Idan Or-Guy: "Both My Parents Are Disabled, But I Never Saw Self-Pity at Home"

In an interview filled with inner strength, Idan Or-Guy shares his personal journey as an albino and visually impaired child, who experienced considerable loneliness in his childhood. He was once ashamed to admit his difficulties, but over the years he learned how to speak about his feelings, and now he is publishing his debut book titled 'White Story'—about a socially rejected child who, from a low point, finds the strength to rise and grow.

Idan Or-Guy also managed to grow out of hardship, enveloping himself in the love he needed from society, and building from nothing—self-confidence and a luminous personality that no longer needs social approval.

Despite growing up in a secular family "without any traditional inclination," he says that in high school he began showing signs of affinity to Judaism. It started with a counselor named Hanan Ben Ari, in a support group for visually impaired and blind youth in Jerusalem. "We talked a lot, and he became a close friend of mine," Or-Guy recalls in an interview with 'B'Sheva'. "During my military service, he invited me for Shabbat, and I went. I was secular then, and all these rituals like hand-washing, prayers, and Kiddush didn't speak to me. But during the third meal, Hanan and I went out to talk by the field, and when I turned to go back—suddenly, for a moment, and I don't know how to explain it, I had a kind of spiritual awakening. I had a thought that from now on I would change my life, and I felt that from today something must change in me. When I got home, I went to my room, took a white fabric kippah from the drawer and put it on my head."

Despite Parents' Disability, "Self-Pity Wasn't a Concept at Home"

The next day when he arrived at his base, the commander was sure something tragic had happened in the family. "He asked me 'who died', and I replied: 'Does someone have to die for me to wear a kippah?' It was entirely clear to me that this was what I needed to do, and the reactions around me didn't concern me."

After the kippah came the turn of public prayers. "I'd go to the base's shul, and the military rabbi taught me how to pray," he says. 

His greatest inspiration for willpower comes from none other than his parents—both polio-disabled and confined to wheelchairs. "My parents manage on wheelchairs, but that's how they raised six children alone," Or-Guy explains and adds that they are his inspiration for action and willpower. How did this fact affect him as a child? "Of course, you dream that your parents will stand up and run to you, but it's just a dream. My parents never made us feel they were different or needed help. My father worked as a personnel manager at ECI and repaired electronic devices at home. A man of work and family, without self-pity.

"I don't remember something I'd ask him and he'd say 'it's impossible'. He never assumed the position of a victim. I think that's what we saw and still see in him today—someone who wants, can, and does. I was never ashamed of my parents, on the contrary. I always took pride in my parents, unique as they are, doing amazing things, things I don't know if regular parents do. Mom loves to paint, Dad is a man of action, and in recent years he works with glass. Serious fighters."

And speaking of fighters, Idan himself is no small fighter: besides being a prominent activist for the visually impaired, a speaker, author, and singer—the thing he is most proud of is his private nest with his wife Atara and their ten-month-old daughter, Tehelet.