Drive west along the Summerlin Parkway as the afternoon light turns the Spring Mountains pink, and you reach a place that did not exist when most of its residents were born. The Jews in Summerlin came late to the desert, mostly within the last three decades, and they built a community at a speed that surprised even themselves. Today perhaps 25,000 Jews live in this master-planned suburb on the western rim of the Las Vegas Valley, drawn by warm winters, no state income tax, and the unlikely promise that you could raise a Jewish family in a city better known for its casinos.
The Place
Summerlin sits on roughly 22,500 acres at the base of Red Rock Canyon, the western edge of the Las Vegas Valley. It is not an old town with a tangled history. It is a designed one, laid out as villages with their own schools, parks, and trail networks, anchored by the open-air shopping district of Downtown Summerlin.
The land was bought by the aviation magnate Howard Hughes in 1952, when desert went for about three dollars an acre. He called it Husite and imagined an aviation centre that never came. After he died in 1976, his heirs renamed the property after his paternal grandmother, Jean Amelia Summerlin, and broke ground on a community in 1990. The first family moved into The Hills village in March 1991.
Within a generation Summerlin became one of the best-selling master-planned communities in the United States, a distinction it has held for most of three decades. It is affluent, manicured, and quiet in a way that older Las Vegas neighbourhoods are not.
How It Became Jewish
The story of Jewish Summerlin is really the story of Jewish Las Vegas, a community that quietly multiplied while the rest of America was still telling jokes about Sin City.
An older, smaller community downtown
Jews had lived in Las Vegas since the early twentieth century, and Temple Beth Sholom, founded in the 1930s with a handful of families, grew to be the largest synagogue in Nevada by the 1960s. For decades that older community clustered closer to the city centre and the established neighbourhoods near the Strip. It was modest, tied to the hotel and entertainment trades, and far from the popular image of a thriving Jewish suburb.
The boom of the 1990s
Then the valley exploded. The American Jewish Committee counted around 55,000 Jews in Las Vegas in 1997. By 2000 estimates had climbed to roughly 75,000, one of the fastest rates of Jewish growth anywhere in the country. The newcomers were not, by and large, casino workers. They were retirees, young families, and professionals leaving Los Angeles, New York, Boston, Detroit, and Chicago.
Many of them looked west of the old city and found Summerlin: new houses, good schools, mountain views, and a tax structure that let a Californian keep five to thirteen percent more of every paycheque. For a retiree living on a pension, or a young family priced out of coastal real estate, the arithmetic was hard to argue with.
The institutions follow the people
By the 1990s Temple Beth Sholom’s downtown membership had thinned to about 300 families, and many of those families now lived in Summerlin. The congregation made the decision that defined the modern community: it followed its members west. The new Summerlin building was dedicated in 2000, and with it the centre of gravity of Jewish Las Vegas shifted to the suburb.
Other congregations grew up alongside it. Temple Sinai, a Reform congregation, settled at 9001 Hillpointe Road in the heart of Summerlin, its Copeland Sanctuary filling on Friday nights. The campus also became the new home of the Jewish Community Center of Southern Nevada, which today runs close to 500 programmes a year and serves several thousand member families across the valley.
A school, and a sense of permanence
The institution that signalled permanence more than any other was a school. In 1988 the Las Vegas businessman Milton I. Schwartz and others had identified the need for a community Jewish day school open to children of every affiliation. Two decades later, Dr. Miriam and Sheldon G. Adelson committed a major gift, and in August 2008 the Adelson Educational Campus opened in Summerlin in a 171,000-square-foot facility at 9700 Hillpointe Road.
It serves children from eighteen months through twelfth grade, Nevada’s only PK-12 Jewish community school, with a lower, middle, and upper school under one roof. A city builds a school like that only when it expects its children to stay.
Chabad and the religious spectrum
The growth was not only liberal and suburban. Chabad of Summerlin, led for years by Rabbi Yisroel Schanowitz, opened a large community centre on the northwest side, its exterior faced in Jerusalem stone and its interior finished in cherry wood. It brought daily minyanim, kosher resources, and an Orthodox presence to a part of the valley that had none. The arc, from a few downtown families to Reform, Conservative, and Chabad congregations within a single suburb, took barely two generations.
The Landmarks
Temple Sinai, 9001 Hillpointe Road. A Reform congregation at the centre of Summerlin Jewish life, its Copeland Sanctuary hosting Friday evening and Saturday morning services. The campus it shares with the Jewish Community Center has become the practical hub for cultural and family programming in the suburb.
Adelson Educational Campus, 9700 Hillpointe Road. Nevada’s only PK-12 Jewish community day school, opened in 2008 in a vast purpose-built facility. Children of all affiliations attend, studying a full secular curriculum alongside Hebrew and Jewish learning rooted in Tanakh.
Chabad of Summerlin and Desert Shores, 2640 Regatta Drive. An Orthodox centre on the northwest side, its facade of Jerusalem stone unmistakable among the stucco of the surrounding neighbourhoods. It anchors observant life in the area with daily prayer, kosher resources, and holiday programming.
Congregation Ner Tamid, 55 N. Valle Verde Drive, Henderson. One of the valley’s largest Reform congregations and a magnet for Summerlin families willing to make the drive across the valley. It illustrates how the Jewish map of Las Vegas now stretches from the western suburbs to Henderson in the southeast.
Midbar Kodesh Temple, 1940 Paseo Verde Parkway, Henderson. A Conservative congregation serving members from across the valley, Summerlin included. Its presence rounds out the religious spectrum that the postwar downtown community never had.
Temple Beth Sholom, Summerlin. The oldest congregation in Nevada, founded in the 1930s, which dedicated its Summerlin home in 2000 after following its members west. Its move marked the moment the suburb became the heart of organised Jewish life in the city.
Downtown Summerlin. The open-air retail and dining district at the community’s core, where families gather after services and the High Holidays empty the parking lots of the surrounding synagogues. It is the secular town square of a community that built everything else first.
Where They Came From
Summerlin’s Jews are, overwhelmingly, transplants. They arrived from somewhere else and chose this. The largest single source is California, and especially the Los Angeles area, families and retirees trading coastal prices and high taxes for desert space.
The Northeast supplied another large share, New York and the Boston area chief among them, along with a steady stream from the Midwest: Detroit, Chicago, and the older industrial Jewish communities that have been shrinking for decades. Many came as retirees chasing warm winters and a tax code with no state income tax, no tax on pensions, and no tax on Social Security.
Others came younger, as professionals and young families, and found that Summerlin offered something the coasts could not: a new house, a Jewish day school, and a synagogue, all within a few miles of each other. The chain ran the way chains do. One family moved, told relatives and friends, and the institutions followed once the numbers justified them.
Summerlin Today
Summerlin is now described, plausibly, as the fastest-growing Jewish community in Las Vegas and one of the faster-growing in the country, home to something on the order of 25,000 Jews. That figure is an estimate, as all such figures are, but the institutions on the ground are not estimates. They are built, staffed, and full.
It is a particular kind of Jewish community, suburban and recently assembled, without the dense walkable feel of the older Jewish enclaves of Brooklyn or the long-rooted institutions of the Northeast. In that respect it has more in common with the Sun Belt communities that grew up at the same time, the Jewish suburbs of South Florida and the desert congregations of Scottsdale, Arizona, each built largely by people who came from somewhere colder and more expensive.
What it lacks in age it makes up in completeness. A child can attend the Adelson Campus from toddlerhood through high school, families can choose among Reform, Conservative, and Chabad congregations, and the Jewish Community Center keeps a calendar nearly as full as anything in the established Jewish districts of Los Angeles that many residents left behind. Kosher dining remains thinner than in larger cities, with most options clustered closer to the Strip, but the rest of the infrastructure is firmly in place. For a community that barely existed when Summerlin’s first houses went up, that is no small thing.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many Jews live in Summerlin?
Estimates put the number of Jews in Summerlin at roughly 25,000, within a Las Vegas Valley Jewish population of about 70,000 as of recent counts. Summerlin is often cited as the fastest-growing Jewish community in the city.
Why did so many Jews move to Summerlin, Las Vegas?
The Jews in Summerlin came largely for warm winters, lower housing costs than the coasts, and Nevada’s lack of a state income tax, which also exempts pensions and Social Security. Retirees and young families from California, the Northeast, and the Midwest made up most of the migration.
What synagogues serve the Summerlin Jewish community?
Summerlin is served by Temple Sinai on Hillpointe Road, the relocated Temple Beth Sholom, and Chabad of Summerlin and Desert Shores on Regatta Drive. Many families also belong to Congregation Ner Tamid and Midbar Kodesh Temple in nearby Henderson.
Is there a Jewish school in Summerlin?
Yes. The Adelson Educational Campus, opened in 2008 at 9700 Hillpointe Road, is Nevada’s only PK-12 Jewish community day school, serving children from eighteen months through twelfth grade across a lower, middle, and upper school.
When did the Jewish community in Las Vegas begin to grow?
Jews had lived in Las Vegas since the early twentieth century, but the major growth came in the 1990s. The community roughly grew from about 55,000 in 1997 to an estimated 75,000 by 2000, with much of the increase settling in Summerlin.
Where did most Summerlin Jews come from?
Most came from California, especially the Los Angeles area, along with significant numbers from New York, Boston, and Midwestern cities such as Detroit and Chicago. The Jews in Summerlin are overwhelmingly transplants rather than longtime Nevadans.
If your family’s story passed through Summerlin, or any of the places Jews have made home in America, Atlas of Home can trace that journey. From a downtown Las Vegas congregation of a few families, to a desert suburb of synagogues and schools, to wherever you are now.