Of Hope

A Memoir

By: Herzl R. Spiro MD PhD

Narrated by: Barry Snyder

These memoirs tell my story of hope. In my early years, my father was trying to help the Jews of Europe and worked on the establishment of Israel. Later, there were wonderful years growing and learning in Vermont.

I describe my personal experiences in the remarkable human rights movement of Martin Luther King. There were years of rising hope for a better community mental health care system as we built programs at Johns Hopkin, Rutgers University, and the Medical College of Wisconsin. The defunding by the Reagan administration and the cruel consequences that occurred are described as I subsequently worked with residents of the inner city of Milwaukee.

In 1982, I started to work on the absorption of immigrants to Israel and became chair as we tried to avoid the mistakes of the black-white relationships in America for the tens of thousands of black immigrants from Ethiopia. We worked to help integrate 1,250,000 immigrants, who were penniless strangers from communist lands adapting to a new language and culture in Israel.

The book also describes the hope engendered by my remarriage and my remarkable family. The epilogue describes the current reality of the Covid-19 pandemic and the rising awareness of the need to heal the long unfair relationship with black Americans, as well as an increasing deprived underclass. The book suggests bringing hope to those now deprived using some of the methods of absorption we used in Israel.

©2020 Herzl R. Spiro MD, PhD (P)2021 Herzl R. Spiro MD, PhD