Ana and Neco’s journey with the Pelham Jewish Center started in September, 2006, when Ana was hired to be the Vav class teacher by then Education Director Halina Rubinstein. Ana and Neco had recently moved to the US from Israel with their two teenage children, Hila and Yoni. Neco was hired to be the Creative Director of Animated Storyboards in New York, while Ana was offered a position at the Solomon Schechter School of Westchester as a Hebrew and Judaics teacher. The whole family relocated from Israel in the summer of 2005 and made Westchester their new home.

 

Ana initially came to the PJC as a substitute teacher during the holiday of Sukkot 2006. The synagogue had invited seniors from the Bronx to celebrate with the students in the Sukkah. Ana was subbing for a teacher on that date and created a program with the seniors on the spot. Hildy Martin, who was the Social Action Committee chair at that time, gave Ana a big hug and a kiss at the end of the celebration; Halina Rubinstein offered Ana a teaching spot right away, and the rest is history.

 

Later that year, Halina Rubinstein announced to the PJC that she was stepping down from her position as Education Director of the Learning Center to pursue a career as a rabbi, and privately suggested to Ana that she should apply for the position.

 

Ana went through the PJC’s search committee process and was offered the role of the LC’s Education Director, starting in September 2007. This meant that she would be taking this new and exciting part-time role in addition to her full-time teaching role at Solomon Schechter. This endeavor needed to be taken as a whole family decision, since it impacted Ana’s time with her family in the evening. After a conversation at home, the Turkienicz family promptly backed her up, saying: “Mom, we got this!”

 

Since then, The PJC has become a second home to Ana and Neco.  They love spending Shabbatot and haggim at the shul.  So much so that they are many times the first to arrive and frequently among the last to leave.

 

Not long after becoming the Education Director, Ana started to incorporate Neco’s talents into her work at the PJC. First, Neco started helping Ana with his artistic talent by frequently drawing characters and helping to design the Learning Center’s Bulletin Boards. Neco continuously supported Ana incorporating technology into the Learning Center, being her prime advisor in that area. Then, Neco became a leading fixture whenever the PJC had an outdoor BBQ. Both Ana and Neco love dressing up for Purim parties, and inviting their PJC friends for authentic Brazilian Barbeques at their back porch. Neco became a key part in the planning for our successful High Holiday programs during the pandemic, coordinating the recording and editing of the prayer service as well as running the streaming of all events in order for the PJC members to be able to have a meaningful prayer experience and overcome the challenges of the lock down time.

 

Many of the Turkienicz family's important moments were held at the PJC Sanctuary, starting with Ana’s own adult Bat-Mitzvah in 2008. Their daughter Hila’s aufruf took place there in August 2014. Both Ana and Neco’s fathers, Leonardo Folberg, and Israel Turkienicz, have memorial plaques on the PJC’s Wall of Remembrance, which makes the shul their true home.

 

Neco and Ana participated in the two Shabbatonim held by the PJC in the past, helping organize it with their previous experience as leaders in the Youth Movement Habonim-Dror in Brazil. Ana fondly remembers that experience as the first time she performed Hagbah, right in front of the Lake at Ramah Camp in the Berkshires, and Neco remembers his first experience of Hitbodedut - praying along in the forest - inspired by Rabbi Schuck’s spiritual leadership during the Shabbaton.

 

Neco and Ana were born in Porto Alegre, Brazil and met in 1977, as members of the Habonim-Dror Youth Movement. They made aliyah (immigrated to Israel) after their wedding, in December of 1982. Their two children, Yoni and Hila were born in Israel, during the time Ana & Neco were members of Kibbutz Bror-Chail, in the Negev. Ana first worked as a first grade teacher in the Sha’ar Hanegev Community School and  later became the kindergarten teacher in the kibbutz. Neco studied Film and TV at Tel Aviv University and became a director and editor, mainly at the Israeli Sports Channel. The family lived in Israel until 2005, when Neco was invited by an old friend from Tel Aviv University to come to New York and be the Creative Director at Animated Storyboards, then a small animation company for the publicity industry.

 

Neco and Ana are now empty nesters in White Plains, New York, where they enjoy gardening, sharing meals with friends and hiking with their two dogs, Beija and Puffy. They have made many new friends and consider the PJC as their community, which they love to contribute to and see it grow. Neco and Ana are excited to be a part of this new era at the PJC and are grateful to all the support and friendship they have enjoyed from its members along the years.

 

Neco and Ana are gratified to receive this honor and grateful to everyone who has worked to make this celebration a success.   They feel blessed to have innumerable role models—clergy, lay, and professional—within the congregation,  who never stop thinking about what they can give to the shul community, the local community, and the global community.  Ana and Neco aspire to be like them.