Gerald Gamm
Sid was brilliant, of course, but what I will miss most is his gentle and forgiving spirit, his uncompromising integrity, his work ethic, his sense of humor, his way of pushing you to listen and learn. He taught by example. He listened more than he talked, and there was exceptional wisdom in how he listened and what he chose to say. No matter the subject, he had a way of approaching it with grace and wit and a story perfect-made for the occasion. As I studied the churches and synagogues of Boston, he asked me one day if I’d come across the story of the Jewish Robinson Crusoe. “The Jewish Robinson Crusoe?” I asked, thinking (as I often did) that some serious lesson was about to unfold. “Umm . . . no.” “Well," Sid responded, "the man lived alone for years on an island until a ship arrived to rescue him. Before he boarded the ship, Crusoe asked the sailors if they wanted a brief tour of his island. Curious, they agreed. So Crusoe showed them around—taking them to his home, the shops he’d built, the schoolhouse, the town hall, and the synagogue, complete with a Jewish star in front. As they were getting ready to leave, one of the sailors asked Crusoe about the one building he’d walked past without explanation—a building that, to the sailor’s eyes, looked just like Crusoe’s synagogue. ‘Oh,’ said Crusoe, ’that’s the synagogue I wouldn’t be caught dead in.’” And that, in a nutshell, became my dissertation.
