Hiroko Masuike for The New York Times  Along with areas for romping, Cedarhurst Village Park offers a playground, a water park and a gazebo for summer concerts and dances. Memorials to veterans and victims of the Sept. 11 attacks are also in the park. More Photos >  WHEN they returned from vacation in Panama a few weeks ago, Avi and Rayna Deutsch and their two young sons found that their neighbors had shoveled the snow from the front walk and driveway of their house, a three-bedroom four-bath colonial that they bought for less than $500,000 last February.  “It’s a very close sense of friendship where people are helping each other,” said Mr. Deutsch, adding that they had not experienced such overt neighborliness in Brooklyn, where they previously rented.  In the 10 months since they moved to this village in the affluent Five Towns area of southwest Nassau County, drawn by family nearby, the Deutsches have also socialized with their neighbors. Their children play together.  Mr. Deutsch, an Orthodox Jew, prays at a synagogue across the street, and shopping is a quick jaunt away.  “I have access to everything — banks, shops, food,” Mr. Deutsch said. He walks five minutes to the train station and makes the most of his 45-minute commute into Manhattan by taking part in a Jewish study group with other passengers.  Describing himself as pleased with the “better quality of life” in Cedarhurst, Mr. Deutsch said that even his property taxes, at $6,400 a year, were “very reasonable” compared with rates elsewhere in the Five Towns, or in Monsey, N.Y., where the family considered moving. According to Mayor Andrew Parisi, Cedarhurst has the lowest tax rate of any village its size in Nassau County.  Ninety percent of new residents are Orthodox Jews, said Lori Schlesinger, owner/broker of Lori & Associates LI Realty, a local broker. “They are drawn to Cedarhurst because of the many different synagogues and also the availability of kosher restaurants.”  By Mayor Parisi’s estimate, about 70 percent of Cedarhurst’s 6,000 or so residents are Jewish, the majority of them Orthodox — though the Catholic church, St. Joachim’s, has 620 families. There is also a Lutheran church.  Because of the Orthodox influx over the last two decades or so, many shops and businesses are shuttered on Saturday but open on Sunday, including the Chase and Citibank branches. Additionally, several homes have been reconfigured as synagogues.  Some see a resulting transformation in the character of the village.  “When I was growing up, it was more culturally diverse,” said Karen Rattner, a 28-year-old teacher who is Orthodox. “Where my parents lived, there were all different types of people, in terms of Jews — Conservative, Orthodox. I had Catholics on my block.”  “It has become a very Orthodox Jewish-populated area,” Ms. Rattner said, explaining that having two small children — one a yeshiva student — makes that cultural unity important.  In August she paid more than $400,000 for a four-bedroom three-bath Cape about a mile away from her childhood home.  “It’s really pleasant, I love the block, I love the neighborhood,” Ms. Rattner said.  If she has any regrets, they are about the current state of local public schools — even though her children don’t attend. She attributed the system’s difficulties in part to the Orthodox reliance on private schools. “Having a strong school district is something that is very important,” she said.  Cedarhurst is part of the once highly regarded Lawrence Union Free School District 15, which also includes Lawrence, Inwood, Atlantic Beach and parts of Woodsburgh, Woodmere and North Woodmere.  Vicki Karant, the assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction, said that since 2001 there had been “a demographic change from Caucasian to a majority minority school district,” with 34 percent Hispanic, 22 percent black, 7 percent Asian and 36 percent white students.  Fewer than half the district’s 7,000 students attend public schools, she added. Nearly 4,000 are in private education, mostly yeshivas.  On a recent Friday afternoon, before the Jewish Sabbath began, Cedarhurst bustled with women wearing ankle-length skirts and pushing strollers, scurrying to do last-minute errands.  In its centennial year, the square-mile village has a centrally situated Long Island Rail Road station, 283 stores and a vacancy rate under 8 percent. It is the shopping hub of the Five Towns, which encompass the village of Lawrence and the hamlets of Hewlett, Inwood and Woodmere.
Because of an influx of new residents who are primarily Orthodox Jews, Cedarhurst, L.I., has been undergoing a transformation.