During the First Lebanon War, she helped care for wounded Israeli soldiers, gaining a medical skill useful in her later American life.
She is living and teaching at a yeshiva, a Jewish school, when she meets her second husband, Los Angeles Police Sergeant (later Lieutenant) Peter Decker, in The Ritual Bath.
After meeting Rina during his investigation of a rape at the yeshiva, he is compelled to explore the religion for himself, and eventually to become a religiously observant Orthodox Jew.
Rina strictly keeps the dress code and behavior appropriate to a frum, or Orthodox, Jewish woman, but with some exceptions.
Roth also suggests that Rina's surname, Lazarus, "signifies the contemporary perception that Jewish tradition is being resurrected".