![]() An effort is underway on the part of a small group of Jewish residents in Las Vegas, New Mexico to purchase a historic synagogue. Located at Eighth Street and Columbia Street, the former Congregation Montefiore structure was built in 1922 and served a Jewish congregation for three decades until being sold to a local Baptist church in 1957. The structure was subsequently purchased by the Archdiocese of Santa Fe in the mid-1960s, eventually becoming the St. Paul’s Newman Chapel. The building has now been made available for sale as part of a larger Archdiocese move to dispose of church property in order to financially compensate survivors of sexual abuse. In response, a crowdfunding campaign has been launched to purchase the structure with a goal of raising some $200,000 by the end of this month. To date at least $137,000 has been secured. According to the non-profit group Las Vegas Jewish Community, the fund-raising campaign is an effort to “reclaim a very important piece of New Mexico Jewish history.” If successful, the group plans to use part of the building for traditional religious services, with the rest of the structure serving as a kind of museum of Sephardic Jewish history. The establishment of the Montefiore Congregation, according to author Lee Shai Weissbach in his book Jewish Life in Small-Town America, followed on the heels of Las Vegas serving as a link on the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad line, eventually leading to a Jewish population in the city at the turn of the century of around 250 people. By Garry Boulard
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