains his favorite. In this interview, Burt reflects on the positions he held, the celebrities he hired and befriended, and offers a unique look at the behind the scenes marketing and entertainment strategies that he helmed. He shares stories of becoming entrenched in casino operations, his reflections of union experiences, and even anecdotes about moving his mother to Las Vegas.

Sharon Walker is a real estate investor, retired stockbroker and former loan officer. She was born on December 8, 1949 in Toledo, Ohio, and moved to Las Vegas with her family in 1963, where they started Walker Furniture, a store which they later sold to the Alterwitz family. Sharon's father, Julius Walker, was also in the casino business, becoming an owner of the El Cortez Hotel and Casino with Jackie Gaughan. Her mother, Anne Walker was a founding member of the first local Hadassah, The Women?s Zionist Organization. Sharon continues the family tradition of being active in Hadassah as well as being a Board Member of Jewish Family Service Agency. In November 2014 she was an honoree of Hadassah Leadership. In this interview, Sharon describes her adolescence in Las Vegas and the differences in culture as compared to her childhood in Toledo, Ohio. She also recalls the Walker Furniture business, her father?s careers, and her uncles Ed ?E? Walker and Lou ?Paddock? Walker.

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).

Deanna Stefanelli and her family moved to Las Vegas when her husband John Stefanelli accepted a position as a professor in Food and Beverage at UNLV. She took a part-time job in the admin office of the university's library in 1981. It was also an ideal time for her to return to college to finish her degree. Eventually she became full-time and enjoyed the growth and change of UNLV and the library. Deanna recalls the physical and personnel changes of the library. She describes some of the fun activities that kept them a close work community—from the Friends of the Library to book sales and pancake breakfasts, to a newsletter and learning to make sushi with Myoung-ja Kwon.