E

very morning, he stands at the busy intersection just across the street — directly visible from our living room window. He’s a tall man dressed in standard dark suit, with a long beard and tinted glasses and a white cane in hand. Amid the noise and hubbub of the morning rush, there’s something about this imposing figure that makes you want to look twice. Maybe it’s the sense of stillness he exudes in contrast to the frantic activity surrounding him.

On this narrow Jerusalem street that was never meant to accommodate the modern-day rush hour, the cars honk, the double accordion buses laboriously navigate the tricky turn. Minivans filled with little boys stop and start impatiently. Taxi drivers yell.

Hurry hurry hurry move move move hurry hurry honk honk beep beep—

And he stands there serenely. Waiting calmly, waiting patiently, waiting for someone to steer him through this sea of impatient humanity, metal, and rubber, all speeding off to their day. Because he can’t see the way himself.

Sometimes it’s a man on his way home from shul who shepherds him across the street.

Sometimes it’s a girl who’s late for school, who shyly lets him know that it’s okay to cross.

Sometimes it’s a taxi driver who jumps out of his taxi and halts all traffic imperiously, barking orders to the tall man and all the cars lined up behind him.

The man nods, murmurs his thanks, and proceeds across the street. Then, with his white cane, he taps his way up the sidewalk and walks off to wherever he’s going. No self-pity, no bitterness. Shoulders high. Listening to the mighty roar of this ocean of modernity from his island of quiet.

We watch him fade into the distance and wonder at the curious mixture of awkwardness and grace. The balance of power should have been upended. This tall, broad man with the gentle smile should be the one crossing the little kids. Now he needs them to help him with this most basic of tasks.

Yet somehow he manages not to be needy even though he can’t do the simplest of things: to cross the street. Somehow he manages to hold on to an unlikely dignity.

The Blind Man is part of the morning scenery. He hasn’t always been blind, we learn. It’s a progressive disease that shrouded his eyes, shut him out from the world of color and action and mobility. But he’s fighting it, we see him fighting it every morning.

We wonder — what happens to the shopping? To the morning paper? To meeting a newborn grandchild and only tracing the fuzzy features with a finger, not being able to soak in the sight with your eyes?

We hear that he davens with an MP3 — a recording of the davening that he follows instead of reading from a siddur. The boys at first would crane their necks curiously at this man who clutched at his MP3 instead of his siddur. Then it became part of the scenery. The Blind Man figured out a way to proceed to his day, the Blind Man figured out a way to daven. The Blind Man can’t see the world, but he sees his way through.

(Excerpted from Mishpacha, Issue 759)