“Either You Stab or You Get Stabbed”: The Berlin Boy Who Became the “Nazi Sharon” of Kiryat Yam and Lost His Sight, But Not His Life

Sharon Avak grew up in Berlin, arrived in Kiryat Yam at age 12 without knowing Hebrew, was drawn into a world of street violence and honor games, received a blindness certificate at 19, fought loneliness after his divorce in the yeshiva world, and at every stage along the way had to decide anew who he was. In a candid and rare interview, he tells Eli Gothelf about the gangs, about the yeshiva student who changed his life with one question, about a divorced man who fought to remain a man of Torah even in the hardest moments, and about the sentence born out of the darkness: “The fears of pain are more painful than the pain itself.”

At age 19, Sharon Avak had his driver’s license taken away. Not because of a traffic offense, not because of an accident, but because of an official piece of paper that determined he was blind. Most people would have broken at that moment. Sharon, instead, began life anew.

The path that led him there sounds like a script no screenwriter would dare submit. A Jewish child who grew up in Berlin in a completely secular family. A teenager who arrived in Kiryat Yam without knowing a word of Hebrew. A young man who was swallowed up by a violent street culture where respect was bought with force. A baal teshuva who was pulled into the world of yeshivas at dizzying speed. A kollel avreich. A divorcee. A father of four children. A man who gradually lost his sight. And at every stop along the way, he had to decide again who he was.

When Eli Gothelf met him for a long, candid conversation, it seemed that each of these identities was still alive within him. The German boy. The tough teenager from Kiryat Yam. The young man who fell in love with Gemara. The man who today walks around with a white cane. They all sit in the same room. They all speak in his voice.

From Berlin to Kiryat Yam

Sharon was born in Israel to immigrants from the former Soviet Union, but spent most of his childhood in Berlin. Judaism at home was mainly a matter of identity. A Star of David, a Jewish school, a little Hebrew. Not much more than that. “The only thing that defined many Jews from the former Soviet Union as Jews was antisemitism,” he says. “Suddenly in Germany you’re no longer being chased because you’re Jewish, so people don’t always know why they should remain Jewish at all.”

At age 12, the family returned to Israel. The landing was worlds away from German order. “I remember the first day at school. I came in with a button-down shirt, the top button closed. Everyone was in tracksuits and flip-flops. I understood very quickly that I was in a different world.”

He did not know Hebrew. The only sentence he knew how to say was, “My name is Sharon, I don’t speak Hebrew.” But in the neighborhood where he grew up, weakness was a luxury.

“Either You Stab or You Get Stabbed”

When he talks about those years, his voice becomes quieter. Not out of nostalgia. Out of caution. “I was afraid people would pick on me, so I started picking on others before they picked on me,” he admits. The streets around him operated by their own rules. Honor games. Violence. Fear. Power struggles. People carrying knives. Friends who did not survive.

“I had two options. To be among the ones doing the kicking, or to be among the ones getting hit. That’s at least how it seemed to me then.”

He describes a world in which any sign of weakness could turn you into a target. “If someone did something, you had to respond. If you didn’t respond, you’d become his soldier.”

Looking back, he understands how distorted his perception of reality was. But in those days, for him, that was life. “I didn’t know anything else. To me, the world looked like that.”

The Man Who Changed Lives With One Question

The change did not begin with drama. Not with a dream. Not with a miracle. Not with a personal crisis. It began with a question.

Sharon met an avreich named Lior Naor on the street and asked him a philosophical question about God. He expected a superficial answer. Instead, he got a wise one. Then another answer. And another. “The thing that surprised me was that they knew how to speak,” he says with a laugh.

A few days later, Lior invited him for Shabbat. Sharon agreed, not out of faith, but out of curiosity. He entered the house, looked around, and could not believe it. “I remember thinking to myself, they don’t even have a television in the living room. How poor.”

But במהלך that Shabbat something else happened. The Shabbat songs. The words of Torah. The family atmosphere. The feeling that there was an entire world he had never encountered. “Suddenly I saw depth. I saw substance. I saw truth.”

Just three months later, he found himself in yeshiva.

“I Discovered God”

For many people, returning to observance is a long and winding journey. For Sharon, everything happened at an almost unimaginable speed. “I wasn’t in a crisis. I wasn’t depressed. I wasn’t looking for an escape. I just saw truth.”

He fell in love with Gemara. With study. With the world of yeshivas. With the long hours in the beit midrash. “I saw two avreichim sitting and learning, and I said to myself, how do they understand this? How do they live in this world? I wanted to be there.”

He studied. He invested. He fought. And he succeeded.

But דווקא at the height of the journey, another struggle arrived.

The Day He Went Blind

The RP disease from which he suffers had accompanied him since childhood. It is a degenerative disease that affects the field of vision. At first, there was only difficulty at night. Then the field gradually narrowed. By age 19, he received a blindness certificate.

“They took my driver’s license. It was very hard.” But according to him, the physical damage was not the hardest part. “The fear was harder.”

Then he says the sentence that accompanies his whole story: “The fears are more painful than the pain itself.”

He pauses. Smiles. And continues. “For years I was afraid of what the future would bring. Today I understand that fear caused me far more suffering than reality itself did.”

Living Among the Sighted

Sharon is not completely blind. And that, surprisingly, is part of the problem. People look at him and see a tall, self-assured, articulate, charismatic man. They do not see the struggle. The inability to recognize an extended hand. The fear of missing a facial expression. The social embarrassment. The constant anxiety over small mistakes.

“I don’t know whether someone is reaching out a hand to me or not. I don’t know whether I’m standing too close or too far. People think it’s a small thing, but it stays with you all the time.”

For years he avoided events. Weddings. Gatherings. Crowded places. Not because he didn’t want to be there. Because of fear.

“You learn to sit in the corner of the room. In the safest place.”

And still, he refuses to define himself by the limitation. “You can have a disability and be a winner. And you can be completely healthy and be a loser. The two are not connected.”

Even After the Divorce

If it seems that life had already tested him enough, the challenge of divorce also arrived. In the yeshiva world, he says, there is not always a clear language for people in that place. There is loneliness. There is embarrassment. There is a feeling of alienation. There are long Shabbatot. Very long ones.

“There were moments when I just wanted noise in the house,” he admits.

But there too he chose to keep going. One more step. And another step. Without drama. Without slogans. Without pretending everything is easy.

“Success is simply continuing to move forward,” he says.

Not to Fear

By the end of the conversation, it is hard not to feel that דווקא the person who almost lost his sight sees something many of us miss. He saw violence from the inside. He saw the world of yeshivas from the inside. He saw success. He saw falls. He saw dreams shattered. And he saw new dreams born.

And as his physical vision narrowed, his view of life seems to have expanded.

Because in the end, Sharon Avak’s story is not a story about blindness. It is a story about a person who stopped being afraid. And when a person stops being afraid, he discovers that even in the dark, it is possible to see far more than he thought.