Draft:Mrs Pesha Leah Lapine

In 1992, Pesya Leah Lapine was brutally murdered in her home in Crown Heights. After this merciless tragedy, the Rebbe addressed his chasidim, speaking with heartfelt emotion. He repeatedly mentioned that the children would go through life constantly yearning for their mother. The Rebbe noted that this horrible incident left us with nothing but unanswered and unsettling questions. Despite these unanswered questions, the Lapine children grew up with the knowledge that they needed to continue their mother’s legacy.

Early Life
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.

Education
Phyliss was accepted to the University of Texas in Austin, where she graduated with a degree in communications in 1975. After she graduated she became more religious in Judaism.

Marriage
In February of 1979, Mrs Pesha Leah Levin married Chaim Dovid Lapine. At first, they settled in Morristown, New Jersey, but moved to Brooklyn New York in 1984 after their first son Fivel was born.

Death
In February 1992, Pesha Leah's son Avraham came home from school and saw threw the window his mother on the floor dead. Apparently a criminal broke into the Lapine home and shot Pesha Leah. The next day, the Lubavitcher Rabbi, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson went to the funeral. After the week of mourning, the Rebbe spoke of her sacrifice but his words sounded more towards God.

Mikveh in her memory
With the Rebbe’s words still reverberating in Avraham Lapine, 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.