DEAL, N.J. — This wealthy seaside town might not have a Syrian Jewish community at all if it hadn’t developed as a summer escape for Brooklyn’s Syrian Jews, more than 10,000 of whom visit each summer.

Indeed, in the Syrian Jewish community, Deal is known as “Brooklyn South,” and the approximately 1,000 who stay here year-round have built a dozen or so Orthodox synagogues, several religious schools and a wide selection of kosher restaurants.

On Thursday (July 23), federal agents arrested five rabbis, two New Jersey state legislators, three mayors, and dozens of others in a political corruption and money-laundering probe that spanned from Hoboken to Israel. The sting has brought an unwanted spotlight to the Syrian Jewish community, which has long tended toward insularity.

“These are only allegations. All these people are innocent until proven guilty,” said Yosef Reinman, an author and rabbi in Lakewood’s sizable Orthodox Jewish community, which is less than 20 miles from Deal. Though he is not Syrian, Reinman has worked with Syrian Jews for more than a decade.

“Even if some of them did stuff over the line, it should not reflect on the community,” he said. “They help the poor. They service people in hospitals. They go to visit people there, entertain them, cheer them up, it’s a very big thing.”

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Among the Syrian Jews arrested were:

— Edmund Nahum, 56, principal rabbi at Deal Synagogue in Deal. Authorities said he laundered $185,000 between June 2007 and December 2008. He was released from custody on $700,000 bail.

— Eli Ben Haim, 58, principal rabbi of Congregation Ohel Yaacob in Deal. Authorities said he laundered $1.5 million between June 2007 and February 2009. He was released from custody on $1.5 million bail.

— Saul Kassin, 87, chief rabbi of Congregation Shaare Zion in Brooklyn. Authorities said he laundered more than $200,000 with the government’s cooperating witness between June 2007 and December 2008. Kassin was released from federal custody on $200,000 bail.

In 1994, Kassin succeeded his father as chief rabbi of the Syrian Jewish community in the United States.

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The Syrian Jewish communities in Brooklyn and Deal are known for their ability to flourish financially in the secular world, particularly in the garment and electronics industries, while retaining centuries-old religious customs and traditions.

“It’s a community that is committed to its rabbis and their rule,” said Jonathan Sarna, an American Jewish history professor at Brandeis University.

The Syrian Jewish community is also noted for adherence to the absolute authority of its religious leaders, and nowhere is this more evident than in a 1935 ban by Syrian rabbis against intermarriage, including people who converted to Judaism and who are openly accepted in most other Jewish communities. The decree is believed responsible for one of the lowest rates of intermarriage of any Jewish community.

The penalty imposed for marrying outside the faith or to a convert is severe: excommunication. “It really was designed to ensure that blood would be preserved,” Sarna said.

The publicity surrounding Thursday’s arrests was a major blow to the tight-knit community whose leaders have long guarded its reputation and independence with care.

“We would prefer that you not discuss it on the news. It’s not good for anybody — especially us,” said a man outside Brooklyn’s Shaare Zion synagogue, who said he’d been receiving calls about the news all morning.

Sarina Rosse, a Syrian Jew from Brooklyn who has studied and spoken widely on the history of the community, said this inwardness is rooted in the Jewish experience in Syria. “You learn to live under the radar and not draw attention to yourself,” she said. “You get into an argument with a Muslim, it’s Muslim court, Muslim law, they take the word of a Muslim over the word of a Jew. You learn to be apolitical.”

In the early 16th century, Jews expelled from Spain made their way to Syria, where the Ottomans extended a relative welcome. Another wave of Jews came from Italy and France in the mid-17th century; they had been granted special privileges to trade without paying taxes, said Yaron Ayalon, a doctoral student in Near Eastern Studies at Princeton who will teach at the University of Oklahoma in the fall. Many of the Jews became traders in silks, spices and other luxury goods.

Syrian Jews began emigrating to the U.S. in the early 20th century, but left Syria in droves after pogroms sparked by the 1947 U.N. partition of Palestine.

When they arrived in America, they were considered uneducated and didn’t speak Yiddish, making for a hostile welcome among the Eastern European Jews already settled in New York, Rosse said. “It was just a very rough start for them,” she said, and that contributed to their effective isolation.

Though Syrian-American Jews eventually assimilated in many ways, including dress and language, they have retained their traditions, including naming practices, religious customs and a cuisine that looks and tastes more like the Arabic cuisine of Syria than other regional Jewish foods.

“It’s a community that has been deeply proud of its identity and its success in America, of the fact that it has managed through several generations to maintain some of its distinctiveness, unlike other sub-ethnic Jewish groups,” Sarna said. “No doubt this will lead to some introspection, especially if significant members of the community are taken into custody.”

(Jeff Diamant and Vicki Hyman write for The Newark Star-Ledger. Carly Rothman and Chris Megerian contributed to this story.)