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Roswell, New Mexico, is rife with UFOs, scorpions and conspiracy theories — but few Jews
ROSWELL, New Mexico — If it weren’t for an Ashkenazi Jew named Stanton T. Friedman, the world might have long ago forgotten what’s come to be known simply as the “Roswell incident.”
Instead, countless books, documentaries and made-for-TV dramas have explored the 1947 discovery of mysterious materials found on a New Mexico ranch that Friedman argued were the relics of extraterrestrials. A wave of successors, including a prominent Israeli-American physicist, continue to press the case for alien contact. And this dusty desert town has been transformed according to an unusual paradox: It’s shaped by conspiracy theories, yet is home to virtually no Jews.
Roswell’s only synagogue, Congregation B’Nai Israel, closed up and moved to Albuquerque five years ago.
“They didn’t have a rabbi and they only met twice a month, on Fridays,” said Leslie Lawner, who made the move with her husband in 2020, reducing Roswell’s tiny Jewish population by two. “There was really nothing we could do for them.”
A granite monument in front of the Chaves County Courthouse in Roswell, New Mexico, displays the Ten Commandments and a Star of David. (Larry Luxner)
The Lawners left behind a town that is largely defined by what happened in the summer of 1947, when local rancher W.W. “Mac” Brazen found rubber strips, tin foil, thick paper and other debris on his property and shared the material with Sheriff George Wilcox of Roswell. The sheriff brought the unusual artifacts to the attention of the Roswell Army Air Field, which on July 9 of that year announced that it had recovered the remains of a “flying disc.”
The outrageous RAAF claim was quickly denounced as erroneous by local military officials who said the debris was actually the wreckage of a crashed weather balloon and related equipment.
That would have been the end of it, if not for Friedman, a nuclear physicist and highly regarded “ufologist” who revisited the incident in the 1970s, devoting the rest of his life to proving the existence of flying saucers. In 1987, Friedman — who died six years ago — told the New York Times that federal officials had engaged in a “cosmic Watergate” to cover up the truth.
The plaque honoring the late Jewish scientist Stanton T. Friedman and his research on UFOs in downtown Roswell, New Mexico. (Larry Luxner)
Now, this remote city of 47,000, located east of the White Sands Missile Range and about a three-hour drive southeast of Albuquerque, is known for one thing and one thing only: flying saucers.
Here in Roswell, those saucers are ubiquitous — beginning with one atop the “Welcome to Roswell” sign east of town along U.S. 380. There’s also a UFO-shaped McDonald’s, along with a bug-eyed little green alien relaxing under an umbrella in front of the nearby Western Inn.
Another extraterrestrial creature reclines on a bed in the display window of White Mattress, not to mention yet another, even more tacky, E.T. proudly holding up the Dunkin Donuts marquee along Main Street. Not surprisingly, Martians are a common theme in Halloween displays here.
In 1997, the Air Force — attempting to dispel rumors that had persisted for decades — released a 231-page report concluding that alien bodies recovered at the Roswell crash site weren’t aliens at all, but dummies used in parachute tests. It also said that the “spacecraft” that had fallen to Earth on Brazen’s ranch was really an Air Force balloon used in a top-secret program code-named Project Mogul to monitor the atmosphere for evidence of Soviet nuclear tests.
Asked at the time if the new report would finally put the matter to rest, retired Air Force Col. Richard Weaver told NBC’s Today show said: “No, I doubt it. This has become a religion to many people. It’s almost a cult. Certainly, an unbelievable financial opportunity for many folks. So I think this is going to endure.”
Now, the town has taken on added prominence with the Pentagon’s recent establishment of an All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office. President Donald Trump is a known skeptic of UFOs. But in a 2020 campaign video, he said, “Roswell’s a very interesting place with a lot of people that would like to know what’s going on.”
In a town forged around the religion of aliens, Jewish life is virtually nonexistent. There aren’t enough Jews here to make a minyan — let alone support a synagogue — and the few who did live here have mostly died off or moved away.
Lawner and her husband Bob rarely attended services at Congregation B’nai Israel, located a block from their house at 8th and Washington, during their 27 years in Roswell. But Lawner did help develop a curriculum on Holocaust studies for Sidney Gutierrez Middle School, which she helped found and where she taught for 17 years.
It was an area of inquiry that overlapped with one outlandish but persistent theory about the Roswell incident. Annie Jacobsen claims in her 2012 book, “Area 51: An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret Military Base,” that just before the Roswell crash, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin recruited Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele — the infamous Auschwitz “angel of death” — to create “grotesque, child-size aviators” to pilot a plane in order to trigger widespread panic throughout the United States.
The obsession with aliens has divided Jewish voices. An Orthodox Jewish rabbinical authority, Rabbi Pini Dunner of Beverly Hills, California, has called the Roswell incident “nonsense.”
“Most people don’t believe any of this, nor, for that matter, do we entertain the claims of those who maintain that the Apollo moon landings were all an elaborate hoax, or that Denver International Airport stands above an underground city that serves as a headquarters for the masonically inspired New World Order,” Dunner wrote in an online post. “It’s not that any of these conspiracy stories can be categorically disproved, but we feel they do not need to be. The question is: why would any intelligent person believe such nonsense to be true?”
But some Jews are attached to the idea that aliens are out there — including one of the most prominent scientists making the case today. The Israeli-American physicist Avi Loeb, who runs a lab at Harvard University, argues that some objects and phenomena in space cannot be explained except as evidence of extraterrestrial technology.
Loeb has emphasized the appeal of aliens and space exploration on Jewish grounds. “It is reasonable to imagine the absence of antisemitism in interstellar space,” he wrote earlier this year, noting that anything traveling from the other side of the Milky Way would have had to set out before there were Jews.
This month, Loeb released new data that he said suggested that an object in space that will come within 269 million kilometers of Earth later this year may have extraterrestrial origins. The resulting frenzy has embroiled U.S. transportation officials and even Kim Kardashian.
Loeb’s argument is rooted in theoretical physics. But here in Roswell, aliens are experienced in concrete terms. Factual or not, this past July, Roswell marked 78 years since the mysterious 1947 event, with an annual Roswell UFO Festival that lures thousands of tourists from all 50 states and beyond.
Every year, sidewalk vendors do a brisk business selling funnel cakes, alien salt-and-pepper shakers and other trinkets, while tourists happily pay $5 each to visit the downtown International UFO Museum and Research Center.
“These exhibits are designed not to convince anyone to believe one way or another about their subjects,” says a sign at the museum’s entrance. “Visitors are encouraged to ask questions.”
Local merchants don’t seem to care much what really transpired that night in 1947. They’re just grateful for all the desperately needed cash this festival generates.
Storefront ad for the 2025 UFO Festival in Roswell, New Mexico. (Larry Luxner)
“Roswell didn’t have a tourist industry and one of my friends was telling me about this UFO stuff. So we started the UFO Festival,” said Tim Jennings, the town’s mayor. “I don’t know what happened, but something definitely happened. It’s not unreasonable. We live out in the middle of the desert, and without a lot of bright lights, at night you can see a lot.”
Added Todd Wildermuth, Roswell’s public information officer: “I don’t have an opinion about it. I haven’t really given it any deep thought.”
To say Roswell is remote is a vast understatement. Some 140 miles from the nearest interstate highway, the town is also unbearably hot and dry. One quickly learns not to go anywhere without a water bottle; it’s even better to stay inside where there’s air-conditioning.
Roswell is certainly not the kind of place to visit if you don’t like reptiles and other poisonous creatures. At the local Home Depot, two of the biggest-selling items, along with plywood and barbecue grills, are Harris Scorpion Killer and Snake-A-Way pellets.
These days, only a handful of Jews remain in Roswell. A Google search for “Roswell” and “Jewish” reveals three synagogues in Roswell, Georgia — a suburb of Atlanta — one of which is a Messianic church.
“There was never a large community here,” said Cymantha Liakos, a Philadelphia native who wasn’t raised as a Jew but recently took a DNA test and discovered she has Jewish ancestry. Liakos, a former geologist, settled in Roswell with her husband, William, a doctor.
Her 23-year-old son, John, a graduate of the nearby New Mexico Military Institute, visited Israel in 2022 as the first Roswell native (and quite possibly the last) ever to participate in Birthright, the program that takes young Jews to Israel on free trips.
Today, the corner structure that had housed B’nai Israel since its establishment in the 1940s is a medical clinic.
“The building was deteriorating and there was no one within the group who knew how to keep it up,” said Judy Stubbs, B’nai Israel’s former treasurer. “Since there was so few of us left, we decided it was in our best interests to sell it.”
The community’s Torah, meanwhile, has found a new home at Congregation Nahalat Shalom in Albuquerque, New Mexico’s largest city and home to many of the state’s estimated 25,000 Jews. In 2018, Roswell’s dwindling Jewish community agreed to “indefinitely loan” Nahalat Shalom the sacred scroll, which had been rescued from a small town in Czechoslovakia by the Karnowsky family during World War II.
Roswell’s Jewish community agreed to “indefinitely loan” a synagogue in Albuquerque their sacred scroll in 2018. (Courtesy)
In 2018, Nahalat Shalom’s spiritual leader, Rabbi Min Kantrowitz, led a special Simchat Torah dedication service in the presence of Kathryn Karnowsky and her Jewish friends from Roswell.
So what do the handful of Jews remaining in Roswell think about the 1947 “incident” that made their town famous?
“My husband is from a ranching family with longtime roots in this area, and all of their ranch neighbors strongly believe it is not a hoax,” said Liakos. “There was an incident, and a government cover-up. Both of us are scientists, and we’re not shrugging it off as ridiculous.”
Stubbs, a longtime resident of Roswell and former city council member, agrees with her friend.
“People ask me that all the time,” said Stubbs, who remains active in politics. “With all the continued hype, I believe something must have happened. A lot of people come here to find out, but no one has the answer. Unless the federal government chooses to open the records, it’s a question that will never be answered.”
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British Actor John Cleese Says He Canceled Israel Shows Due to ‘Safety’ Concerns After Being Accused of Caving to BDS
John Cleese. Photo: BANG Showbiz
British actor and comedian John Cleese took to social media on Tuesday to clarify claims about him canceling a series of sold-out shows in Israel, a move that a local promoter blamed on pressure from supporters of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against the Jewish state.
The “Monty Python” actor, 86, was set to perform a series of shows in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv in late November and early December. All of the performances were to be moderated by Israeli entertainer and comedian Tzivka Hadar.
Alon Yurik Productions, the promoter behind the shows, issued a statement on Monday night claiming that Cleese called off the sold-out shows after he “succumbed to threats from BDS organizations,” according to The Jewish Chronicle.
In a social media post on Tuesday morning, Cleese explained that “contrary to the claims made by Alon Yurik Productions,” he rescheduled his shows in Israel “following advice about safety” because “at 86, that is obviously all important.”
“I will rearrange these shows as soon as it’s possible – and I would be happy to perform without receiving any fee,” he added. “I am hugely fond of Israeli audiences and send my sincere apologies to all the people who bought tickets.” The same performances were originally scheduled for June, but Cleese, who in 1975 created and starred in the sitcom “Fawlty Towers,” postponed the shows because of the war between Iran and Israel at the time.
The actor has recently shared on social media several posts that criticize Israel, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He shared a video of Jewish actor Mandy Patinkin blasting Netanyahu and another clip of American actor Mark Ruffalo talking about severing ties with friends who justify Israel’s military actions targeting the Hamas terror group in the Gaza Strip over the past two years. Cleese also shared posts that promote fake news, including a claim that a former IDF soldier admitted to killing “countless babies for Israel,” which he never said.
In another post, Cleese commented “unbelievable” regarding a tweet of a fake quote attributed to former Israeli Ambassador to the United Kingdom Tzipi Hotovely. The fake quote reads: “There could be a million dead Palestinian children and I would still sleep well in the evening.” Hotovely said during an interview on “Piers Morgan Uncensored” over the summer: “We [Israel] never target civilians. Israel is not killing children, Hamas is using them as human shields … Israel is not deliberately killing children and this accusation is a fake thing.”
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Israel Says Hezbollah Trying to Rebuild, Smuggle in Arms From Syria
Hezbollah artillery gun is seen in Jroud Arsal, Syria-Lebanon border, July 31, 2017. Photo: REUTERS/Ali Hashisho
The Israeli military accused Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah on Tuesday of seeking to rebuild its combat abilities in south Lebanon to the point of threatening Israel‘s security and undoing last year’s ceasefire deal.
Military spokesman Nadav Shoshani said Iranian-backed Hezbollah was operating south of the Litani River in violation of the truce accord and that Israeli forces were conducting strikes on Hezbollah targets in that area. Hezbollah, which has refused to disarm in accordance with the ceasefire, nonetheless says it is committed to the deal.
Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam say Israel is violating the truce deal, pointing to the occupation of five hilltop positions in southern Lebanon by Israeli troops as well as Israeli air strikes and ground incursions into Lebanese territory.
TENSION OVER DISARMAMENT PUSH
Shoshani told a news briefing that Hezbollah was also trying to smuggle in weapons from Syria and via other routes to Lebanon. “We are working to prevent that from happening and to block the ground routes from Syria into Lebanon to a high level of success, but they still pose a threat to us,” Shoshani said.
“We are committed to the agreement, but it must be held. We will not return to the reality of Oct. 7 [2023] with a threat of thousands of terrorists on our border within walking distance of our civilians.”
Several recent reports have said that Hezbollah is, with support from Iran, intensifying efforts to bolster its military power, including the production and repair of weapons, smuggling of arms and cash through seaports and Syrian routes, recruitment and training, and the use of civilian infrastructure as a base and cover for its operations.
Hezbollah denies it is rebuilding its military capabilities in south Lebanon. It has not fired at Israel since the ceasefire came into force, and Lebanese security officials told Reuters that Hezbollah has not obstructed Lebanese army operations to find and confiscate the group’s weapons in the country’s south.
In a televised speech on Tuesday, Hezbollah head Naim Qassem said Hezbollah remained committed to the 2024 ceasefire and that there was “no alternative” to that deal.
He said if Israel withdrew, stopped its attacks on Lebanon, and released Lebanese nationals detained in Israel, then northern Israeli towns would have “no problem” with security.
But he reiterated Hezbollah‘s rejection of full disarmament and said Israel‘s destructive and deadly strikes “cannot continue,” adding: “There is a limit to everything.”
The comments came after Hezbollah recently threatened protests and civil unrest if the government tries to enforce control over its weapons.
Israel has been pressing Lebanon’s army to be more aggressive in disarming Hezbollah by searching private homes in the south for weaponry, according to Lebanese and Israeli officials.
The army is confident it can declare Lebanon’s south free of Hezbollah arms by the end of 2025, but has refused to search private dwellings for fear of reigniting civil strife and derailing a disarmament strategy seen by the army as cautious but effective, Lebanese security officials told Reuters. The terrorist group still wields considerable power among Shi’ites in Lebanon’s fragile sectarian-based system of governance.
Experts have expressed a different assessment.
Under last year’s ceasefire agreement, the Lebanese government committed to disarm Hezbollah, which for years held significant political and military influence across the country while maintaining large-scale terrorist infrastructure in southern Lebanon, which borders northern Israel. The deal was reached after Israel decimated much of Hezbollah’s leadership and military capabilities with an air and ground offensive following the Islamist group’s attacks on northern Israeli communities — which Hezbollah claimed were a show of solidarity with the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas amid the war in Gaza.
Earlier this year, Lebanese officials agreed to a US-backed disarmament plan, which called for the terrorist group to be fully disarmed within four months — by November — in exchange for Israel halting airstrikes and withdrawing troops from the five occupied positions in the country’s southern region.
The Lebanese government is now facing mounting pressure from Israeli and US officials to follow through and establish a state monopoly on weapons.
“It is definitely unrealistic for the Lebanese army to achieve full disarmament by the end of the year,” Hanin Ghaddar, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told The Algemeiner, noting that the subsequent phases, for which they refuse to provide a timeline, could take months or even years.
“The goal should be to reach a better agreement now. The ceasefire was a good start, but it lacked a clear timeline, and Hezbollah is using this period to rearm and rebuild itself militarily, financially, and politically,” she continued. “The stronger Hezbollah becomes, the weaker Lebanon gets, and the prospects for disarmament and peace will continue to diminish.”
Hezbollah last week rejected any talks between Israel and Lebanon, even as the Jewish state ramps up military operations amid rising border tensions.
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Why Israel Is Thriving Despite Years of War and International Attacks
The Western Wall and Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
An October 2025 ranking of the world’s economies, using 2026 projections from the International Monetary Fund, indicates that in spite of two years of existential war against multiple enemies, including Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and the Houthis, Israel’s economy is performing surprisingly well.
Gross domestic product (GDP) is expected to increase to nearly 700 billion dollars, ranking 27th in the world — impressive for a small country with a little more than 10 million people. Per capita, the situation looks even better. Israel’s per capita GDP ranking is 16th, edging out Germany (18th) and the UK (19th) and well above Canada (22nd) France (26th), and Italy (28th).
These numbers could not help but remind me of a column by Alistair Heath in the June 2025 Daily Telegraph on “Israel’s Divine Survival.” Heath starts by saying there is something about Israel that makes people uncomfortable:
A nation this small should not be this strong. Period. Israel has no oil. No special natural resources. A population barely the size of a mid-sized American city. They are surrounded by enemies. Hated in the United Nations. Targeted by terror. Condemned by celebrities. Boycotted, slandered, and attacked. And still, they thrive like there’s no tomorrow.
Is Israel thriving?
Well, besides economic measures, other indicators also defy expectations. For example, it was also recently reported that life expectancy in Israel increased by one full year, a significant jump, to 83.8 years, between 2023 and 2024. Life expectancy in Israel is now the fourth highest in the 37 member OECD, exceeded only by Switzerland, Japan, and Spain.
Israel also ranks near the top for measures such as low infant mortality and success in disease prevention. Israel is among the countries with the lowest mortality rate from heart disease. And this high level of care is delivered efficiently at relatively low cost. OECD-member states typically devote 11 to 12 % of GDP to health care. The value for Israel is only 7.6 %. (Health care expenditure in the US is about 17% of GDP.)
Then there is the “Global Flourishing Study,” a new study that asks the question “What makes people flourish?” Published In April 2025 in the journal Nature Mental Health, the study, headed by Tyler J. Vanderweele of Harvard University, is a multi-year survey of 200,000 people, across 22 culturally and geographically diverse countries, including Israel, the US, Japan, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.
The domains measured included: happiness and life satisfaction, physical and mental health (how healthy people feel, in body and mind), meaning and purpose (whether people feel their lives are significant), character and virtue (how people act to promote good), social relationships (both friendships and family ties), and financial and material stability.
Israel ranked number two (of 22 nations), behind Indonesia when financial indicators are included, and number four (after Indonesia, Mexico, and Philippines) when financial indicators are excluded. The primary finding of the study so far (the study will be completed in 2027) is that high income countries are not necessarily flourishing countries. Israel is the outlier.
The 2025 World Happiness Index also shows Israel is still high up the list of 147 countries, at number 8.
If you ask Google AI why Israel continues to thrive in conditions not normally conducive to success, you get a prosaic answer: Israel’s ability to thrive, in spite of regional challenges and limited natural resources, is due to the combination of an emphasis on higher education and research, a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship, significant foreign support and investment, defense needs, and a democratic institutional framework that protects property rights and promotes a market economy.
But to Alistair Heath Israel doesn’t make sense unless you believe in something beyond the math. “There is no historical precedent for surviving the Babylonians, the Romans, the Crusaders, the Inquisition, the pogroms, and the Holocaust, and still showing up to work on Monday in Tel Aviv,” he wrote. Perhaps the secret to understanding Israel’s success is not any different from appreciating the resilience displayed by the Jewish people through the ages. Or, as expressed by a quotation attributed to the noted Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, “I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.”
Jacob Sivak, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, is a retired professor, University of Waterloo.