Service of Gratitude and Remembrance
Thompson Memorial Chapel, Williams College
Reunion Weekend 2011 – Sunday, June 12
“On Not Standing Idly By”
Norman Spack M.D. ’65
Good morning. I want to thank Chaplain Spalding for giving me the (z’chut in Hebrew), the privilege to speak this morning.
Members of reunion classes, families and guests, surviving spouses and partners, and friends of departed members of our Williams community.
The last time I participated in a service in this building was in 1962, in my freshman year in the fading days of compulsory chapel attendance which, in hindsight, was an exercise in ecumenicism.
If I missed the Jewish Friday evening Sabbath service held in Griffin 3 at 5:30 PM, I could fill out my chapel attendance card as a parishioner at the 8 PM Sunday night college service. Here, I learned to belt out “Onward Christian Soldiers” with the most devout Protestants.
Quite a few of my non-Jewish friends preferred the Jewish Friday service: it was brief and early enough for road-tripping to Skidmore or Smith, and we Jews always served food: challah bread washed down with vintage Manischewitz wine and fishballs of uncertain species. Years later, those gefilte fishballs resurfaced on toothpicks at the wedding receptions of those same non-Jewish classmates and friends.
So, in retrospect, it wasn’t all that terrible to be coerced into each others’ cultures.
2 months ago Williams held a weekend commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the Jewish Religious Center. During the Saturday service. I was asked to chant from the Book of Prophets on the 55th anniversary of my Bar Mitzvah. The accompanying biblical text deals with a variety of illnesses, mainly skin diseases incorrectly translated as leprosy, which not only contaminated the afflicted but could extend to the entire house. In the Old Testament, Illness didn’t just happen—it was caused by the almighty for personal sins or impurity and was onlycured by the almighty by means of purification rituals. The only role of humans in the process fell to the priests who only had diagnostic authority.
The absence of human intervention in healing troubled Maimonides, the 12th century rabbinic commentator, philosopher, and physician who lived in Moorish Spain and later in Egypt where he was physician to the Sultan and his harem. Maimonides’ rationalist works form a bridge between the earlier Aristotle and the later Descartes and Spinoza. He found his prooftext for his life as a physician in Leviticus Chapter 19 verse 16:
Al ta’amode et dam reiyecha.
“You shall not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor.”
Not only is one permitted to heal, one is commanded to intervene to save another. By the way, note how often President Obama uses the phrase: “not standing idly by.” He obviously heard this in church.
Alumni of reunion classes ending with a 6 or a 1 meeting this weekend have made their own decisions whether or not to stand idly by.
The Class of ’61 witnessed the election and inauguration of a young President, born 3 doors from my home. JFK paraphrased Leviticus with “Ask what you can do for your country.” And many Williams alums heeded the call and joined the Peace Corps. I stood idly by.
Exactly 50 years ago, the Freedom Riders challenged the segregationist states who rejected their federal right to racially integrated interstate bus travel. The non-violence of the Freedom Riders in the face of violence and hatred spawned the civil rights movement of the ‘60s. Here at Williams the movement was centered in this very building under the leadership of Rev. John Eusden and his band of students. They did not stand idly by but, at great personal risk, headed south to register African-American voters. Yes, I attended meetings where they reported on their experience, but compared to the “chapel jocks”, I really stood idly by.
Exactly 30 years ago, the Class of 1981 heard about the first reports of an outbreak of an unusual pneumonia and immunologic deficiency, later to be called HIV and AIDs. Those who were first infected were stigmatized according to Old Testament attitudes about illness, a classic case of blaming the victim, especially if they were Haitian, gay, or African-American. Many physicians refused to treat or operate on HIV-infected people, fearing becoming infected by contact with blood or body fluids, literally standing idly by the blood of their fellow men and women. Ultimately 1.7 million Americans would become infected, 600,000 would die of AIDS and a million would remain HIV-positive with an uncertain future. Worlwide, 60 million people have been infected in the pandemic. Half have died.Today we mourn everyone, including the members of the Williams community who perished or lost a loved one to this disease.
The Class of 2001 will always be remembered for what happened 3 months after graduation. The 10th anniversary of September 11 will be commemorated in 3 months. We will never know how many in those doomed towers gave their lives to assist someone else who “made it.” The firemen and women, policemen and women, had seen the flames and smoke and and the sheer terror of people jumping from upper floors. Yet the first-responders rushed up the stairs knowing that the chance that they would get out alive was marginal. None stood idly by and today we remember Williams students, alumni, relatives, friends and all who were lost that fateful morning.
As a pediatrician specializing in Adolescent Medicine and Endocrinology, my opportunity to be tested about standing idly by for so long arrived in 1990 when Mark came to my office. He was a recent Harvard graduate who was born female but lived as a male with the full knowledge of supportive roommates, his allies. The college registrar had been aware of his transgender situation and made sure that all class lists contained his male name. Mark asked me to treat him hormonally because no one else would. Treatment with male hormones allowed him to evolve and virilize in voice, facial hair, musculature and self- confidence. He taught me more than I gave him: about the difference between sexual orientation (who you go to bed WITH) and gender identity (who you go to bed AS) and why one has nothing to do with the other.
In time, I learned about the acts of bullying, violence and overt discrimination heaped on my adult transgender patients and a growing number of referred teenagers. I realized that as long as transgenderism was listed as a mental illness, as was the case with homosexuality until 1973, health insurers would only provide psychological counseling and would never pay for the expensive medications and surgeries. I watched people made anxious and depressed by “treatment delayed and treatment denied.” I also saw that when patients had been given hormones and surgery to align their bodies with their brains, their psychiatrists often agreed that the psychotropic medications were no longer necessary.
From Mark, a single patient, Boston’s Children’s Hospital now has the largest program for children and adolescents with Gender Identity Disorder in the USA. Since 2007, we are involved in the direct care of 120 young people under age 21. Our social worker, psychologist, and psychiatrist counsel parents and young children. Highly screened transgender patients are treated with protocols piloted in the Netherlands where over 100 teenagers received potentially reversible pharmacologic suppression of a genetic puberty which had rendered many of them suicidal. Their patients become candidates to receive the pubertal hormones of their affirmed gender in their mid to late teens. Neither the Dutch patients nor ours patients change their minds about their affirmed gender identity.
What was controversial treatment has now been endorsed by virtually every international endocrinology society. My team is actively advising 6 major pediatric centers who wish open such clinics, yes including San Francisco and NY City. We are also consulting to schools and colleges.
Colleges and universities around the country are getting on board to provide full psychological and hormonal services to all transgender members covered by their university health services. UPenn and Harvard, among a rapidly growing number of others, are even paying for surgeries. It pays off because, what is the price of a human life? 45% of untreated 18-25 yr old transgender young adults admit to a suicidal gesture or attempt. Let us not stand idly by our neighbors, colleagues, students, co-workers, employees and their families.
In the lyrics by Michael, better know as Mick, born 4 months after me, who might have been Class of ’65 had he come to Williams rather than the London School of Economics:
“If you try sometimes, you might find, that you not only get what you want, you get what you need.”
On this day of remembrance we think of those with whom we have shared this Purple Valley who have left us in body if not in spirit— classmates, faculty, friends and alumni from other classes. Like the rest of you, I read the class secretaries’ notes 2 years ahead and 2 years behind my class. I also think of coaches, trainers, librarians, secretaries, chefs, housekeepers, maintenance and townspeople who enriched our lives.
In conclusion, we give thanks today just for being here whether you have met your challenge of not standing idly by as a student or young alum. Or, like me, whether you have to wait until you pass your 25th reunion before your chance will come, even if you haven’t filled out the required number of chapel attendance cards.
Please follow in your program and join Chazzan Scherr and me in one of the most universal prayers of thanksgiving in the Jewish liturgy. It is called the Shechechyanu and dates back to the early Talmudic period, 2000 years ago. It is recited at the beginning of most holidays and joyous family events, and what can be more joyous than a reunion?
We will read the prayer printed in English in your programs in unison and Hazzan Scherr will sing the Hebrew.
Unison: Blessed are you O God, Ruler of the universe,
Who has kept us in life,
Sustained us,
And allowed us to reach this season.
Amen.
Chazzan: Baruch ata Adonai eloheinu melech ha’olam
Shechechyanu, v’kyamanu, v’higyanu la’zman hazeh
Amen.
