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he sound of Mozart dances
quietly, softly around the
warm room.
Then smack. Down comes
one key. Smack. That's
another. The keys click incessantly as
Fay Isackson turns words into visions
for the blind.
Isackson has been sitting behind
the Braille machine almost every day
for the past 24 years, transcribing
books into Braille. Nothing stops her
— not even the arthritis that in recent
years has crept into her fingers. -
Among the books Isackson has set
into Braille are Mother Goose, a
geography textbook, two volumes by
Maimonides and several pages of the
telephone book.
On the shelf beside the radio are
pages of And Then There Were Four,
a Jewish children's book that
Isackson is setting into Braille. She
has completed about 150 pages of the
book, making for an almost 8-inch-
high stack of completed Braille pages.
A member of the National Braille
Association, Isackson works with the
Tri-County Braille Volunteers, which
accommodate public school text-
books and special requests from the
blind. She doesn't get money; she
doesn't want it.
She gets a certificate. Isackson is
unimpressed. "I'm not doing it for an
award," she says.
But those who know Fay Isackson
say she deserves at least that.
"Fay is the kind of person who is
always willing to do what is asked of
her," says Cara Lynn Pender, a board
member of the National Braille
Association and immediate past
president of MATVI, the Michigan
Association of Transcribers for the
Visually Impaired.
Pender describes the transcribers'
work as "invaluable." While recor-
dings are available for blind students,
she says, most find Braille easier and
faster.
"She's very dedicated and cons-
cientious," adds Bernice Gill, a
member of the Beth Shalom
Sisterhood board. "And if you need a
volunteer, Fay Isackson is always
ready to lend a hand."
Isackson's talents are not limited
just to English Braille. She also
knows Hebrew Braille.
Isackson taught herself Hebrew
Braille from a single card illustrating
how the letters are made. She started
with Beresheet, typing letters and
vowels and words over and over. Final-
ly, she sent a completed manuscript
to the Jewish Braille Institute in New
York, from which she holds
certification.
While similar to its English
counterpart, Hebrew Braille has
distinct traits — the vowels are plac-
ed next to the letters rather than
under them, as in written Hebrew, for
example.
Isackson receives her assign-
ments from the Jewish Braille In-
stitute, which finds transcribers for
books to be used by children in
religious schools, college students and
young men and women studying for
their b'nai mitzvah. It also has seen
that prayerbooks for the elderly are
set into Hebrew Braille.
Although Braille demands much
of her time, Isackson is active in other
organizations as well. She is past
president of Hadassah and serves on
the board of the Beth Shalom and its
sisterhood, and is a member of the
synagogue ritual committee.
She also makes regular visits to
local groups, such as the Girl Scouts,
to illustrate how Braille is written.
She takes the machine with her when
she goes, pulling it along in a luggage
carrier.
in
ost recently, Isackson spoke
at her grandson's school
during Jewish Book Month.
She was volunteered before
she knew it. "He just said I
would come and do it."
Isackson's interest in Braille
began when she was in high school.
She sat beside a blind student who
took notes by punching dots onto a
wooden board. His - work made a short,
clicking sound familar to his teacher
but foreign to a substitute who ex-
claimed, "What is that noise?"
It was slow going at first. Her
stylus and wooden board in hand,
Isackson punched her drills: DICE,
ACID, CAGE over and over. Then she
went back and corrected them by
looking over the dot patterns -.
Although an expert at writing
Braille, Isackson reads it only by
sight.
Not long after completing the
Beth Shalom course, Isackson submit-
ted a 50-page Braille manuscript to
become certified by the Library of
Congress.
Isackson did her manuscript — "It
Continued on Page 77
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
73