OTTUMWA — Author Stephen Bloom calls Postville, Iowa “a laboratory” where Iowans — and Americans — can learn what happens when a new ethnic group moves to town.

But there are no easy answers, and in some cases, Bloom has not even found a tough answer.

In Postville, population 1,400, a strictly religious Jewish butcher from Brooklyn, N.Y., purchased a vacant slaughterhouse. Using kosher techniques, he and his partners quickly found success, and in a way, so did Postville.

“It jump-started the town,” Bloom told the Courier after his presentation at the Fourth annual Diversity Conference held Friday at Indian Hills. “People were dying off or leaving Iowa; the slaughterhouse had been vacant for over a decade. The town is flourishing. And it’s one of [few] Iowa towns that has increased it’s population: [It’s] doubled from 1,400 to 2,800.”

The success came at a price. When he came to town to write his book, it felt like he had walked into a civil war, he said.

The assertive, loud and strangely dressed Hasidic Jews weren’t interested in making friends. They wanted to worship, work and keep to themselves.

“For 150 years, rural Iowa was as white as the milk produced by [all those] Holstein cows,” Bloom said. “In some towns, a farmer from another county is considered an outsider.”

Hasidic Jews, the ultra-religious transplants from Brooklyn, picked up their culture and moved it whole to Postville. They had no desire to become stereotypical Iowans.

“They don’t want to know what seven-layer salad is,” said Bloom.

And that can cause trouble. When summer rolls around, Iowans start up their lawn mowers. The Hasidic Jews weren’t interested in mowing their lawns. That doesn’t go over well in a town that gives out a “Lawn of the Week” award, Bloom said.

And when the Hasidim saw there was not enough parking on the street, they parked on their lawn.

“People were infuriated,” said Bloom.

But we need to import new people because Iowa’s biggest export, he said, is not corn, beans or hogs; it’s young adults.

He said Iowa loses more college-educated young people than any state except North Dakota.

And with one of the eldest populations in the United States, people in small towns are dying off.