Two Decades of Change and Growth in Sin City

When US Congresswoman Shelley Berkeley (D. Nevada) met Rabbi Shea Harlig twenty one years ago, she tried to hide her skepticism. New to Vegas and just married, Harlig and his wife Dina were reaching out to local Jews, getting acquainted. Berkeley was then Vice President of Government and Legal Affairs at the Sands Hotel.

As the rabbi left her office, she recalls thinking, “This will never happen.”

In a recent interview with Lubavitch International, the seven-term Congresswoman who is now running for Senate laughs at what she says turned out to be “a foolish observation.”

“I wondered whether he was ready for Las Vegas. I could no sooner imagine Chabad in Las Vegas than I could Chabad on the moon.”

Plain and humble in manner, Harlig does not cut the figure of a catalyst for radical transformation in a city where excess and decadence rule. But after years of watching the Chabad representative do his thing, says Berkely, “the question now is whether Las Vegas is ready for Rabbi Harlig.”

Beneath Harlig’s easygoing manner is a fearlessness, say those who know him, about doing what he believes is necessary to make life in Las Vegas not only viable, but attractive for Jews living in this city, and for those on the periphery as well. Harlig recently brought a class action suit against the state of Nevada for denying a Jewish inmate kosher meals.

Jacob Hafter, the Las Vegas attorney who won a settlement in March ensuring Jewish prisoners a kosher meal program, led the suit pro bono after Harlig called on him. Advised that the only way to fight for Jewish inmates’ rights to kosher food would be to sue the State of Nevada—no small matter—Harlig didn’t miss a beat. “Do what needs to be done,” Hafter says Rabbi Harlig told him. “He’s really not afraid to fight for what we need.”

In 1990, what Las Vegas needed was more than what Hafter and other local Jews believed could ever be had in this desert city. “I was in high school when the Harligs came, and I left soon after for college.” Hafter returned 12 years later. “The difference I found was a difference of day and night.” When he left the city, Vegas was not a place “where I could live as a Jew.”

Today, married and the father of four, Hafter is happy to raise his family here. With five Chabad centers and a sixth soon to open, the city now boasts nine kosher restaurants—all under the supervision of Chabad—and a “Kosher Experience” at Smith’s (a Nevada supermarket chain) as good as any in New York offering a full line of fresh dairy, meats, baked goods and take-out. With a thriving Jewish day school in a magnificent $10 million building, a newly opened high school, a popular summer day camp, several mikvahs, a Jewish library, and Torah study classes all weeklong, Chabad has developed a Jewish infrastructure to rival that of any major city.

“I give Rabbi Harlig a lot of credit. He got out there and inspired the non-affiliated to support an Orthodox community,” Hafter says, observing that Harlig “is very much in touch with reality and the challenges of the modern world. While some rabbis fear that, he uses that to his advantage.”

Inspiring Broad Support

Rabbi Louis M. Lederman, a pulpit rabbi at a Las Vegas Conservative synagogue for many years until he retired a few years ago, concurs. “Most of the support for Chabad came from Conservative Jews, because they recognize that yiddishkeit cannot exist with just Reform and Conservative.” Ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary, in 1957, Lederman studied under the Seminary’s great personalities including Rabbis H. L. Ginsberg and Louis Finkelsetin, Saul Lieberman, and A.J. Heschel.

Lederman was still leading at his congregation when Harlig arrived in Las Vegas. Today, he is a regular at the Chabad center where he participates at daily services, Torah study classes and Shabbat services which draws about 100 worshipers on average. His grandchildren, he says proudly, are all studying at Chabad schools—locally and abroad.

Rabbi Harlig’s impact is unlike that of most rabbis whose reach is typically limited to their congregations, says Lederman. “In Southern Nevada, if a Jewish prisoner needs help, if a patient at a hospital needs to be visited, it’s Rabbi Harlig,” that they turn to. Lederman talks about Chabad’s broad impact through the various programs and activities it sponsors citywide. He describes the enormous excitement generated by Chabad’s public Chanukah Menorah lightings at the popular Fremont Street Experience—where thousands, including city and state officials, come to participate—and how Chabad has succeeded to raise Jewish awareness, pride and visibility in Las Vegas.

And he points to Chabad’s growth, and the many representatives and new centers serving Southern Nevada’s Jewish population, (approximately 70,000), including Chabad of Summerlin, a center in Henderson, a Chabad Hebrew Center, and a Chabad House at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, as well as a new one opening up in Southwest Las Vegas.

According to Congresswoman Berkeley, Chabad “has integrated so well here, and is respected by religious people and non-Jews alike. There is rarely an event or occasion here where Chabad’s presence is not strongly felt.”

Indeed, Harlig enjoys the support of a wide variety of Las Vegas personalities, among them Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, Bob Arum CEO of Top Rank boxing, and former Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman (whose wife Caroyln Goodman succeeded her term-limited husband and is now Mayor of Las Vegas).

The achievements, big and small, add up, and as they do, Harlig sees more need and more possibilities. As is true of many Chabad representatives, he admits that he wishes he could spend less of his time on administration, and devote more to teaching and working with people. With a staff of 40, his hours are tightly packed with administrative responsibilities, but he is committed to teaching Torah study classes every day, and dedicates time daily to his own personal Torah study regimen.

The Rebbe’s Blessings

The success, he says emphatically, “is thanks to the blessing I received from the Rebbe before I left New York to begin in Las Vegas.” It is also, he says gratefully, thanks to the Shluchim who have joined him in Las Vegas, “and their dedication and commitment that has made it all possible.”

When recruiting additional Shluchim, Rabbi Harlig says he looks for individuals who have the necessary gravitas to lead with integrity to the mission. “I believe that we can never lose sight of our purpose as Shluchim and the responsibility that comes with the fact that in everything we do, we represent the Rebbe.”

On a typical Thursday evening, the Miriam and Sheldon Adelson Chabad Center is a busy place. Visitors drop in to make arrangements for Shabbat; a study class with Rabbi Harlig has just ended, and a video of the Rebbe speaking about utilizing every opportunity for holiness is playing on a wide screen in the shul. It all seems surreal, fantastically incongruous to the vulgarities of Vegas, the siren song that beckons takers at every turn on the Strip—only a stone’s throw from the Chabad Center.

But having nurtured a bustling Jewish community here as they raised their own large family—(their daughter Chayaleh and her husband Levi Wilhelm will be opening a new center in Southwest Las Vegas), Rabbi Shea and Dina Harlig have charted the challenges of Sin City for more than twenty years, and are adept at playing high stakes in the pursuit of a different kind of windfall: Jewish life and Jewish continuity where it seems least plausible.