By N. Clark Judd

Dinar Enggar Puspita had never been inside a synagogue until she came to Riverdale in August; now she prays at Riverdale Jewish Center every Wednesday.

Ms. Puspita isn’t Jewish — she’s a Muslim exchange student from Indonesia spending the year living in Riverdale and studying at the David A. Stein Riverdale/Kingsbridge Academy, MS/HS 141. Her religion requires her to pray five times daily facing Mecca, the holy city in Saudi Arabia, but unlike her school back home, RKA offers no space for prayer.

The separation of church and state is one of the new and different things Ms. Puspita, 17, has had to adjust to about the school and community — including contact with Jews as a reality rather than an abstract idea.

“Dinar asked, ‘Well, where do I go to pray in school?’” said her host mother, Naomi Erickson, “and the question kind of took the principal [Lori O’Mara] by surprise.”

So Ms. Erickson approached the Riverdale Jewish Center, just across the street, and its rabbi, Jonathan Rosenblatt, offered Ms. Puspita a space to pray.

“We’re just helping to welcome somebody’s child from overseas,” said Rabbi Rosenblatt on Nov. 12. “I only hope when my children travel halfway around the world they will be as scrupulous in their prayers as Dinar is in hers.”

She’s got a standing invitation to join the synagogue for Sabbath services, Rabbi Rosenblatt added.

Of course, the 17-year-old from Semarang, a city centrally located on the island of Java, couldn’t do all of her praying in a synagogue and Riverdale has no mosques, but after visiting three or four places in the area, she was able to settle on a Yonkers mosque to attend during the holy month of Ramadan.

Ms. Puspita is in Riverdale thanks to the Youth Exchange and Study program, an organization dedicated to sending students to the United States from significant Islamic nations, and vice-versa. She’s one of almost 400 students who will visit the United States this year through the YES program, Ms. Erickson explained.