She’s blind and fearless | Rachel Bodek

Please check our Rochel Yenty Bodek’s wonderful website here:

Rochel Yenty Bodek is a Hasidic woman who lost her sight as a young woman due to a genetic condition. She has faced tremendous challenges as a wife and mother in the Hasidic community and has risen to the challenge with tremendous resilience. In this interview she talks with a lot of candor about the challenges and strengths of the Hasidic community and how she approaches her disability in this realm.

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[INSIGHTbeyondEYESIGHT-pf]

Hi all, it's me-rochel Yenti (aka Rachel) Bodek. Thanks all for your nice comments and thoughts. I hope my interview is making a positive difference in people's lives-that's what I live for and thrive on. Just want to make you aware today is Jacob Bolotin's yahrtzeit-please say a prayer or do a good deed in his memory. As far as I'm aware his Hebrew name for kaddish or mishnayos is Yakov ben Aryeh Leib. May we all bring light and goodness to this world.

[surifleischman]

I’ve worked with Rochel Yenty- she is famous in the industry as a boundary pusher, always advocating and educating. She is a true inspiration!

[FishareFriendsNotFood]

What an extraordinarily accomplished woman, she's an inspiration for us all!

[mizzymel]

WOW! Rochel has mastered the use of an iPhone better than most of us without vision impairments! I love her tenacity. ❤

[blooky]

Impossible to understand the effort required to mitigate this disability. Rochel makes it sound feasible to overcome - but listening to the detail reminds you that it is a devastating illness. Her perseverance is beyond question😊

[FriedaVizelBrooklyn]

Dear friends: for technical difficulty reasons this video did not translations to Yiddish and Hasidic words added onto the video. However, I have added English subtitles to the whole video (as I always do) and put translations in the subtitles. I hope this might be helpful. Thanks for watching Rochel Bodek's story ❤

[shella]

Fantastic interview. My grandmother of blessed memory was born with low vision. I was extremely close to her and this interview brought back many memories. Grandma lived a beautiful full life and I was grateful for her example of resilience and tenacity. Grandma had 2 visually impairment siblings and 3 siblings with full vision. They lived in a remote area of Idaho and were very poor. In the 1920s the state forced them to move hundreds of miles away to a residential school for hearing and visually impaired. Grandma enjoyed the benefits of the school but her two siblings ran away! The benefits for Grandma were access to a music education. She was a gifted pianist and organist, who played by ear. Grandma also played guitar and harmonica. She was also an avid reader- using braille, records/tapes, and large print. She was fortunate to keep her low vision all her life. She was very light sensitive and had to wear dark glasses. Grandma didn't like to use a cane either.

[bethannd]

I can so relate to this video. I have the same eye disease as your guest, but fortunately did not become legally blind until I was an adult. I have failed learning Brea, she is absolutely right when she says it is difficult, it is extremely difficult to learn, especially as an adult. I am still learning to adapt to my disability, even though I have been legally blind for 40 years now. Every day is a constant challenge, constant stress, constant fear. It was very interesting to hear her viewpoint as a orthodox Jewish blind woman. As I have watched your other videos, I often wondered how the blind coped in that community. Especially With mobility since you are not allowed to touch a person of the other sex. I often wondered how that worked. So thank you for shining a light on this. 27:35 27:45

[jimmccullough]

Rochel is a strong individual and will succeed in whatever she chooses to do 😊

[D.N..]

Hi Friedal... Thanks for interviewing Rochel, its very informative. She is a positive force in her community.

[bonifacy]

Brilliant interview and brilliant interviewee. Thank you!

[Familylawgroup]

As a child of a person with RP and Ushers, common with Askenazi Jews, this was really important.

[bertgetner]

Thank you for posting this. Rochel should be an inspiration to others.
She has incrdible tenacity. God bless her.

[andrezelvin]

I was so very happy to see you do this interview. I'm Blind, not of the community but was involved with it for a while, . I know people she refers to including the two who are guide dog users. So often, and I mean in the secular world, interviews non-disabled people who doo interviews with disabled people end up getting what they expect to get - and your title makes it sound like that - stories of bravery by "special' individuals, but you're good at what you do and you have gone beyond that. I don't know Rochel but I know of her, and she's for sure an important member of the community and probably the best person you could have picked to interview, but she's a person. When folks focus on "courage" or "specialness" they miss the reality that we are all just people living our lives. If you admire someone using that paradigm undermines the lives of other people with that disability, and it makes that individual out to be what they are "in spite of" their disability instead of it just being part of their story. Sure, compared to a sighted neighbor, a lot of things are harder, but it's not like we bravely choose that greater difficulty. It's just what we have to live with.
Anyway, just one note, for what it's worth, it is okay to use a guide dog on shabbat. Maybe someone would rule that it is not, but there are some who rule it's not okay to use a cane, on Shabbat while most Blind people who use canes, do use them on Shabbat.
Something you should know, that is "special" is that, well, in my one person's opinion, Frum community, at least in NYC and surroundings, is not "behind" or less accepting of blindness than in the secular world. The shidduch situation is it's unique, but who's to say that it's a disadvantage to be only set up with disabled people? I think this has changed in the secular world, maybe in the last 20-30 years, where young Blind people today seem to often be dating sighted people, and there have always been Blind people who found sighted spouses, I don't know numbers, but, well, when I did the thing you're supposed to do, and told everyone I knew that I was looking to meet someone and happy for them to make introductions, my non-disabled friends *only* introduced me to disabled people, often whith whom I had nothing in common. As a Jew, I would say that attitudes towards blindness is the factor most responsible for my disenfranchisement from Jewish community. Nobody really knows and nobody much cares what my level of Jewish connection or observance is, But as leaving Frum community is a bigger deal, one most don't want to do, they work harder to counter negative atitudes and find their place in the community, and the community does more to include them. CSB (Computer Sciences for the Blind) which Rochel refers to is an amazing small organization that does more for its size than many larger secular institutions that purport to serve Blind people. the founder has created ingenious individualized access solutions for people, but often individual parents who were in isolation at the time, from other parents of Blind kids, or from Blind adults, did a lot of incluwork to make sure their kids' needs were met.
Also, the way people like Rochel have gone out of the community to get resources they need, and also the way they often live a bit outside the prevailing cultural norms, like in getting higher secular education or transcending some of the gendered expectations, not only have I seen that among Blind people from other insular communities, where they sometimes end up with the role of being the bridge to the outside world, but it's really the case in the secular world also. That because the world isn't set up for our needs, Blind people, and disabled people in general, just have to develop more creativity to live our lives and often end up with fewer gendered or other constraints and wider worlds than our non-disabled family and neighbors. Even though we are disadvantaged in employment, places which think hiring us would be an extra burden, just don't get that they are missing advantages we bring to work that doesn't show on a resume. I think anyone listening to Rochel for this whole interview would be able to clearly see that.

Not including the disability experience in your work would be missing an important secment of the population, and I encourage you to do more interviews like this.

[sandragostanian]

I taught Physical Education for students with many different abilities, as well as disabilities. I started working with one student, blind from birth, when she was in Kindergarten. She was a delight, inquisitive, funny, and amazingly talented. One day she asked me to teach her how to use the “monkey bars.” I was puzzled - how did she know what they were - well, hearing from friends who were using them. She was successful and I still remember the ear-to-ear smile. But then there was the day she told me, “you know, Coach, I’m tired of being blind.” That broke my heart. Thank you for inviting Rochel to your channel. She is very interesting. I’m glad she is a TVI - a true gift to students with Visual Impairments. ❤

[yeppiesheppie]

I was SO happy to see this video! I am visually impaired, and SO much of what Rochel said was relatable and/or true to my experience growing up VI in a secular community in the Midwest, all the way down to the cane woes! Thank you to Rochel for sharing her experiences and thank you Frieda for holding such interesting conversations that the general public is often unaware of.
🩵🩵🩵

[Robin-xrtz]

I work with finding employment for those with disabilities it is so hard to get employers to realize that the skills and wisdom it takes to navigate the “normal “ world are amazing and to appreciate someone’s talents that can translate into a working environment. GOOD ON ROCHEL

[chanasundown]

Rochelle’s life is inspiring and I enjoyed hearing the interview. What an admirable way she has shaped her life. Interesting culture clash was raised—the typical dislike of dogs and the potential need for a guide dog. I found myself worrying a little for the dog…

[Zelde-M]

Thank you dear Frieda for taking us on a journey with Rochel Yenty Bodek, a visually impaired Chasidic woman who is an advocate in the Chasidic and Yiddish speaking world for the visually challenged. Rochel Yenty, a wife, Mother, sister and career woman is knowledgeable, charming, eloquent and articulate. She reveals the struggle of learning her vision diagnosis in her teenage years, how she has lost vision gradually and how it is to be different in the Community. Telling her story with understanding, sensitivity and humor we learn high-achiever Rochel Yenty's way is, "to solve problems, not just sit." She aims to help herself but even more so help others. In this episode Rochel Yenty shows us how to turn limitations into the limitless! A lesson for All! Shkoyakh!

[makeGODsmile]

Wow Frieda! I have been paralyzed for 37 years and this lady really impressed me. Great content!