Word: sheina
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Harris eventually found a Lubavitcher couple willing to open their home to extended observation. Over four years, Harris visited them in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, N.Y., where 15,000 Lubavitchers live. The pseudonymous central figure of Harris' book is Housewife "Sheina Konigsberg," not a born-and-bred Hasid but a baalat teshuvah (female "returnee"). Financially comfortable and reared in a Jewish family that was only moderately observant, Sheina joined a supportive community of Lubavitchers in the Midwest after a divorce from her first husband. To the dismay of her children, Sheina subsequently entered an arranged marriage and moved...
...Sheina is less imbued with Yiddish culture than most Lubavitcher women. Nonetheless, she voluntarily leads a highly regulated life prescribed by Jewish custom and law. "I'm here for a purpose," she says. "To see the beauty and holiness in everyday things. The key is in the Torah, and the way to get there has been shown us in a practical way by the mitzvot," the 613 commandments that define traditional Jewish practice. In Lubavitcher thinking, all matter is filled with holiness, and even minor deeds help prepare for the coming of the Messiah...
...Besides Sheina's homelife, Harris depicts a series of community scenes: an outdoor wedding capped by the bride's energetic dance with other women while the groom prances in an adjacent room with the men; a beehive-like bakery where workers scurry to produce matzoh under the prescribed limit of 18 minutes; a farbrengen (gathering), where Rabbi Schneerson preaches extemporaneously for hours to a room packed with followers, while the women crowd behind dark Plexiglas in an upstairs gallery...
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