The first Hanukkah celebration in Roberta “Bobbie” Kane’s memory banks took place in the back of her uncle Louis Wiener’s tailor shop on Fremont Street. The only child was 4 or 5 at the time and recalls being spoiled with gifts. She also remembers the “magic of the spinning dreidel.”
According to Jewish Nevada’s latest numbers, about 70,000 Jewish people live in Southern Nevada today. But when Kane (then Roberta Gordon) was born—on November 28, 1932—she was hailed as the first known Jewish child born in Las Vegas.
Kane’s parents, Meyer H. Gordon and Sallie Schur Gordon, had moved to town in 1931—when gambling was legalized and construction had begun on what is now the Hoover Dam. The family lived in the heart of today’s Downtown core, first along what is now Las Vegas Boulevard South and later on Bonneville Street.
Kane’s book
This past June, Kane published her first written work, Las Vegas Born and Raised: A Young Woman Embraces Life’s Adventures. The black-and-white cover photo—of Kane with her mother, grandmother and great grandmother—was taken in 1938, when the 6-year-old Kane had just returned home from Fifth Street Grammar school.
The book includes chapters such as “Men, Marriage, and Mayhem,” covering her early dating life and first marriage, and “The Stardust Hotel in Las Vegas,” in which she shares her memories of working at the hotel and casino.
Today, Jewish Nevada estimates, there are more than 25 Jewish synagogues in Southern Nevada. But Kane says that growing up, there was no real meeting place for local Jewish families to conduct formal worship services or observe the High Holidays. Kane says they made do, however, arranging Friday-night services at locations like the Elks Club or Eagles Hall.
“As I started school, there were only three of us—Bernard Mendelssohn, Joey Abrams and I, who missed school during the High Holidays, and it made us feel a little different,” Kane remembers. “My friends couldn’t understand how I got out of school. I told them I was attending religious services, and they were very friendly. I never suffered discrimination.”
By 1943, Kane’s parents had sent her to an all-girls boarding school in Azusa, California, following the influx of young servicemen at Las Vegas Army Air Field—now Nellis Air Force—to train for World War II. Her parents, she says, were busy running two 24-hour liquor stores and couldn’t keep a close eye on her.
Kane returned to Fifth Street Grammar School in 1946, the year Las Vegas’ first Jewish temple—today known as Temple Beth Sholom—opened its doors. Originally located on Carson Street, the temple relocated to Summerlin in 2000, where it retains the mahogany doors from the original version. Today, Temple Beth Sholom is also home to the Warsaw Ghetto Remembrance Garden, which displays stones that once paved the streets of the area within the Polish city of Warsaw where Jews were forcibly exiled.
“It’s a gorgeous facility and a tribute to the Jewish education way of life,” Kane says of the temple.
After Kane graduated from Las Vegas High School, life took her to California, back to Las Vegas and then to Hawaii, where she lived for 56 years and met her husband, Alexander Wyper Kane.
A photo from Kane’s senior year at Las Vegas High School, Class of 1950
In 2016, the Kanes returned to the Vegas Valley, where Roberta had family and where Alex—who had developed dementia in 2015—could be placed at Sunrise Senior Living. He died in 2017.
Now 89, Kane attends Ner Tamid synagogue in Henderson, which is close to her home. She continues to familiarize herself with Jewish traditions and praises Las Vegas’ modern Jewish community.
“At Ner Tamid, the young people are very involved. … I met with approximately 20 young people who were either Bar Mitzvah or pre–Bar Mitzvah, and honestly, a finer group of young people I have not seen in ages,” she says. “They’re bright. They’re interested. I like to think that those are the characteristics of the young Jewish people today.”
Stefanie Tuzman, president and CEO of Jewish Nevada, agrees. “I think that the Jewish Community is strong, vibrant and engaged, and we’re really connected and committed to helping strengthen and grow Jewish life and also help those in need.”
These days, Kane also makes regular visits to Paseo Verde Library. It was there, in 2018, that she came across a memoir-writing series led by Barbara Tabach of UNLV’s Oral History Research Center. That set the stage for Kane’s book.
“I think what’s so significant about Bobbie as a representative of the Jewish community is how it tells a story of how young Las Vegas is. You can actually identify the first registered Jewish birth, and that person is still alive,” Tabach says. “The Las Vegas that Bobbie was born into was a community where Jews who may have felt suppressed elsewhere saw an opportunity and thrived.”
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