LV temple is bulging at renovated seams

Saturday, Sept. 16, 2000 | 10:02 a.m.

In Temple Beth Sholom's front office, staff members answer a barrage of phone calls and arrange seating for upcoming Jewish holiday services.

Down the hallway, construction workers lay marble tiles near a small sanctuary that will be used for daily prayers as the $10 million contemporary-style temple nears completion.

After years of planning and one and a half years of construction, Temple Beth Sholom opened its new synagogue for services last month. It serves 500 members -- a tremendous growth spurt for the synagogue that five years ago had dwindled to almost nothing.

With its sleek building and Early Childhood Learning Center, Temple Beth Sholom, 10700 Havenwood Lane in Summerlin, is attracting many of Southern Nevada's Jewish newcomers -- mainly couples in their 30s and 40s with children.

"It's not unreal to have people who moved here four days ago joining our temple," Sandra Mallin, Temple Beth Sholom's president, said.

The Early Childhood Center, which opened less than two weeks ago, was expected to serve 40 children but already has 75.

In the past week 13 families have joined the synagogue, Rabbi Felipe Goodman said.

The temple will be dedicated Sept. 24 in an invitation-only musical celebration narrated by Monte Hall.

The dedication comes in time for Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah services. The upcoming holiday services are expected to stretch the congregation beyond the main sanctuary's seating capacity of 400. Officials are planning for 600.

Not a problem.

The 44,000-square-foot temple was designed to accommodate the growth. Walls of the social rooms can be opened into the sanctuary, providing space for secondary seating.

"We can fit 1,500 people for the High Holidays," Goodman said.

"We are a happening place now," he said. "We're one of the top five growing congregations in the United States -- which is remarkable. When I came here people told me (the synagogue) was going to die."

Part of the temple's growth can be attributed to the area's growing Jewish population.

"There are 75,000 Jewish people living in Southern Nevada," Beth Miller, Jewish Federation of Las Vegas spokeswoman, said. "We're the fastest growing Jewish population in North America."

All of the Las Vegas Valley's 18 synagogues have been growing, she said.

But before Temple Beth Sholom could serve the growing community, major changes were required of Las Vegas' oldest Conservative synagogue, once the center of the Jewish community.

The synagogue originated in 1945 on Carson Street near Maryland Parkway. In its early years, it served the entire Jewish community, Goodman said. It served religious and community needs and had the area's only Jewish cemetery.

In 1960 it moved to 1600 E. Oakey Blvd., where it operated for 38 years. By the 1960s, the synagogue was serving 1,000 families of all denominations: Orthodox, Reform and Conservative.

As the temple grew, the congregation split, Goodman said. Then a large turnover of rabbis in a few number of years added to its near demise, he said.

New neighborhoods in the northwest and southeast valley led members away from the city-based temple.

To accommodate suburban members, officials moved Temple Beth Sholom in 1998 to the Schwartz Hebrew Academy in Summerlin.

The move proved fruitful. Membership rose, and under Mallin, more than $9 million was raised for a new temple. Before Mallin left the academy for its new facility, membership was up to 400, according to Goodman, who arrived in 1998.

"We changed everything: The way services were run, the programs. And we revamped the education program," he said.

"We try to combine traditional services and spirituality with modernity. We stopped using so much English (in the services) and use more Hebrew."

Friday night services accompanied by keyboards -- an uncommon practice among traditional Conservatives -- draw a younger crowd, Goodman said. The traditional Saturday morning service draws the older crowd.

The preschool is the pride of Temple Beth Sholom. There are eight classrooms, a youth lounge and library. The classes have an 8-to-1 student-teacher ratio.

Children are exposed to Spanish, Hebrew and English daily. Items in every room are labeled in the three languages. Each class has a library and computers with Internet access, and the software is in the three languages.

Specialty classes teach music and dance. Children serve themselves lunch to teach independence and self-sufficiency, according to Deborah Jensen, director of the education center.

"There's always a learning process wherever you are," Jensen said.

Through a Jewish Immersion Program, the children are taught how everything in their lives relates to being Jewish. "We learn about being Jewish all the time," she said.

The education center also offers Hebrew classes, which are growing in popularity. Last year four temple members were bar or bat mitzvahed, Goodman said. So far this year more than 30 children have gone through the rites of passage.

Goodman walks with enthusiasm through the building designed by architect Brad Friedmutter of the Friedmutter Group.

The 14-foot mahogany doors taken from the temple's former location on East Oakey welcome members into a spacious octagon-shaped entrance that features a mosaic by artist Jonathan Mandell in the floor.

That leads to Memorial Hall, where deceased members are remembered with plaques, and down hallways to a smaller sanctuary and to the Mikvah -- a ritual bath used for purification.

A Torah that was rescued from Czechoslovakia during World War II -- after it had been tagged and catalogued by the Nazis to be exhibited as a relic of an extinct race -- will be placed near the entrance to the main sanctuary.

Fifteen other Torahs for the main sanctuary will be marched in and placed inside the temple's Arc of the Covenant on the altar during the dedication ceremony.

The arc in the main sanctuary is surrounded by Jerusalem stone, part of about roughly 480 square yards of that stone used in the temple. The $300,000 worth of stone was funded by an Israeli who lived in Las Vegas for seven years. The stone is indigenous to Israel and required in all of Jerusalem's buildings.

People in a high-tech control room behind the sanctuary can monitor five cameras in the sanctuary, allowing the taping of weddings and other special events. The temple has two kosher kitchens to keep dairy products and meat separate.

A sculpture of a burning bush -- a sign from when God spoke to Moses -- is set near the entrance to the building. The sculpture was brought from the temple's former East Oakey location.