Weekside: A weekly section by Ehrle Weisberg
Fini Levy: "It was as if the lights went out, I didn't feel the body. I just whispered 'ambulance'"
Six years have passed since the basketball player suffered a stroke and was declared a plant.
His left hand remains paralyzed, but he testifies that "I feel in heaven. I learned that family is the most important thing in life. We didn't treat what happened as a disability, but we talked and related it."
personal interview
Ehrle Weisberg
04/10/2022
Tuesday, 04 October 2022, 10:30
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Tomorrow night, after the end of Yom Kippur, when Yael and Pini Levy go to sleep in their house in Rishon Lezion, she will tell him the regular sentence she usually says on this date.
"She always says 'that night you fell asleep, and I only saw you after a month,'" says the former basketball player.
Six years have passed since that beginning of the fast, when Levi's life changed.
"I finished taking a shower, got ready, came to the bed and just fell on it. I still managed to whisper 'ambulance' to Yael. I felt something in the back of my neck, as if the switch came down and all the lights went out, I didn't feel my body and only my eyes remained a little open," he recalls.
Levy then suffered a stroke, and for many weeks he was sedated and ventilated, and was defined as a plant.
The doctors didn't give him a chance.
Even those who believed that he might survive, were convinced that he would remain paralyzed throughout his body.
He said he heard the doctors talking to his wife about organ donation.
she refused.
"My wife's brother came from the US, and I saw him.
It's like my soul detached from the body and was there.
After I woke up, I asked Yael, 'Was your brother here?', and she didn't understand how I knew."
"I have a family that loves and accepts me and supports me."
Yael and Fini Levy with their daughters Adi, Hila and Roni (Photo: Udi Tsitiat)
Fini Levy, 51 years old, 2.03 m, played for 17 seasons in the senior league and also reached the Israeli national team.
He grew up in Hapoel Jerusalem and appeared in the media for nine years.
In between, he moved with Adi Gordon to Nahum Manbar's Hapoel Holon, returned to Malha - skipped to Maccabi Kiryat Motzkin and ended his career after six years in Maccabi Rishon Lezion.
He scored 1,324 points in the league, and won with Jerusalem its first two state cups in 1996 and 1997.
Levy was left paralyzed in his left hand and partially in his left leg as well.
"I can't feel my hand at all, and I walk with a limp. I can't kick the ball," he says.
"When I go to synagogue in the morning, I need someone to help me put on a tefillin."
Still, he testifies, "I feel today that I am in heaven."
Yael and Fini have three daughters - Roni (15), Adi (12) and Hila (8).
We held the interview this week while he was waiting for his middle daughter to finish basketball training in Elizur Holon.
She follows her father's path.
For him, the very fact that he can drive his daughters to schools and classes, "and I make sure to do it every day" as he testifies, is not taken for granted.
"I have a family that loves and accepts me and supports me. We talked about it with the girls, we got in touch, and we didn't consider what I have as a disability. My wife is a military woman. She loves me, and I love her. I saw spouses of people in hospitals, who ran away after a few days, and she came and fed me and took care of me. She took care of the girls alone, and when I was released, she took care of me like another child.
"I got a second chance. Before the incident, I worked three jobs, I was under pressure, I burdened myself too much, and that was a warning. The body told me, 'Enough.' . I, who grew up in the Hatikva neighborhood and came from a destroyed family, understand this. This is perhaps my main insight from what happened. Without it, I would not have noticed the really important things."
"It's nice that they thought of me and appreciated me."
In the uniform of Hapoel Jerusalem, against Radisev Chorcic in 1996 (photo: Maariv, Adi Avishi)
After he woke up from the coma, he was in a long rehabilitation, and only about a year after the incident he met his daughters and returned home.
"You are in this thing for a long time, and you become a survivor. Around me were old people and people who were injured in car accidents. You hear screams at night, it's not an easy place to be. It was very difficult, but I kept the hope that one day I would be able to recover and return to my life."
- How does an athlete who sanctifies his body deal with becoming a person with various disabilities?
"It was scary to God, that I would stay in a wheelchair, not be independent and find myself dependent on other people. When I came home, I was no longer the strong Finn and the supportive father, and I was in crisis. But little by little I got out of it. Even today, I can't dress myself, and I I take pills all the time, but my condition has improved a lot. People don't believe when they see me compared to where I was."
Levy, who has always been traditional, has come closer to religion since the restoration.
"We do kiddush on Shabbat, I go to the synagogue and put on tefillin every morning, listen to Torah lessons and have fun. My way of thinking has changed, and I look at things in a different way. Religion helped me get out of the crises I experienced, and I am in the process of repenting. I feel that I am in a place that it is right for me to be in it."
"I got a second chance."
Fini Levy, this week at his home (Photo: Udi Tsitiat)
In 2017, his two main groups held recognition ceremonies in his honor.
"It's fun that they thought of me and appreciated me," he admits.
Although he still lives in Rishon Lezion, it is hard not to notice that his true love is still for Jerusalem, even though he does not spare her criticism.
"HaPoel Jerusalem is not going in the right directions," concludes Levy.
"Why invest in youth, if they bring in other players at their expense anyway and pay them money? How did they give up on players like Rafi Manko and Adam Ariel?".
- When you played in Jerusalem, did you feel that you had this absolute backing as a home player?
"It happened in progress, while moving. There was a foreigner named Orlando Phillips, who spoke badly of coach Yoram Harosh in one of the places in Jerusalem, and on Monday he was already on the plane. I started playing, there was no one to replace me, and I felt good"... the situation This led Levy to the record season of his career: in 1993/94 he scored 10.2 points and grabbed 5.5 rebounds per game in the regular league, while in the playoffs he reached 11.4 points and hit 46.7 percent of the threes.
"Why invest in youth, if players are brought in at his expense?".
In the Israeli national team with Zvika Sharaf and Efi Birenbaum (Photo: Maariv, Adi Avishi)
- You became a symbol in Jerusalem, but you left on the way to Holon.
"Danny Klein is not able to forgive me for this move, even though I returned to Jerusalem after a year. He didn't even come to the ceremony that Hapoel held in my honor, and that clouded my joy. The group owes me money to this day, and in those years it went into liquidation and I had no financial security." .
- Do you stay in touch with players from those days?
"Peppy Turgeman is the best friend I knew on the court. A friend for life. We played together in youth, we won the school championship together. When I was still connected to the devices, he came to visit me and told me: 'You are strong, and you will survive this.' We sat for coffee for a few weeks."
- Who do you miss from basketball?
"To Ofer Ron. He raised me in my youth and invested a lot in me, in Pepi and in an old rival. The connection between us was severed, and I'm sorry. I wish we could renew it."
sport
basketball
Super League
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Pini Levy
