Mrs. Lapine, a Wife and Mother

by Jena Morris Breningstall – L’chaim Weekly

Pesha Leah Lapine and I were not only cousins, we were good friends. I remember the night we became friends. Pesha Leah and I were exactly the same age, and had done the same things at the same time. We had each gone from the social issues of the sixties, to a growing sense of Judaism in the seventies. Everything Pesha Leah said that night made me laugh and I laughed until my sides ached.

But I also remember the pain and the awkwardness, because there I sat, with two little boys running around, and expecting another child. I wondered, “Why don’t they have kids? Lubavitch, and married more than 3 years. Something must be wrong.” Something was wrong, and more than one fertility specialist told Pesha Leah she would never have children.

The next time I saw the Lapines was two years later. They had just moved to Crown Heights. They invited us to come for Simchat Torah. I sighed with relief when Pesha Leah informed me that she had just had a baby. They told me that it was the blessing of the Lubavitcher Rebbe that proved the doctors wrong. In fact, when Pesha Leah had her fourth child in five years, she called me, saying, “I’m doing all right for a lady who was told she’d never have any kids, aren’t I!”

The Simchat Torah visit was my initiation to Crown Heights, to “770,” and to the Lubavitcher Rebbe. I’ll be honest with you. I couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to live in Crown Heights, and I told her so. “How could you leave Texas, with its wide lawns and its huge trees, to come here?”

“Now that we have this little baby to raise, we want him to be near the Rebbe. And we want Feivel to grow up knowing Chasidus. He will learn more Chasidus from the Rebbe than we could ever teach him ourselves in Houston,” Pesha Leah explained to me.

My first trip to Crown Heights led to many more. It was certainly never boring at the Lapines. What a collection of unusual guests they had. I think you had to experience it to believe it. Pesha Leah’s mother told me, “Her daddy never saw anything wrong with anybody. Pesha Leah was just like her daddy. He treated everybody like they were somebody, and so did she.”

Unlike many other women of our generation, Pesha Leah wasn’t bent on her way to fame and fortune. She was a wife and a mother. That’s all. But she was a wife. And she was a mother.

As a wife, Pesha Leah was as good as we’d all like to be. She told me that the secret she had learned was she didn’t always have to be right. It was okay if Chaim Dovid was right, too.

Pesha Leah was unassuming and uncomplicated. She was honest to the core and called it like she saw it. What you’d call “a real straight-shooter.” She had strong opinions, and I think I must have heard them all in the four days I spent with her.

Pesha Leah mentioned that she and Chaim Dovid did not own a car. “Can you imagine getting by in Houston without a car?” she laughed. Well, no, I couldn’t because when I grew up we used to ride to the 7-11 which was two blocks away. “Where else but in Crown Heights could a family the size of ours get by without a car?” She marvelled at her friends who regularly volunteered to take her shopping, who always seemed to be there for her and her children.

At one point, I asked her about a certain fad, something that is popular in Minnesota, and she said, “Oh, the only fad we have here in Crown Heights is Moshiach. That’s the only thing we think about and the only thing we talk about.”

So I asked her, “How do you feel about Moshiach?”

She answered, “Isn’t that why we’re here, in this world? Isn’t that what it’s all about?”

In the summer of 1991, the eyes of the world were on Crown Heights as mobs came to riot and loot. At Pesha Leah’s funeral they came again from all over New York, but this time it was politicians and dignitaries, clergymen and neighbors, from all ethnic groups and from all walks of life. They came to stand with the Jews, with the chasidim, in tribute to a Jewish woman, a woman of valor. I wondered if the eyes of the world were watching now.

I was standing right on the edge of the curb during Pesha Leah’s funeral. Near me was a group of teachers from the Episcopal elementary school on President Street. I don’t think these women were there because they knew Pesha Leah, or to make a political statement. I think they came to honor Pesha Leah for what she was–a wife and mother.

I don’t know how many of you marched in civil rights marches in the sixties, but I did. As I was standing in front of the hearse, I looked around and my mind flashed back to those marches.

Then the Rebbe came out, and one of the teachers from the Episcopal school asked, “Who is that?” And her friend answered, “That’s the Rebbe. He’s their leader.” As the crowd pressed forward, these women pressed forward as well, and when the crowd fell into step behind the Rebbe as he followed the hearse, the teachers fell into step as well.

There we were. There was Pesha Leah, who the Rebbe later said, would be among the first to arise when Moshiach arrives. And behind her was the Rebbe, and behind the Rebbe the chasidim, and behind them, and with them, was everyone else.

So, we walked along for a while, and I could see that many of the neighbors came out to pay their respects. And again, I wondered if the eyes of the world were watching now, if anyone noticed that here in Crown Heights–where not too long ago there was street fighting and bottle-throwing–there was for one moment in time complete unity.

And I want to ask you what I asked myself that day, “When the whole world walks behind the Rebbe, not just Lubavitchers, but other Jews, and gentiles, when the world falls in step behind the Rebbe, follows the Rebbe to honor a true woman of valor, isn’t that a step out of Exile. Isn’t that a first step into Redemption?

A Sefer Torah was recently written in Pesha Leah’s memory. Take part in the writing – Click here to donate.

Based on a speech at the memorial to Pesha Leah Lapine in 1992 and published in the L’Chaim Weekly.