Crystal Clear

And another and another. One complication creates another, requiring yet more surgery. And when the disease finally abates, he’s left without any sight.

Lavi Greenspan, now 51, has spent half his life as a sighted person, and almost half his life without sight. It hasn’t been an easy path. Yet he’s doggedly maintained a positive outlook and unflagging emunah, and his ahavas Torah, ability to connect with others, and overflowing ahavas Yisrael have made him a magnet for Jews in search of chizuk and inspiration. When he and his bashert, Nechama, were married this past November, after decades of searching, the guests included Rav Herschel Schacter, Rav Yerucham Olshin, Rabbi Dovid Breslauer, Rabbi Mordechai Kamenetsky, and Rabbi Moshe Katzenstein, in addition to hundreds of Lavi’s “best friends.”

 Lavi and Nechama have moved into a two-bedroom apartment in Kew Gardens Hills, but since he has a regular Sunday chavrusa in Brooklyn, we meet at my home. Nechama drove him in, and sits with us as we speak.

A solidly built man of medium height, Lavi is clean-shaven and dressed in regulation yeshivish black pants and white shirt. He tells me a little about his childhood, in Hillcrest, Queens, with his parents, brother, and sister. His father was a social worker, and his Israeli-born mother went back to school once her children were grown to earn a law degree. Lavi attended Yeshiva of Central Queens for elementary school, followed by mesivta at Yeshivah of Flatbush, Keren B’Yavneh in Israel, then Yeshiva University, where he became close to Rabbi Yehuda Parnes, whom he considers his rebbi. When selecting a profession, he chose law, because it seemed a practical career path for a young Jewish man, and was accepted to Fordham Law.