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

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