In N.H. town, a cultural widening

BETHLEHEM, N.H. -- Kosher history was made in this North Country town as clerks at the Bethlehem Village Store recently moved aside boxes of Luvs diapers and cases of Budweiser to make way for Manischewitz matzo meal, borscht, gefilte fish, potato pancake mix, and Tam-Tam crackers.

"The store is recognizing that there are other people who exist," said Harold Friedman , 76, a Bethlehem selectman and resident of six years, by way of Long Island. "It's wonderful."

Brookline, it is not. But Bethlehem, population 2,300, has become an unusual rural scene. Jews from across the country have taken up residence in and around this faded resort town, lured in part by the area's rugged beauty, but especially by the proximity to members of a common faith.

Jewish culture, far more prevalent in urban and suburban settings, now threads through this outlying town, which has a lone blinking traffic light and grassy knolls where elegant hotels once stood on Main Street. The recent influx has propelled an ongoing tutorial for long time residents in the ways of synagogues and Jewish burial and the rules of kosher food.

The scenes unfold everywhere. Bethlehem's Colonial Theater this summer will host a Jewish film festival. The town's five-member Board of Selectmen includes two Jewish members. The non denominational synagogue, a former Episcopal church, is now open year-round for regular services, a Hebrew school, and bar and bat mitzvahs.

Meanwhile, the Hasidic Jews who make summer pilgrimages from New York, speaking Yiddish and generally keeping to themselves, are comingling as well. This summer they will begin construction on a year-round hotel that will cater to Jews and non-Jews.

Most significant, Jewish residents say, is the consecration of a 32-plot Jewish section in the town cemetery last fall, approved unanimously by the cemetery board, along with the installation of a faucet for visitors to wash their hands when they leave the cemetery, in keeping with Jewish tradition. Two residents have been buried in the section; three other plots have been sold.

"To live here, to die here, and to be buried here says that this is our town, too," said David Goldstone , a New York City Department of Parks and Recreation official and long time summer resident who plans to retire to Bethlehem.

The irony of a Jewish community in a town incorporated as Bethlehem on Christmas Day in 1799 has not been lost on some. Moocho Salomon , who settled in Bethlehem and co-owns with her husband the Northern Lights Music Store in nearby Littleton, said, "We call it 'Beth-Lechem,' " which in Hebrew means house of bread.

Specialists in Jewish-American life say that Jews have transformed other onetime seasonal spots, such as Sharon, Mass., into permanent homes. But Bethlehem is remarkable because of its setting. New Hampshire was the last state to grant Jews and other non-Christians the right to hold elective office, in 1877, and has long held the reputation of being unfriendly to outsiders, with its homogenous population and conservative political bent, said Jonathan Sarna , a Brandeis University professor of American Jewish history.

In recent years, New Hampshire has grown in population and become more diverse. Still, the state now counts just 9,970 Jews, or .8 percent of the population; Massachusetts, by contrast, counts 275,030 Jews, or 4.3 percent of the population, according to 2006 estimates by the American Jewish Year Book.

Even fewer Jews live in rural areas, where being outwardly Jewish is not always easy. Some Bethlehem-area residents ask not to receive the Bethlehem Hebrew Congregation Synagogue newsletter because they do not want their affiliation known, congregants said. Some were reluctant to have Jews' role in Bethlehem highlighted in the Globe for fear of upsetting long time residents.

There are now nearly three dozen Jewish residents of Bethlehem who are active in the Hebrew Congregation, and another 45 from neighboring towns. In addition, there are dozens of other local Jews who do not affiliate with the synagogue, and dozens more who vacation in the village.

Their presence marks a renaissance of Jewish activity. Jews began flocking in summertime to Bethlehem in 1916, seeking relief from hay fever in the town's high altitude. At the time, many of the region's grand hotels barred Jews, but they were welcomed at the Altamonte Hotel, which had been bought by businessman Isidor Lusher . By 1956, more than a dozen hotels in Bethlehem catered to the summer Jewish trade, according to "Images of America Bethlehem," published by Arcadia Publishing.

"They were communities in and of themselves," said Linda Herrman , a Bethlehem resident who recently moved from Florida. Her father owned the Sinclair Hotel, which signaled its friendliness to Jews with a notation of "Dietary Laws" on its stationery, meaning that the hotel was kosher. "There was not a lot of contact with the rest of Bethlehem," she said.

In the 1960s and '70s, the Jewish hotels were shuttered as allergy sufferers sought solace in medication and as hotels elsewhere removed rules precluding Jews. Jews sold homes, and attendance at the Bethlehem Hebrew Congregation fell.

Rebirth of the Jewish community came in the late 1990s, with the burgeoning group of year-round residents. Some are retirees who visited during summers of their youth; others are small-business owners and telecommuters freed from city life by the Internet.

Eileen Regen , 67, a retired middle school teacher who moved to Bethlehem five years ago with her husband, a retired military civil engineer, was among the group. She and her husband had traveled the globe but settled in Bethlehem because they wanted an uncongested area, yet one with a Jewish community. The Hasidim, too, despite a strict orthodoxy that rejects much of modern life, are reaching across the divide. Joel Strulovic , 27, a Talmudic scholar of Brooklyn, N.Y., whose grandmother in 1970 bought the Arlington Hotel, a center of Bethlehem Hasidic life, said that the 33-room hotel under construction will cater to Jews and non-Jews.

"In the winter, the Jewish people are not so into skiing," he said. "So, it will mostly be not so many Jewish people at the hotel then."

For long time Bethlehem residents, the resurgent Jewish presence has meant an education. Bonnie Demers , who bought the Bethlehem Village Store last summer, said she watched with amazement as religious Jews, men dressed in black coats and women with covered heads, bought seltzer water and fruit, bypassing everything else in the store because it was not kosher.

"They have different ways," said the Lisbon native, who had never known a Jew before coming to Bethlehem. "But I truly enjoy them. I just sit back and watch."

Sarah Schweitzer can be reached at schweitzer@globe.com.