Of Hope

About the Book

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.

About the Author

Herzl R Spiro MD PhD was educated at Vermont, Harvard, Rutgers, New York Hospital and Johns Hopkins. He helped organize medical care for Rev King’s marches. He served the Jewish Agency Absorption Committee for 20 years. He was faculty at Johns Hopkins, and Rutgers before becoming Professor and Chair of Psychiatry at the Medical College of Wisconsin and Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology at The University of Wisconsin-Madison where he is now Emeritus Professor. He published numerous books and research articles. He currently at 85 years still works as a psychiatrist fulltime serving Milwaukee’s inner city.