When the Soloveichiks moved to New York City in June, they passed over neighborhoods overflowing with kosher restaurants and yeshivas to settle in a barren stretch of the Bronx with a dwindling Orthodox Jewish population.

The incentive?

A synagogue in Pelham Parkway offered to pay them $625 a month — for a total of $22,500 over three years — just to live and worship among its members. The money helps cover the family’s $1,750 monthly rent; if they had chosen to buy, they would have received a lump sum of $40,000.

“Pelham Parkway is most certainly not on the map,” said Yakira Soloveichik, 38, a nurse, who relocated from Chicago with her husband and four young children. “You have to make it worth coming here. Money is a great way to pull people in.”

If religion is good for the soul, keeping Sabbath has never been better for the bottom line.

Many synagogues and other Jewish groups have dangled lucrative incentives in recent years to attract new members to their graying or shrinking communities around the nation. Advertised in Jewish publications or through word of mouth, relocation bonuses have included partial down payments on homes, discounted yeshiva tuition, repayment of student loans and even free memberships to the Jewish dating Web site JDate.