Local News

Making a new life

By Judy Lash Balint, Special to JTNews

    Nava Turin, 52,

    cradles her infant twin boys as she looks out of the window

    of her modest three-bedroom home in Kochav Yaakov at the

    Judean hills beyond.

   

    To those who meet

    her in her newfound home, a 20-year-old community of 350

    Torah-observant Jewish families just north of Jerusalem

    across the Green Line, the modestly dressed Turin looks as

    if she fits right in. But to anyone who knew the former

    Nancy Weiss when she was an investment banker in Seattle,

    single, living on Capitol Hill, and serving as president of

    the Women’s Endowment Foundation of the Jewish Federation of

    Greater Seattle, her lifestyle turnaround is quite a

    surprise.

   

    Turin’s story

    made newspaper headlinesin Israel recently – even in a

    country renowned for pulling out all the stops to help

    couples have children, it’s unusual for a woman in her 50s

    to give birth to her first offspring.

   

    But Turin’s life

    story is anything but usual. Turin smiles widely as she

    recounts how a secular Ashkenazic Jew from Miami moved to

    Seattle, got involved with a Sephardic congregation, became

    observant, then visited and moved to Israel where she met

    and married a man with a similar background.

   

    A whirlwind

    romance, wedding and move to Kochav Yaakov would be more

    than most people could deal with, but Turin barely takes a

    breath as she tells a visitor how she also managed to get

    pregnant, deliver twins and take the Israeli securities exam

    to resume her high-powered career.

   

    Reflecting on her

    journey, Turin says the first steps were taken in Seattle

    when she was looking for a synagogue for her

    three-times-per-year attendance.

   

    She was

    introduced to Congregation Ezra Bessaroth where she found a

    warm welcome from several women and former Rabbi Yamin Levy.

    Before long, Turin found herself attending classes on

    Judaism and driving down to Seward Park for Shabbat meals

    with EB members.

   

    Making her

    kitchen kosher followed so she could reciprocate invitations

    to her observant friends. Eventually, Turin made the move

    from Capitol Hill to Seward Park and became fully shomer

    shabbat.

   

    Before she became

    religious, Turin notes that she was content being single,

    "But once I began to see the importance and beauty of family

    life, I realized I was really unfulfilled in a very

    significant way," she says. "I also realized there were very

    few observant single men my age in Seattle whom I didn’t

    already know as friends," she adds with a laugh.

   

    For Passover of

    2000, Turin made her fourth trip to Israel. Prior visits had

    left her with no particularly strong connection to the

    country, and certainly no inclination to live there, she

    explains.

   

    All that changed

    with what she calls "a monumental visit with monumental

    spiritual experiences" during that trip.

   

    "Standing at the

    Kotel (Western Wall), the site of the Temple, being

    blessed by thousands of cohanim, made me feel such a

    connection to who I really was," Turin remembers.

   

    On that same

    trip, Turin made her first visit to the Cave of the

    Patriarchs in Hebron, the burial place of Abraham, Isaac and

    Sarah. There she encountered an elderly man who told her:

    "Your papa Abraham and mama Sarah are so happy to see you,

    and so glad that you’ve come home," she recalls.

   

    "It was a

    defining moment in my life," Turin says quietly.

   

    The Torah reading

    for the week Turin was born is Chaye Sarah, which

    recounts the story of Sarah, who gave birth late in life.

   

   

    "I was already in

    my late 40s and realized that it would soon be too late,"

    she says.

   

    Turin says the

    trip led her to the realization that "I’m not a ghetto Jew,

    my roots are not in Miami, Seattle or Russia – my roots are

    here." She vowed to return to Israel within a year, but

    found herself missing Israel as soon as she returned to

    Seattle.

   

    After arranging a

    leave of absence with an understanding boss, Turin planned a

    three-month pilot trip to Israel to see if she could make it

    as an immigrant.

   

    "From the minute

    I made that trip, God was by my side," Turin explains. "When

    you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing, God helps

    you."

   

    In short order,

    she closed out her affairs in Seattle, changed her name and

    moved to Jerusalem in November 2000. Despite her limited

    Hebrew, Turin quickly found work in her field, selling

    institutional bonds. Her next task was to go about the

    sensitive business of finding a match.

   

    Ezra Bessaroth’s

    new rabbi, Solomon Cohen-Scali, provided an introduction to

    a rabbinic colleague who heads up a Jerusalem Sephardic

    yeshiva. Yaakov Turin, 55, a former New Yorker, was studying

    there. Like Nava, Yaakov had never been married, was raised

    in a non-observant Ashkenazic family and found Judaism

    through the Sephardic tradition.

   

    It took the

    couple just eight days before they knew they would get

    married. One day, as the Turins were discussing wedding

    plans in a downtown Jerusalem café, a homicide bomber blew

    herself up close by.

   

    "It made us

    realize what’s important in life," Nava says. The wedding

    took place in Jerusalem five weeks later.

   

    "We knew we

    wanted kids, but due to my age we realized it might not

    happen," she continues. But with the help of Israel’s

    cutting-edge medical technology, the Turins received the

    news on their first wedding anniversary that Nava was

    pregnant with twins.

   

    Since then their

    life has been a whirlwind of doctor visits, diapers and

    decisions.

   

    Reuven and Dov,

    born several months premature, celebrated their first

    birthdays this September. Nava has resumed her successful

    business from home, working on U.S. time in the late

    afternoon and evening after her husband returns from work to

    care for the kids.

   

    "We’re very

    blessed," says Turin. "I’m just so glad that our boys will

    grow up with Jewish values in a Jewish country, not yet so

    saturated with materialism."

Former Seattle resident Judy Lash Balint is an award-winning Jerusalem-based writer.