Theme Music Tonight, on New Hampshire Crossroads, we're going to have a celebration of Judaism in New Hampshire.

We're going to travel around the state to explore the history and the culture of the Granite State's Jewish population.

(singing in Hebrew) We’ll travel to the North Country to visit a community known for its clean air and its rich culture lifestyle.

Bethlehem was full of large white hotels, with people, many of whom stayed for weeks, if not for the whole summer, I rode a horse for the first time then, and it was a lovely place, and still is.

Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey And in Nashua you'll hear about the revival of traditional Yiddish dance music.

A lot of these songs just originated over generations.

A lot of the songs don't even have words.

It's just die, die, die and la la la , and it's more the spirit behind it.

You can hear the schmaltz, the, the, the feeling behind it, it's universal.

La, la, la La la la, La la la But first we are in Portsmouth.

We're at Strawbery Banke, a popular historic site that looks at New Hampshire's evolving social history.

Every year during Hanukkah, this place comes alive with reenactments and celebrations, many of which center here at the Shapiro House.

It's the original homestead of Russian-Jewish immigrants, and this is their immigrant story.

Shalom, Chag Sameach.

I'm Sarah Shapiro, or Shiva, and I live in this house with my daughter Mollie, who's ten, and with my husband, Abraham, who's the pawnbroker on Penhallow Street, which is two blocks walking from here.

Their names were Sarah and Abraham Shapiro.

They were born in the Ukraine in the late 1800s, where they lived separate lives.

The two things they did share were their religion and the persecution that came along with it.

Around the early 1900s, when Nicholas the Second was czar of all the Russias, he had a foreign minister, advisor by the name of Pobedonostsev.

And Pobedonostsev had a very simple solution for dealing with the Jews.

One third would be murdered, one third would convert to Greek Orthodoxy, and one third would emigrate.

az egmor b’shir mizmor As it turned out, more than 1.5 million Jews fled Eastern Europe.

Abraham's brother Samuel was one of those who emigrated.

His journey took him through London and eventually to Boston.

Praise your saving power In the end, Samuel settled in Portsmouth.

He lived in the Puddle Dock neighborhood now known as Strawbery Bank.

Abraham and Sarah followed.

Furious, they assailed us When they first arrived here, my grandfather had $12 in his pocket.

He came across from Russia on a boat, and actually he started out with $7, and it was a very turbulent trip.

And one of the party, a gentleman on the boat, bet my grandfather $5 that he couldn't walk around the deck Well, he took that bet, and he made an extra $5 that way.

And so he arrived with $12, traveled to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to be with his older brother Samuel, and a couple of years later married my grandmother.

Puddle Dock was appealing for the young couple.

Neither spoke English, and the neighborhood had something to offer them.

This was a very multicultural neighborhood.

In this neighborhood, which was the affordable neighborhood that recent immigrants were able to come and live in, was populated by other ethnic groups, as well as a group of about 40 Jewish families.

I don't know how they felt, but I would have felt terrified.

I would have felt lost not being able to speak the language, not having a job.

The support system, I think, is what kept them going.

Happy Hannukah.

Oh, thank you.

Chag Sameach to you also, that’s happy holiday in Yiddish.

Family, community, friends were extremely important because they were all in the same boat, so to speak, and they needed each other to succeed and they worked together to achieve that success that they had.

(grating sounds) The Shapiros worked hard in their new homeland.

Abraham labored in a shoe factory and worked as a local pawnbroker.

Sarah took in immigrant families.

Along with other Jewish families, the Shapiros established a Hebrew school, kosher shops, and a synagogue that still stands in Portsmouth today.

My grandfather, as well as many of the other members of the Jewish community, purchased a building that used to be a church.

It was changed into the Temple Synagogue, and that was a central focus point around which many of the activities took place.

Music The Shapiros’ dream of a new life and a new land was being realized, but there would be more.

In 1909, a daughter was born.

They named her Molly.

I would say that their lives focused and centered around her.

They came to this country with very little.

They wanted to make a new life for themselves and their daughter, Molly.

My mother was a very important part of that.

Molly was their only child and thus the most important part of her parents’ lives.

She became the focus of their hopes and dreams.

Excelling in school, she was the first in her family's history to attend college at the University of New Hampshire.

It was there where she met her future husband, Ed Wolf.

My grandparents were very, very proud of her because she was a wonderful daughter.

She was a very good student.

She was the first of the family to go off to college.

Shortly after graduating from the university, Molly learned that she was to become a mother.

For her parents, this was the next step of their journey.

On March 25th, 1934, at the age of 25, Molly gave birth.

Bert was to be the only grandchild Abraham and Sarah would have, for Molly died of complications following the delivery.

That was the greatest loss they had ever suffered in their lives.

Their only child dying at such a very young age.

Music I think everything they had dreamed of, dreamed for, wished to have.

It was not uncommon in those days for parents to put such a great emphasis on the importance of their children.

And they lost some of that, as well as losing her as a wonderful, beautiful individual.

Music As grandparents, Abraham and Sarah loved Bert as they would their own son.

They raised and cared for him.

And today, in the home where his mother grew up, the public is reminded of the important legacies that so many immigrant families have left for all of us.

(singing in Yiddish) The first time I came here, I cried.

Tears came to my eyes.

I feel very thankful and appreciative to have this opportunity.

That this house was randomly selected.

The time that was selected was the time that my grandparents and my mother, when she was ten years of age, lived here.

And this was a very important part of their life because they lived here for approximately 20 years.

And I think Strawbery Bank has done a marvelous job depicting that period of time.

And the Shapiro House is an example of what happened to and for many immigrants who arrived then.

(singing in Yiddish) Incidentally, we should point out that Strawbery Bank is open each year from April to November.

Now for our next story, we're going north from Portsmouth up to the White Mountains.

To the town of Bethlehem, in particular, a town that was incorporated 200 years ago on Christmas Day.

It's renowned for a number of things, among them, it's the poetry capital of New Hampshire.

It's also the highest elevated community east of the Rockies.

And more importantly for our story tonight, it's home to a tremendous Jewish community that's bonded by its history.

Music Bethlehem may look like other northern New Hampshire towns, small and quiet, but the synagogues and Hebrew signs here indicate something's different.

New Hampshire has one of the smallest Jewish populations in the country.

0.8%, to be exact.

That's less than 10,000 people statewide.

Most Jews in the Granite State live around our cities.

So why has Bethlehem, this small North Country town, established itself as a hub for Jewish life?

We asked Leslie Dreier, a long time Jewish resident.

My grandfather came and was the first member of my family, and he came because of he found relief for his allergies up here.

And I think that was why many people came from New York.

Now, I heard one recently from a friend of mine who told me that she first came, she had terrible allergies and she didn't know what to do.

She asked her rabbi, what should I do?

I'm really sick.

And the rabbi said, go up to Bethlehem.

Doctor Bluhm from Pennsylvania came and proved that the pollen count and everything was less severe in Bethlehem than anywhere in the country.

While he was here, he realized there was a need for a pollen count.

He went to the local hospital, got them to let them put up equipment on the roof of the hospital in Littleton to prove the ups and downs of pollen count.

So now they have them all through the United States to you, in fact, on your weather station sometimes, they'll say the pollen count is.

But it all started in Bethlehem.

Bethlehem also became a popular vacation spot.

People traveled from all over to enjoy the scenery and the outdoor recreation.

For some, however, New Hampshire wasn't quite so welcoming.

When I was growing up, there were hotels in the area where Jews were not allowed.

It was as simple as that.

I should tell you this story of my grandfather a little bit more, in more detail.

He came here for his allergies, and he used to - He came, I guess, for a few summers, and he was in the habit of taking long walks.

And he went walking towards the east on route 302 here one day, and came across a sign that was not that uncommon in those days, saying that no Jews or dogs are allowed beyond this point or allowed on this property.

And it was a hotel with a golf course, and it was a very nice place.

And he bought it.

And that was how that hotel became a Jewish hotel instead of a restricted hotel.

This was quite common.

And other Jews bought property in the area.

Bethlehem soon was one of the few towns in the White Mountains where Jews could stay and feel welcome.

All of us in high school had jobs either at the hotels or at the drugstore, and a lot of the summer Jewish people would work in hotels too.

When I was growing up here in the 30s into the early 50s, you couldn't find a place to park your car on Main Street, and you couldn't find room on the sidewalk.

The hotels were packed with as many as 5000 people here.

Music Bethlehem was full of large white hotels with people, many of whom stayed for weeks, if not for the whole summer.

And it was just, it was very, very busy in the summer.

There were a lot of people there and a lot of things to do.

It's very hard to imagine now what the hotels were like.

People would dress differently, you know.

They had to, they had all kinds of clothes.

They would - Men had to wear at the Maplewood tthey had to wear tuxedos on Saturdays and Wednesdays.

There were lovely cocktail parties.

There was a band every night.

There were first run movies.

There were, there were famous comedians and dancers and, and singing acts.

The golf was always fabulous.

There are people who play three, twice a day.

They play 18, 6, 36 holes of golf a day.

And it was a wonderful life.

My whole family used to come up, aunts and uncles and cousins.

And it was, it was very festive family kind of time.

But two things, the development of the automobile and the invention of antihistamines, led to the decline of Bethlehem’s summer population.

Most of the grand hotels burned down by the 1970s, and many tourists stopped coming.

For year- round Jewish residents, this posed a problem.

One of the most important duties of a Jew is to bring up one's children as Jews.

That can be difficult here, and only because there's not much of a, really a real community to identify with on a moment-by-moment basis.

So you have to make extra effort to bring up your children to identify with the ethics and and the history that you want them to identify with, and that was very difficult for Alice and me for a couple of reasons.

One was that the Jewish community at the time was a summer community.

It was elderly and there weren't any programs for children.

Now, thanks to Moocho Salomon and a number of other people, there's a wonderful Jewish community for children, (singing in Yiddish) Well, we got together with other families and we started a congregation of young families, a little bit separate from this congregation.

This was an elderly congregation that was primarily focusing on prayer.

And they gathered in the summer, and we needed education for our children.

And then the president of the congregation died suddenly, and, all of a sudden, that occurrence forced us into having to make a decision on what our commitment was to carrying on the building and all the responsibility.

In fact, his wife brought the checkbook over one day after he had died and said, this is it.

This is yours.

You're the next generation.

You take it.

Shabbat, Shalom Shabbat, Shabbat, Shabbat Shalom Shabbat, Shabbat, Shabbat Shalom When we first moved here and the synagogue was full of people that on the Friday night or Saturday morning I describe when we walked in with our children, it was full.

These people were raised where they didn't miss a Shabbath, and they lit candles every Friday.

And they were, and they were mainly kosher too.

They had a much different background than the community today.

The community today was not brought up that way, but they still have a very strong bond with their tradition and with their history.

And I think they're quite eager to pass that on to their children.

In a way, you feel like you want the Jewish heritage of Bethlehem to continue.

It has an incredible history of how the Jews established themselves.

And now it has a new, it has a new era, but without the old era, you couldn't really go into the new era.

I think it's just always going to be a center for Jewish life.

And it's nice that we have the synagogue and it's and it's a beauty to take advantage of and preserve.

rushing by (singing in Yiddish I think they have a lot of advantages thanks to the enormous efforts on the, on the part of a few people in town to keep it going.

And I must say something else.

If it weren't for the tremendous support from the earlier community, I'm not sure these things would be happening today.

So what they maintain, built and maintained for so many decades, has changed radically from what they were practicing 20 years ago when we came into the community.

But I think it's definitely serving exactly the purpose that it should be serving right now.

(singing in Yiddish) And now from Bethlehem to Nashua, we're going to meet the Raymond Street Klezmer Band.

This summer, they performed at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington, D.C., where they showed people the traditional Yiddish dance music, a revival form they play which predates the Middle Ages.

(traffic noises) Music Klezmer music actually goes back to, people say, 16th century Middle Ages.

It’s, you could say it's Jewish troubadour music.

It's a very old Jewish tradition of reaching to the sky high, which essentially to God.

So elevating a person in a chair (inaudible) today, it's probably from that tradition of reaching high to the Almighty.

Music I call it Depressed Dixie.

It has, it sort of sounds like Dixieland, but it's in a very, It has a very minor sound to it.

A minor influence.

So it sounds, sometimes it sounds like sad Dixieland music.

Music And the bottom of it, of it is very simple.

It's almost like a polka.

So it's very Music I think klezmer music isn't specifically a religious thing.

I think, you know, when you talk about being Jewish, there's there's culture, there's people- hood, there's religion.

And, I don't think of klezmer as being a religious thing.

In fact, I think, you know, back in the old days, being a klezmer musician was probably like being an actor.

You know, you wouldn't want your daughter to to marry one or go out on a date with one.

And, so it's, it's, it's very strong in terms of cultural stuff.

It's not particularly religious.

It's, it's fun, it's raucous.

It's, some of the songs we sing are pretty irreverent and make fun of rabbis or rabbis’ wives, that type of thing.

13 candles shine so bright As each (inaudible) comes up tonight.

Father, teacher, classmates too Each one means so much to you A lot of these songs just originated over generations.

A lot of the songs don't even have words.

It's just die, die, ie and la, la, la.

And it's more the spirit behind it.

You can hear the schmaltz, the, the, the feeling behind it.

It's universal.

A lot of the groups we sing for aren't Jewish, but they understand the words to the song, even though they're not in English because it's just the feeling and the energy that they get.

Dance a circle, round and round, chairs are lifted off the ground Music Well, I think it's, the music that started in Europe.

In places like Poland and and Russia and Hungary, areas like that where, where there were lots of Jews living and it was just the kind of music that they, that I think they played, with just a certain feeling that really makes a big difference between the Depressed Dixie and the klezmer music.

It's got the little bit of a minor tone or minor sound to it, but it does, it's it's a bit on the unique side.

It's, these tunes have certain things in common.

One is, despite where they came from, it's clear that in many cases the tunes have this minor sound very much akin to the chanting of the hazzan or the or the cantor.

And this is, you know, it's the, it's the sad wailing sound of Jewish chants.

Now, of course, there's very happy Jewish tunes, and I'm sure, I know there are some major keys, but but these are the things that people immediately, they recognize it.

Music Hava Nagila means (in audible) in Hebrew means song joyous.

So Hava Nagila, it mean let's, let's be happy.

Let's have some joy.

And that's exactly what it is.

Hava Nagila The meaning of the word klezmer means instruments of sorts in Hebrew.

So it's like the people who make this music becomes the song themselves.

Music La la la la la la la la la La la la la la la la la la la La la la la la la la la la la La la la la la la la la la la La la la la la la la la la la La la la la la la la la la la We hope you enjoyed this look at Judaism in New Hampshire.

And until next week, for the Hampshire Crossroads, I'm John Clayton.

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