After leaving Amish roots in Kentucky, Brianna Leapley built a Jewish life in Jerusalem

Directions most would find simple to understand – “Go down the hallway, turn right, and take the elevator up to the second floor” – were most puzzling to 21-year-old Brianna Leapley, who was training for a new job in food service at a senior center.

She had lived a very sheltered life, had been homeschooled, and was new in the “big” city of Raleigh, North Carolina. From age 16, she had been living among the Amish in Kentucky and had hardly ever seen an elevator, much less ridden in one. She puzzled over what to do, willing the elevator doors to open, which they did not by themselves. Finally, fearful of setting off an alarm, she reached out and pushed the button on the wall.

The doors opened, and she stepped inside. When they closed, she stared helplessly at the control panel, realizing she had no idea how to make the elevator take her where she needed to go.

But this was just one small step in the journey that recently landed Brianna, now Nechama, with a brand-new Jewish soul and a new name, at Midreshet Rachel V’Chaya in Jerusalem.

Raised as the eldest of seven, Nechama described her childhood as sheltered. Her father, a nuclear engineer who was in the US Navy and later worked as an instructor in nuclear power plants, moved the growing family from her birthplace in Rhode Island to Chesapeake, Virginia, to South Carolina, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and finally, to Amish country in Kentucky.

In his 40s, he gave up his naval career and began farming sweet potatoes.

Contrary to the burgeoning tech boom of the early 2000s, Nechama and her siblings were homeschooled by their mother, whom she described as devout, Christian, and increasingly conservative. They had no telephones, televisions, or other electronic devices. Instead, they were surrounded by the great outdoors in their yard, and read plenty of books, from textbooks to science and storybooks.

“We always had nice backyards and built playhouses and little towns in the woods,” she said wistfully. The siblings learned naturally from their creative backyard pursuits. They built makeshift stores with pretend produce and acted out stories that she read.

“As the eldest, I was the ringleader,” she said. “We used holly leaves as currency and made our own rules about how many we could pick off the bush because when we didn’t regulate it, we ended up with inflation.”

While her childhood was idyllic, filled with lots of healthy outdoor play and responsibility, it also included chores that supported her mother through difficult pregnancies, caring for her siblings, and warm parental interaction. But she sensed that something was missing.

But converting was never a considered option for the family. Although they appreciated Jewish practices, they were committed Christians.

“My parents were always seekers,” she explained. “And I was happy to learn.”

When the family began visiting Amish communities when Brianna was 14, she was eager to take on the practices of the Amish. When they decided to move to a Kentucky community two years later, she was all in.

“We had been raised isolated,” Nechama explained. “We were like on our own little family island – homeschooled, no friends. But my parents wanted to have more of a community. They thought the Amish might be an answer. They liked the values and the plain lifestyle. As a teenager, I liked the idea of having a community where I could belong. I had grown up feeling alone.

“The idea of having friends and living on a farm without electricity and running water was great,” she continued. “I liked the idea of no technology. As an outdoor girl, I was excited by the idea.”

Although it meant giving up the family’s Jewish practices, since the Amish would not support that notion, Brianna loved the idea of finding community and friends, willing herself to forget her attraction to Judaism.

Her parents had more of an adjustment than the children. Unlike her parents, she learned to converse in Pennsylvania Dutch, and she and her siblings all made friends, but Brianna still felt strangely alone.

Their clothes were plain, long, and not very colorful, dyed with natural dyes and handcrafted with no zippers – only snaps and buttons. All the girls wore bonnets that covered their hair. No mind, she was never fashion-forward. The boys wore straw hats.

Wood was chopped and kept in a shed, which fueled the stove. Water was boiled and mixed with tepid water that was pumped up from rainwater that had collected in a cistern below the house for bathing, laundry, and dish washing.

They washed their clothes in tubs by hand with a washboard and homemade soap. There was no heat in the winter and no air-conditioning in summer. Brianna’s dad, the nuclear engineer, was forever planting, tending, and digging up sweet potatoes.

The Amish lifestyle of hard work suited Brianna until she was 20, when she faced the realization that deep down, she wasn’t getting what she needed from the lifestyle and the community. At age 21, her father told her, “It’s your life. I don’t want you to leave, but I won’t stop you.”

With help, she made a phone call to her aunt and uncle and asked if she could stay with them in Raleigh, North Carolina. At that point, figuring out how to use a phone was a challenge. While heartbroken at the thought of hurting her parents, she decided to exercise her independence.

“I climbed into the car belonging to my aunt and uncle, sobbing,” she recalled. “My mother helped me in, and I remember waving to my family as the car pulled away from the farm.”

In Raleigh, Brianna got used to flush toilets, a water faucet, washing machines that scrubbed the clothes, dryers, vacuums, and taking hot baths in which she didn’t have to boil the water first. Her aunt and uncle gave her a cellphone, and she stood at her new job site, confronting the perplexing elevator.

As she read the horrific news of Hamas’s invasion of Israel and mega-massacre, she instantly felt regret for “forgetting” her dream to one day become Jewish. She decided that the next leg of her journey would involve somehow revisiting her childhood dream and meeting Jews.

But first, she took a month off to go back to Kentucky and let her friends and family know. Her friends felt that she was sure to burn in hell; her parents, however, were more tolerant and permitted her to exercise her desire to explore her religious yearnings.

Somewhat more tech-savvy, she performed a rudimentary Google search on her phone, asking where Jews could be found. Google answered, “Brooklyn and Jerusalem.” In her next search, she Googled “Brooklyn classified,” and ads appeared for furniture sales. Growing frustrated, she was about to turn off her phone when she saw a classified ad for a night companion for an Orthodox Jewish woman in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, in exchange for room and board.

She called and spoke to the woman’s brother, who said that the position was still open. She told him she wanted to convert to Judaism; he assured her that it wasn’t a necessary job requirement.

Her Brooklyn-or-bust trip began in a car service that broke down in Knoxville, Tennessee, where she culled through her luggage, sending much of it back to her parents. She then waited for hours in the freezing cold for a Greyhound bus. When the bus finally arrived, she noticed that her bag was filled with a glass container of handmade shampoo, a gift from her mother, which had broken.

Two days and several buses later, she was astonished to find herself in New York, a city that made Raleigh look tiny. When she finally got to Brooklyn, she was welcomed by her Orthodox employers. She found a day job, friends, and an Orthodox synagogue. Very soon afterward, she was on a fast track with the Rabbinical Council of America to convert to Judaism. Less than a year later, Brianna immersed herself in the mikveh (ritual bath) and emerged as Nechama.

At a recent speaking engagement, she was asked: “How does it feel to join a people who are hated by so many?”

She still corresponds with her parents by snail mail, as they do not use phones. They can never come to visit her, she said, since they have no IDs or passports and thus are unable to board a plane.

Does she see the similarities between Amish life and a strict Orthodox lifestyle?

Nechama now supports herself by giving riveting speaking presentations at schools and synagogues, describing her amazing journey. These days, she has an email, a cellphone, and even an iPad.