SightSpecific

Rabbi Levy praying with a braille prayer book at a Woodmere, L.I., shul.

Rabbi Levy praying with a braille prayer book at a Woodmere, L.I., shul.

by Sandee Brawarsky
Special To The Jewish Week

Rabbi Michael Levy helps to open up New York City to thousands of people with disabilities, and also helps to open up Jewish texts to people who, like himself, are blind.
In his work as director of travel training for the Metropolitan Transit Authority, he manages the transit authority’s program to teach people with disabilities to use subways and buses independently. He has also developed and implemented an award-winning subway safety-training program for customers who are blind, and he makes informational materials about the transit system available in braille and recorded editions.
Blind from birth, Rabbi Levy, 56, has been an advocate for the disabled since earning his rabbinic ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary and a social work degree from Columbia University.
“About disability,” he says, “don’t say it’s impossible unless you know it’s impossible. One person can really make a difference.”
His passion outside of work is Torah study, and he credits his friend Rabbi Nachum Lehman, executive director of Computer Services for the Blind (CSB), for developing the computer software that enables him to access more primary Jewish texts than ever before.
At the dining room table in his home in Woodmere, L.I., Rabbi Levy demonstrates how he can scroll down his screen, and find a particular chapter of the Torah, commentary, tractate of the Talmud, Mishnah and other sources. What I see on the screen, he can read with a Focus braille display that hooks up to his laptop and keyboard. The CSB software translates the Hebrew text into braille.
“This is really a revolution,” he says. “There’s no reason for a child who is blind, and of average intelligence, not to go into any Jewish program of any denomination if they have this equipment.” He admits that he might have taken a more traditional rabbinical job if this system had been available during his student years, when he had access only to those books that were translated into braille.
“I always longed for something like this,” he says. He now serves as a founding board member of CSB, speaks at its conferences, does fund-raising, and helps others in the blind community use CSB services and adapt the systems to their particular needs.
His laptop is loaded with a speech synthesizer card, so that a voice he describes as sounding like “a Scandinavian with a cold” projects from a speaker.
My conversation with Rabbi Levy in his home spills over into subsequent telephone calls and many e-mails. His notes are packed with information, and his memory for details is impressive. Unable to resist a good pun, he is facile with quotes, aphorisms and lines from poetry and old songs. He named one of his travel workshops, “I Get Around.”
“I am more or less like everybody else,” he insists.
His commute usually takes 66 minutes, from home to his office in Long Island City. After the last kaddish in shul — he attends minyan thrice daily, as he is saying kaddish for his mother — he heads to the nearby Woodmere station on the Long Island Railroad. Like most commuters, he knows exactly where to stand for the greatest efficiency. At Jamaica, he switches to the subway.
“I swipe my Metro-Card and walk about 19 steps to the down escalator, onto the subway platform, past the escalator to the next lower level,” he explains. Then he takes two subways and walks a short distance to work. On the way home, his house is a 60-second walk from the train platform.
He usually reads The New York Times during his commute, thanks to a system called Newsline, set up by the National Federation of the Blind. He dials into a central number, enters some codes to select among scores of newspapers, chooses a particular section, and hears the articles. Sometimes, he’ll fire off a letter to the editor.
At the MTA, he designed the pioneering travel training program he now runs. While the training itself is outsourced, he recruits clients by networking and conducting workshops for professionals in the field. He explains that there are 83 accessible subway stations and the city’s fleet of buses is totally accessible. Training a person who travels regularly on a fixed route to use the transit system, and thus making him less dependent on paratransit transportation, is not only cost effective, but grants the person a degree of independence.
Rabbi Levy knows how important that independence is.
When he was growing up in Bradley Beach, N.J., someone from the New Jersey Commission for the Blind taught him how to get to his elementary school on his own. He told a story at his mother’s funeral, recalling his excitement on the first day he would travel solo. Carefully following the route he had been taught, he proudly arrived at school and was greeted by a friend who said, ‘Hi Michael,” and then “Good morning Mrs. Levy.” He then realized that his mother had been trailing him on bicycle, to be sure he was safe. The next day, she stayed home.
“One of the wonderful things my parents did for me when I was young was to let me explore,” he says, grateful that they encouraged his decision making and autonomy. They also made great efforts to describe the world to him. He says that he can still get from Manhattan to Bradley Beach, by car, knowing all the turns and landmarks (which may no longer stand), as his father narrated their journeys.
“When you speak of courage, it’s really the parents of the disabled who are heroes,” he says.
In his experience at the MTA, he has sometimes seen a young person with cognitive deficiencies successfully complete the training, only to have a legal guardian experience a change of heart about granting permission. For Rabbi Levy and the trainee, that’s heartbreaking.
“The bottom line is that with some training, many New Yorkers with disabilities can get around New York City safely,” he says.
In his work as a contributor to the newsletter “On the Move,” which goes to 120,000 customers whether in print, tape, or braille editions (and is also available on the MTA Web site), he has a lively touch. He’s always enjoyed writing, and explains that while growing up, in “manipulating words, I felt that I was on an equal playing field with sighted people.”
Prior to joining the MTA, he worked as director of services at Brooklyn Center for Independence of the Disabled, Inc., and has also worked as a chaplain and psychotherapist.
He’s a founding board member of Yad Hachazakah-The Jewish Disability Empowerment Center, as well. At an interview when the organization was applying to Bikkurim for funding as a new organization, Rabbi Levy knew that the guidelines said, “Don’t say, “If we build it, they will come.” He told the potential funders, “This could blow the whole interview, but in the case of people with disabilities, if we don’t build it (accessible), they can’t come.” The center got the grant.
His home is outfitted with ramps that accommodate his wife, Chava Willig-Levy, a writer who contracted polio as a child and gets around in a motorized wheelchair. Their daughter is a seminary student in Israel, and their son attends Yeshiva of Far Rockaway. They have lived in Woodmere since 2002, after many years on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. In his upstairs office, Rabbi Levy points out a 14-volume braille edition of the Artscroll siddur produced by JBI International, that spreads over several shelves. It is still not the complete reproduction of the one-volume printed edition; the full commentary would make the volumes so massive that praying from them would be difficult.
Jewish study is very much part of his daily life, as he attends classes and enjoys writing divrei Torah, or expositions on the weekly Torah portions. While he’s pleased that he now has access to much material, he says, “When you drink the waters of Torah, you become thirstier.” He notes that he would love to have additional commentaries, and the writings of Rav Kook, Rav Soloveitchik and others.
Rabbi Levy’s favorite newspaper section is Science Times. A self-described child of the space age, he’s long been fascinated with science, particularly the fluctuations of weather — he loves walking in big storms — and remembers the day in 1962 when John Glenn went into orbit. He’s very good at explaining how things work.
He says that he’s also something of a skeptic, and has been ever since a doctor told his mother that he needed glasses.
He’s not interested in research into artificial sight, and would like to see research dollars instead go toward bringing the benefits of sight through other senses. He objects to the way “dollars and glamour flow to the primitive vision chip, that people cling to the belief that the medium of vision, even when imperfect and primitive is better than any alternative technique in obtaining information.”
“It makes one wonder who is it that is really in the dark,” he says.
He’d be interested in the development of a chip that could be attached to any device with a touch screen, like cash machines or appliances that would then connect to a keypad usable by a blind person. He’d also like to see researchers study why so many blind people are underemployed, and develop tools to make information accessible, the way ramps make buildings accessible.
Rabbi Levy rarely complains. He dislikes simple platitudes about self-improvement. He says that the last thing he’d want is for a parent to show this article to a teenager, and say, “Look what he has accomplished, you should follow his example” or “There’s a man who has figured it all out.”
“No,” he says, “Success involves plenty of struggle.”

Westchester Jewish Conference

Westchester’s Jewish Community Relations Organization