HONOLULU ? On a recent stop at a gas station on the North Shore of Oahu, Rabbi Yitzchok Krasnjansky got an unusual request from the attendant.

“The guy asked me if he could take a picture,” Krasnjansky said. “He asked me how does the yarmulke stay on my head.”

The rabbi obliged. He understands how he might seem like an oddity in a state where only about 10,000 Jews are peppered among a population of 1.2 million.

While many island residents don’t even know what being Jewish really means, the election of Linda Lingle last fall — the state’s first Jewish governor — has Hawaii’s Jews getting more attention.

“I think people are becoming more aware now,” said David Bernstein, a 42-year-old Kaneohe man who recently attended a Passover Seder at Washington Place, the historic governor’s mansion. “I think it’s a chance to educate people.”

“I’ve seen some interest,” added state Rep. Mark Moses, who is Jewish. “I would hope that at least people would take some interest in Judaism and realize, hey, if they agree with the governor on a lot of things and this is her faith, at least take a look at her faith.”

Though their numbers are modest, Jews have been in Hawaii since the 1800s, most having moved from the U.S. mainland. While it’s easier to find a Buddhist or a Christian in Hawaii, there is an established Jewish community on the islands including about 10 synagogues.

Still, in more rural parts of the islands Judaism can seem like a foreign concept.

When Lingle moved to Molokai in 1976 “people there had never met a Jewish person before,” she said. “I find people, more than anything, just curious.”

Many Jews find Hawaii a place free from many of the stereotypes and biases sometimes applied to members of their faith elsewhere.

It’s a place where a Roman Catholic priest paired Hebrew with Hawaiian at Lingle’s inauguration to greet the crowd with “shaloha.” It’s a place where surfboard-themed yarmulkes and colorful aloha shirts don’t clash, and bar mitzvahs and bat mitzvahs are held outside under the palms. It’s a place where a local newspaper’s food section featured a Passover recipe for “Gefilte Fish Goes Hawaiian” with Pacific-fresh mahimahi.

While Lingle was mayor of Maui and during her gubernatorial run, she did receive some anti-Semitic notes and phone calls, but they were minimal and some suspect they came from outside the islands.

Many island Jews say they are free from such bigotry here, a state where no one ethnic group represents a majority and cultures meld seemingly with ease, where the “aloha spirit” dictates acceptance.

“Hawaii has definitely been good for the Jewish people,” said Krasnjansky. “There’s no anti-Semitism here.”

Being thousands of miles from a large Jewish community is something, perhaps surprisingly, that many Hawaiian Jews also say enhances their spiritual life.

“I think here, Jewish people will tell you, you feel — actually — more Jewish,” Lingle said. “I think you are more conscious of it, you feel it more.”

Brad Sherman, who moved to Maui two years ago from New York’s Long Island, agreed. “It’s kind of the reverse of what I expected here,” he said. “It made me think more about what it means to have this identity.”

Bernstein said part of that is because Jews in Hawaii have to work a little harder to create a sense of religious community, so people become more involved.

“It’s hard to be Jewish anywhere,” he said. “But here in Hawaii, we’ve got to make things possible that you take for granted.”