A Shocking Interview: "I Never Thought Blindness Would Meet Me, But It Did"

"It happened without any preparation. I ended a phone call with my sister and got up from the chair while looking up. I'll never forget what happened next," says Mrs. Rachel Lichtenstein, an educator and lecturer, describing the moments when she first received what she calls "a gift from heaven"—blindness. "Suddenly, I started seeing the fluorescent light above me moving. Of course, it was just in my head, but I couldn't know that at the time. Then different spots began to appear on the fluorescent and the ceiling above it. Thirty seconds later, everything went black. Black as black."

The "gift from heaven" she received did not prevent Rachel from continuing her life almost as usual. Today, she serves as a lecturer and educator and also works full-time as a typist and text writer. She may not be able to see, but if she could, she wouldn't understand why you are raising an eyebrow while reading these words. For her, being blind does not make her disabled. Because no, blindness is not a factor in her life. Of course, it is. But from her perspective, being blind doesn't mean she's limited. "It took me a while to understand that," she admits in our conversation.

"The Operation Succeeded, But the Patient Died"

"I am blind and hearing impaired," begins Rachel Lichtenstein, a conversation filled with both pain and hope. "I was not born blind, nor hearing impaired. I was a normal child and teenager, and even got married while seeing and hearing. My five children were also born through completely normal deliveries. But blindness was always in the background because some family members are blind. Like a person who hopes and wishes for the best, I never believed the moment would come when blindness would meet me too.

When did your vision begin to deteriorate?

"Seventeen years ago, I remember the exact day: Monday. While baking a cake, I suddenly started seeing purple spots on the cake. After the purple spots, one black spot appeared. I immediately understood it was a matter that required treatment and quickly called my sister to understand from her what people see moments before blindness. Her answer made me realize I needed to go to the hospital."

Rachel quickly arrived at Kaplan Hospital in her city of Rehovot, where it was revealed that one of her eyes was severely damaged. "I underwent three complex surgeries, after which it could be said that the operation succeeded, but the patient died," she laughs. The doctors managed to flatten Rachel's retina, which was the problem diagnosed in her eye, but they did not succeed in the more important task: restoring her vision. "One of the assessments is that my vision was lost due to excessive handling of the eye during the surgery," she notes.

"Even before that, I couldn't see as well as my peers," adds Rachel. "Since a young age, I wore glasses with a prescription of minus 30, so visual impairment was not foreign to me." However, the transition from a seeing woman to being blind in one eye was a significant shock.

Another implication of losing her vision was the fear that accompanied her life like a shadow. She began to cope with an increasing fear that her other eye might also follow the same path. "The problem I had that led to the loss of vision in one of my eyes is a very elongated eye structure, which causes the retina to be very tense and susceptible to tears and detachment," she points out, adding: "When I became blind in one eye, I knew that these were sibling eyes, and what happened to one eye could also happen to the other. So, initially, every flicker I saw or imagined I saw, sparked fears and concerns. I remember looking at my children playing on the floor, and suddenly the thought flashed through my mind that maybe this is the last time I see them. But time is the greatest healer, and with time, I calmed down. I would wake up morning after morning with a seeing eye, and the fears faded and disappeared."

After five years of seeing well in her remaining eye, a layer of cataract began to accumulate on the healthy eye. "This disease is usually the fate of older people, but in problematic eyes from birth, these problems come early," Rachel says in her literary language. She says there was another reason for the development of the cataract: "That eye became the only one serving me for vision, which greatly increased its load until the day the cataract began to form."

The Art of Groping

To remove the cataract requires a fairly simple surgery that cleans the affected eye. However, when there is only one seeing eye and a surgery needs to be performed on it, the situation becomes much more complex. "So I decided to wait until the day when I would have no choice, and only then to undergo the cataract removal surgery," Rachel says. That day finally came. "At that time, I saw the whole world darkened, and I decided to sign my consent for the surgery." The surgery ultimately ended successfully. "I left the hospital a new person. Suddenly I could see the world, the numbers on the phone screen, and the dirt I needed to clean. People accustomed to this don’t realize how much they need to be grateful. For me, those were the happiest days of my life," Rachel fondly recalls those days.

Then, a month after the surgery that changed her life for the better, Rachel noticed a slight decrease in vision. "I wasn’t alarmed," she notes. "I was told earlier that cataract can return, and it can be fixed again by surgery." However, in the period following, the vision in her eye began to deteriorate further and further. She returned to the hospital on the 12th of Av. "When I arrived, I asked the doctors to perform the cataract removal surgery. But they refrained and asked me to wait another month. At that moment, I started thinking of it as a disaster."

When did you completely lose your vision?

"Shortly after the cataract started again. It happened when I was looking out my window when suddenly it seemed to me as if the whole street was floating, going up and down alternately. After that, everything became black as pitch. I ran to the closet to get money to go to the hospital, and that was the moment when I began to understand how a blind person's life looks. I had to grope my way to the closet, and from there, try to reach the money. All my conceptual understanding shifted at that moment from a language of sight to a language of groping."

Rachel quickly realized that she wouldn't be able to manage on her own and called her husband to send one of the children with money. One of the children was quickly sent to help her get to the hospital. Once she arrived at the hospital, it was revealed to her that the worst occurred from her perspective. "They told me there are a number of tears in the eye, meaning the vision is gone. The only thing I’ll be able to see is the distinction between light and darkness," one of the doctors informatively added, and her world darkened, both literally and figuratively."

Rachel emphasizes that nonetheless, there is an advantage for the blind who can distinguish between night and day: "A person who cannot see but can notice the difference between darkness and light, this is very meaningful because it provides a certain place for time in a blind person's life. Through this partial vision, he can know whether it is day or night."

(Photo illustration: shutterstock)

How did you take the harsh news?

"In the first seconds, I was very optimistic, but not in the positive sense of the word, rather through denial. I denied reality. I still saw shadows and light, so I said it might not be as bad as it was in the other eye. Alongside the denial, there was also the most significant difficulty I recall from those early days—the loss of the sense of time. That was the hardest and most significant loss I felt with the onset of blindness. At that time, I was constantly calling my acquaintances to know the time."

But, it wasn’t just the impairment on her sense of time, Rachel’s entire conduct became cumbersome and difficult at that time, and she felt that death would be better than life. "In the first three weeks, I was awake in the daytime and sleeping at night, eating all the time, and crying constantly. My family - my husband and children indulged me until the first mourning period and gave me everything. After three weeks, Rosh Hashanah arrived, and I decided to go pray at the synagogue. I had a ten-year-old daughter at the time, who agreed to lock me in Noah's Ark, so I wouldn’t be seen in public. She couldn’t imagine me walking on the street while she was beside me, supporting me against the looks of her friends seeing me in my blindness. I was torn whether to go out despite her requests, but then I decided I had to take this step. I explained to her that she didn’t have to take me, and I could go with neighbors or friends. Eventually, she got used to it. It taught me that you don’t have to cushion children’s lives when it comes at the expense of other things.

"I had another problem then," Rachel recalls, "the prayers of Rosh Hashanah are long prayers that I didn’t know by heart, so I had to recite the words of the prayer before the holiday, so I could pray along with the cantor. In the end, with Hashem's help, the prayers were special. It was the first time I went out of my house. I didn’t regret this step, which also required courage from me."

You mentioned initially denying the situation. How long did it take you to internalize the new and challenging situation you are dealing with?

"The internalization was long. Very long. It took me about two years to gather the time and understand that I have a mission in this world despite the blindness. And to this day, I constantly receive insights that allow me to continue overcoming the initial difficulty. And if at first, I thought that death was better than my life, because of the realization that my life had changed forever and I would be dependent on others for the rest of my life, later my view of life changed. Also, because how long can one be in mourning?!"

Rachel says she strongly feels that Hashem gives her special strengths that compensate for the loss of sight. According to her, blindness no longer constitutes a factor in her life. "Today, I am no longer thinking about it, and it doesn’t occupy me. And also functionally, I am improving. For last Pesach, I cleaned the refrigerator by myself, I also iron and do many other things by myself at home. Part of it is because I have married off most of my children, so I don't have as much help as I could ask for."

How did your family take the blindness?

"My mother mourned it more than I did. Until her last day, she hurt over my blindness. As part of this, she would come to me to cook and help me with whatever I needed. She took my blindness more harshly than I accepted it.

"Precisely within my immediate family, the children took it more lightly. I have four sons and a daughter. The sons were the ones who took it most lightly, by nature they are less emotional, so they were less occupied with thinking about what I think, or what I was experiencing. They would say that they were praying for me and accompanied me outside without any problem. They also enjoyed reading the newspaper to me with great joy, so I could stay informed on what was going on. However, it was harder for the daughter at first, but after six months she got used to it, and since then has helped me a lot over the years.

"Over the years since I became blind, my children treated it lightly and even with humor. Once, I stumbled on something I had previously placed on the floor, and one of the children asked me if even a blind person could violate the prohibition of 'do not put a stumbling block before the blind.' As part of the light manner in which my children accepted the blindness, they feel comfortable being demanding of me just as children are demanding of their parents. I don’t get any concessions on this matter, despite the blindness."

What are you doing today?

"Before I became blind, I worked in teaching. I was then the pinnacle of the students' dreams, who enjoyed having a teacher who could hardly see and barely hear them. Therefore, I understood I couldn’t continue to be a teacher in such a state, so I informed the school management that I was leaving the position, and moved to work in the field of linguistic editing. Three years later, I completely lost my sight.

"After losing my sight, I also left the editing profession. There's no need to explain why," Rachel adds. "While working, I had a secretary who wanted to continue in the field and to do so, she needed me to keep working as well. So, she started convincing me to come back and work with her. Eventually, I agreed to her persuasion, and today we work together: she reads texts, advertisements, or academic papers to me, and I type the material on the computer, while also editing it both linguistically and in terms of punctuation and vocalization."

Since the difficult early days of the onset of blindness, much water has flowed in the wells of Rachel's city of Rehovot. Since then, she's become particularly busy, giving lectures to women eager to hear her words on almost any topic and is also up to her eyes in work. Nowadays, blindness is for her a "gift from heaven," meant to harden her and bring out the best in her, and a subject that hardly occupies her during the day.