Shabbos Stories in Honor of the Yahrtzeit of Chana (Helen) Keren

Shabbos Stories for 

The yahrtzeit of  

Chana (helen) Keren 

Volume 14, Issue 7 - 28 Tishrei 5783/October 23, 2022  

Printed L’illuy nishmas for my mother Chana (Helen) bas Meir  

Past stories can be found on the website ShabbosStories.com  From Texas to Missouri:  

A Crown Heights Story  

of Love and Memory  

By Mordechai Lightstone  

The horrific murder of Pesha Leah Lapine thirty years ago shocked the Crown  Heights Jewish community and the city of New York at large. (Credit: Sefira  Lightstone) 

Rabbi Avraham Lapine describes his childhood in broad, simple terms. His  earliest years often seem as distant to him as the noisy, asphalt streets of his native  Brooklyn, N.Y., are from the quiet, suburban green of his home today in Columbia,  Mo.  

Recalling Life as a Five-Year-Old  

“I was just this fun-loving kid. I just enjoyed being around family, coming  home, eating my favorite supper,” recalls Lapine, who co-directs Chabad Lubavitch at the University of Missouri with his wife, Channy. “At 5-years-old, I  was old enough to know I no longer wanted to be a fireman or something, but didn’t  really think about the future.”  

There are bits and snatches of memory: summers in the Catskill Mountains;  playing in the schoolyard; his mother, Pesha Leah Lapine, saying Tehillim (Psalms)  in a rocking chair after the Shabbat meal. Of this last memory, he is less sure if it is  his own or if it is something he assimilated after hearing about it frequently from  others.  

There is, however, one day that stands out in sharp contrast to the haze of the  others.  

On a chilly Thursday, Feb. 6, 1992, Lapine returned from kindergarten at  around 4 p.m. The family’s apartment at 680 Lefferts Ave. in Crown Heights was  on the first floor of a two-story red brick house. Shaded by two large oak trees, it  was the only house on the block with an awning, a large green one that covered the  porch, as if to shield its occupants from the outside.  

Getting off the bus from yeshivah, he walked up the steps to the front porch  and pushed the front door. It was locked. Several large bags of groceries sat on the  porch, evidence of his mother’s pre-Shabbat shopping and a telltale sign that  someone was home.  

Lapine didn’t think much of it. Instead, he stopped to rummage through the  bags. “I just wanted to see what my mother bought, if she got any of the treats I  liked,” he says. He then proceeded to the side door on the left of the home, only to  find that entrance also locked. It was then that Lapine heard his sister, Sarah Chana,  just 2-years-old, crying.  

“Mommy Open Up”  

“I started screaming, ‘Mommy open up,’ ” recalls Lapine, his cries echoing  those of his sister. “But still there was no answer.”  

Moving on to the backyard, he discovered an open window. Stacking the Little  Tikes seesaw onto a small table, he tried, unsuccessfully, to climb into the window. 

That’s when a neighbor, out to take her own children off the school bus, came over.  Hearing the cries of Sarah Chana and seeing the young Avraham struggling to get  in, she hoisted him through the open window.  

“I stood on her hands and pulled myself through the window,” says Lapine.  “There I could see the long hall of the house, and then at the end of the hall,  something no child should ever see…”  

The horrific murder of Pesha Leah Lapine shocked the Crown Heights Jewish  community and the city of New York at large. The Brooklyn assistant district  attorney on the case called it “the most heinous crime in recent years in this county.”  

Pesha Leah Lapine on a visit to Houston, Texas. Pictured here with Yossi  Lazaroff, today a Chabad emissary at Texas A&M.  

At the end of the seven-day shiva mourning period, the Rebbe—Rabbi  Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory—spoke publicly about Lapine’s  life and sacrifice. The murder of a young mother, one who had transformed her life  to grow as a Jew and given so much to raise her family in a vibrant Jewish  community, could only be understood in the context of Jewish sacrifice through the  ages. 

“What has occurred—an act of martyrdom—is utterly incomprehensible!  There is no one to whom to turn for an explanation,” he cried out. “All those present,  including myself, are equally confounded. So what do we gain by questioning? The  question still remains … !”  

The Rebbe spoke about the fact that Lapine’s young children would long for  their mother, and one day tell their own children about their holy grandmother who  had sanctified G-d’s name.  

With the Rebbe’s words still reverberating in his mind all these years later, on  the 30th anniversary of his mother’s murder, Rabbi Lapine started a new project in  his mother’s memory. The campaign to build the Columbia Jewish community’s  first mikvah began in February 2022, and when complete it will be the only one for  nearly 150 miles in either direction. Lapine, who has a daughter and nieces named  after his mother, hopes that the mikvah will perpetuate the dedication to Judaism that  his mother personified.  

Small-Town Texas Judaism  

Pesha Leah Levin, or Phyliss as she was then known, was born on July 30,  1953, the 19th of the Jewish month of Av, in El Campo, Texas, a small agricultural  town in the floodplains of the Colorado River about an hour’s drive south of  Houston. Her parents, Frank and Betty Levin, were one of only a half dozen Jewish  families in the town of 7,000.  

They were traditional, at least by El Campo standards, making annual trips to  Frank’s family 80 miles north in Brenham for the Passover Seders and closing the  family’s drive-through grocery store every Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.  

“We went to Shabbat services Friday nights,” recalls Marilyn Duchan,  Lapine’s older sister by four years. “But in small-town Texas, football is king.”  Shabbat services, held in the synagogue in nearby Wharton, took place year-round  at 8 p.m., only after the varsity game had ended.  

Despite such unorthodoxies, the Levins were proud of their Judaism.  “Growing up, Mother always taught us, ‘If you practice your religion and show  you’re proud of who you are, people will respect you,’ ” says Duchan.  

Today, Duchan describes the sort of idyllic 1960s all-American life that she  and her sister grew up with. They enjoyed trips to the drive-in, ice-cream floats at  the soda shop and weekend-long barbecues from the family’s backyard smoke pit.  

Engrossed in Her Debate Prep  

At El Campo High School, Phyliss was part of the National Honor Society  and an avid member of the debate team. Her classmate Martha Chappell would later  tell The New York Times that Phyliss was so engrossed in her debate prep that she 

often neglected more mundane matters. “Someone would be assigned to roll up [her]  sleeves before she began her debate.”  

Chaim Dovid and Pesha Leah Lapine.  

Phyliss was accepted to the University of Texas in Austin, where she  graduated with a degree in communications in 1975. By then “it was clear to me that  Phyliss was looking for something,” says Duchan. “For a community, for meaning.”  

Following a summer trip to visit family at a large kibbutz in Israel and a stint  pursuing a master’s degree at Hebrew University, Phyliss went to visit the Western  Wall in Jerusalem. A chance invitation there to attend a communal Shabbat meal  opened new horizons in Jewish practice to Phyliss. After taking some occasional 

classes in Jerusalem, she enrolled in the Neve Yerushalayim seminary and spent the  year in Jewish study. When she returned to Texas at the end of the year, Phyliss had  taken to using her Jewish name, Pesha Leah.  

Settling back in at home in El Campo as a newly observant Jew had its  challenges.  

“My mother was ready to send her on the first flight back to Israel when she  landed,” recounts Duchan. An aborted attempt to make the family barbecue  pit kosher had less than happy results. “Father, who grew up in an Orthodox home,  would not have his daughter tell him how to properly barbecue a brisket.”  

Pesha Leah began spending time in Houston’s Orthodox community, where  friends introduced her to Chaim Dovid (Dennis) Lapine. Born in Houston and raised  in Kansas, Chaim Dovid Lapine had grown religious through Chabad-Lubavitch in  Kansas City and returned to Texas to work in the family grocery store. He and Pesha  Leah hit it off, and after taking full advantage of Houston’s kosher dating scene  (namely, long conversations while eating kosher candy in the parking lot of a 7- 

Eleven), were soon engaged.  

A Chassidic Wedding in Wharton  

When time came for choosing a wedding venue, the Levins insisted that Pesha  Leah and Chaim Dovid marry at the family synagogue in Wharton. The chuppah and  ensuing wedding—held outside the star-shaped synagogue building in February  1979 and officiated by Chabad of Texas director Rabbi Shimon Lazaroff  and Chabad of Kansas City director Rabbi Sholom Ber Wineberg—were a sight to  behold: a full Chassidic wedding in small-town Texas. For the celebration, they even  managed to make sure the synagogue’s communal barbecue pit was freshly koshered  so that Frank Levin could serve a glatt-kosher brisket to guests.  

After the wedding, the Lapines lived in Houston before moving to  Morristown, N.J. When Pesha Leah was offered a job working for the Anti Defamation League in 1984, the Lapines moved to New York City. The young  couple thought there was no better place to settle than Crown Heights in Brooklyn.  With access to synagogues and spiritual life, and the chance to regularly learn from  the Rebbe, it was a place of vibrant opportunity.  

The Long Awaited First Child  

One point was particularly painful for the Lapines. After more than four years  of marriage, they still didn’t have any children. A year after arriving in Crown  Heights, after countless hours spent with specialists and a key blessing from the  Rebbe, the Lapines were finally blessed with Faivel, the first of their four children.  

Pesha Leah’s joy seemed complete. 

“After so many years of waiting, of praying, when we finally had a child, she  really just embraced being a mother, being there for our children,” says Chaim Dovid  Lapine. “That’s what she wanted to do.”  

Chaim Dovid got a job as a special-education teacher for the New York City  public school system, and as the family grew, the Lapines moved to the house on  Lefferts Avenue.  

Life was Far from Easy in Crown Heights  

Life, however, was far from easy in Crown Heights in the 1980s. Crime was  high and the neighborhood, like the rest of Brooklyn, was starved for resources. The  Lubavitcher community, the sole Jewish community not to abandon the  neighborhood during the explosion of crime and subsequent community flight of the  proceeding decades, remained tenaciously in place.  

In August 1991, after the bloody, antisemitic Crown Heights riots swept  through the neighborhood, Chaim Dovid remembers a phone call from his father.  “Are you sure you want to stay there?” asked the elder Lapine.  

The Lapines, however, would hear nothing of leaving their community. Social  and outgoing, they took part in neighborhood Torah classes, hosted Shabbat guests  and shared widely with others. Pesha Leah was particularly keen on helping young  Jewish women who had recently moved to the Jewish community, especially alumni  from her beloved Neve seminary.  

“If Pesha Leah found out someone went to Neve,” Chaim Dovid recalls,  “she’d invite them over for the next Shabbat.”  

In the summer of 1991, she even managed to host a Texas-style barbecue with  other guests in the bungalow colonies in the Catskills.  

Fractured Memories  

Shopping Together for Shabbat in Boro Park  

“I remember that Thursday, I put up the challah dough very late—it must have  been right around 2 p.m. that I left it to rise,” recalls Feige Jacobson, who lived down  the block from the Lapine family. She and Pesha Leah used to shop for Shabbat  together in Borough Park. Not merely shopping trips, the afternoon drives were  transformed with conversation, sharing recipes and Jewish life lessons. On that  February day, however, the trip was unusually rushed.  

“So, I got the challah up late,” Jacobson recalls, emotionally rushing her  words. “It was very late. So, in addition to shopping with Pesha Leah, I needed to  pick up food for my father, who lived in Borough Park, and then we needed to be  back in time for Pesha Leah to pick up her baby from daycare.” 

The two women, overburdened with packages from shopping, returned to  Crown Heights. Pulling up in front of Lapine’s home, it was then that Jacobson  realized her rising challah dough might be overflowing.  

“So, I looked at Pesha Leah,” Jacobson says. “We both had a lot of groceries  and I asked, ‘Do you mind if I just bring your packages to the porch’–because I  wanted to help her–‘and then I’m going to take care of my challah?’ ”  

The Lapines with their son, Avraham.  

Jacobson helped Lapine to the porch and then rushed home. It was sometime  after 3 p.m.  

Unbeknown to the two women, across the street was Romane LaFond, a 24- year-old unemployed handyman who loitered about the neighborhood. Mentally ill  and with a criminal record, LaFond had a history of stalking and assaulting Chassidic  women. As Lapine made the first of several trips to bring her daughter and the  groceries in, LaFond followed them in and locked the front door. 

Jewish Blood Is Not Cheap  

“I remember looking through the window into the house,” says Avraham  Lapine. “Pulling myself down, I told the neighbor, ‘I think I see someone lying on  the floor?’ ”  

The neighbor made a face that Avraham, only five, couldn’t parse, and then  walked him to her house.  

Word spread quickly on the block. Hearing the sirens, Feige Jacobson ran over  to the Lapine residence. There she overheard a female detective describing the scene  to a colleague.  

“I began to scream,” Jacobson recalls. “This was a nightmare; you hear about  these kinds of things in the news, but how could it be happening? Later, in court, we  heard how bad it was … But also, how she fought back against that malach  hamavos (‘angel of death’), that achzar (‘sadist’). She fought him with everything  she had.”  

Some 4,000 mourners filled the streets of Crown Heights for the funeral. The  Rebbe himself took part, following the hearse down the block as the funeral  procession made its way from Chabad World Headquarters at 770 Eastern  Parkway to the Lapine home and then on to Queens for the burial. 

Shortly afterwards, Chaim Dovid Lapine returned from work.  

“You come home and see the police everywhere,” he says. “You try to think  ‘Maybe it’s not my family? Maybe it’s not so bad?’ Then, when you realize what’s  really happened, it’s this terrible shock.”  

Police officers and detectives streamed in and out of the house, the groceries  still sitting on the porch. Unsure of what else to do, numb with grief, Lapine took a  book of Tehillim from his pocket and began to read.  

A clipping from the New York Daily News' account of the murder, which  received widespread coverage in newspapers and television.  

The pain in Crown Heights was palpable. The trauma of the previous decades  coupled with the sense that the city had turned a blind eye on a violent, antisemitic  riots, brought hundreds to the street. As Chassidim marched to the 71st Precinct  station to demand protection, non-Jewish neighbors rained rocks, flowerpots and  bottles down on the Jews, who shouted back. Later that evening, two non-Jewish  men beat and robbed a Jewish couple walking home from an unrelated gathering. 

Police officers in riot gear filled the streets and reporters rushed in with  cameras, all under the impression that the Chassidim in Crown Heights would riot  in retaliation for the pain of the violence.  

The crowd swelled. An elderly Jewish man fell, apparently hit in the head by  a police officer’s nightstick. At one point, a Caribbean-American teenager climbed  onto a Jewish-owned bus, hoisting a sign made by a Chassidic protester above his  head, its words screaming out to the words: “Jewish Blood Is Not Cheap.”  

“I kind of want to represent the black community and tell them I’m with them,  not against them,” he told The New York Times. “I hate to see this happen to the  Hasidic people.”  

Frenzied Predictions Unfulfilled  

Dawn broke on Friday morning with the frenzied predictions unfulfilled, but  the true sign of Jewish anguish was yet to come.  

Pesha Leah’s family, the Levins, received a call from New York and flew in  from El Campo for the funeral. In a daze, Marilyn Duchan recalls only the biting  cold and being picked up by “New York’s Finest,” the NYPD, at the airport for their  escort to the funeral. They were followed by a cluster of reporters hoping to better  understand the loss of Pesha Leah.  

“We just kind of went through the motions,” says Duchan. “When something  like that happens, burying a child in such a way, it takes a toll on the parents. They’re  never the same.”  

Some 4,000 mourners filled the streets of Crown Heights for the funeral. The  Rebbe himself took part, following the hearse down the block as the funeral  procession made its way from Chabad World Headquarters at 770 Eastern  Parkway to the Lapine home and then on to Queens for the burial.  

The Rebbe’s Eyes Turned Heavenward  

As thousands of mourners streamed past, the Rebbe paused under a large  banner stretching across the street that said “Moshiach is on his way.” Stopping for  a moment, the Rebbe looked up, his eyes turned heavenward as the stream of  humanity poured forth around him.  

A week later, at the conclusion of Lapine’s shiva, the Rebbe spoke in 770.  Though directly addressing those gathered in the synagogue, the Rebbe’s words  seemed more clearly directed at G-d Himself.  

“What do we gain if we have questions and no answers seem apparent? When  it seems, Heaven spare us, that the redemption is being delayed ever further?” the  Rebbe asked.  

Drawing a lesson from generations of Jewish sacrifice and how precious those  Jews are, he continued. “G-d may hold dear the preciousness of a Jew's self-

sacrifice—but there’s been enough sacrifice over the course of this exile—an exile  that has spanned nineteen hundred years, and Moshiach is still not here! One day  passes to the next, one week leads to another… How much longer will this exile  continue? We cry out, we beg and beseech G-d, ‘It's enough!’ and what is the result?  A mother is taken away from her children... a greater self-sacrifice than any other!  May G-d answer us already, and save us from having to ask more questions, to have  more difficulties, more sacrifices!”  

‘Legacy of Someone Taken Away So Young’  

Less than a week after Lapine’s murder, LaFond was arrested after tips came  in from Jews and non-Jews in Crown Heights.  

Community members had recalled seeing him around the neighborhood.  Pesha Leah’s cousin, who had been in town to visit several weeks prior, realized  LaFond had come to the house, barging in to offer his services as a handyman.  

Avraham Lapine and family in Colombia, Mo.  

“Oh, what a horrible year that was,” Jacobson recalls. “We were all back and  forth between the courtrooms. Between the trial for the murder for Pesha Leah and  the trial for the murder of Yankel Rosenbaum, the Australian student researching 

antisemitism who’d been murdered during the riots, it felt like every man and woman  in Crown Heights was there.”  

The community stepped in to help the Lapine children. Feige  Jacobson’s sister-in-law and another Lefferts Avenue neighbor, Feigel Jacobson and  others helped the Lapines.  

Quiet and reserved, Feigel reflects on the intervening years. “Sometimes, I  wonder,” she says. “We were so focused on making sure their day-to-day needs were  met, did we help them with their trauma?”  

Duchan feels a similar void looking at her sister’s murder.  

“It’s hard to reflect on the legacy for someone who was taken away from us  so young,” she says. “The future? That’s for her children.”  

Avraham has drawn lessons from his painful memories, but hopes  the mikvah will serve a broader purpose, connecting Jews to their heritage and  epitomizing everything his mother believed in.  

The pain that gnaws at the heart of all who knew Pesha Leah remains, but as  the Rebbe reflected, the legacy of Jewish growth abides.  

Avraham Lapine and family members at his mother's gravesite in Queens on  the anniversary of her passing. 

“ … [T]hese children will long for their mother,” he said in February 1992.  “They will recount to their own children their intense longing for their mother; they  will tell them that she merited to sanctify G-d’s Name. … The Redemption should  come immediately. … And then this young woman will meet her children and  continue their education with a joyous heart.”  

Reprinted from the August 30, 2022 website of Chabad.Org Magazine. 

  

 

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