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Dora Issacharoff knows what it's like to have trouble seeing. Cataract surgery helped restore her sight.

Now, she gives back to visually impaired people who aren't so fortunate.

Issacharoff, a native of Argentina, and fifteen other volunteers record books in Spanish written by Jewish authors at the Jewish Braille Institute in Manhattan.

“I thought that Jewish Braille was a way of really saying thanks and at the same time, perhaps through voices, to give back a feeling of belonging to society,” says Issacharoff. “To know what can be the last book in literature or the best book in literature.”

Clients can request a "talking book" free of charge. The book can be sent to them anywhere in the world.

“She has such an intimate knowledge of what's available out there in Spanish,” says Lisa Kirsch, JBI’s audio production manager. “She has a passion for bringing that to people who cannot receive the literature through any other means.”

Twenty books, by authors like Isaac Bashevis Singer, Saul Bellow and Isabel Allende, have been recorded since JBI started the Spanish Talking Books program two years ago.

Issacharoff says she thinks about her audience when she chooses the books to be recorded.

“Who are the readers who need these kinds of books?” says Issacharoff. “You have intellectual people, you have academicians, you have writers, you have housewives, you have doctors, lawyers.”

The volunteers don't know the clients who will be listening to their voices but say they record as though they are telling the story to that one listener.

“I feel almost a personal communication even though I don't know the listener,” says volunteer Eva Zelig.

Issacharoff says she hopes clients will listen to the talking books together, sort of like an audio book club.

“Ten people can read the same talking book and then get together, either electronically or by going to a certain center that they go to an discuss a book, and that is wonderful,” says Issacharoff.

So, for sharing her love of literature and bringing stories to life for the visually impaired, Dora Issacharoff is the New Yorker of the Week.

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