4 minute read
Q&A: A pediatrician who moonlights playing klezmer
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Early bird tuition rate $1,500 before April 1
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Q&A: A pediatrician who moonlights playing klezmer
TALKING WITH ALIX WALL | CORRESPONDENT
homelessness and diff erent kinds of abuse. I saw a “20/20” episode with a transgender college student, NAME: Dr. Ilana Sherer teenager and child. The kid AGE: 38 was doing really well, and CITY: Oakland it was an aha moment. I POSITION: Pediatrician thought, ‘What can we do to protect these kids, to keep them from struggling the way the adults are?’ When I got to UCSF for residency, I Dr. Ilana Sherer has a general pediatrics was directed to Stephen Rosenthal, who was practice in Dublin at the Palo Alto Medical creating the [Child and Adolescent Gender Foundation/Su er Health with a specialty Center at UCSF Medical Center]. in caring for gender-nonconforming and transgender youth. She’s also a violinist Aren’t there a lot of Jews in this field? with Saul Goodman’s Klezmer Band. She Once, at the center, we were trying to lives with her wife and two children in schedule our next meeting and realized that Oakland. everyone in the room but one person was Jewish. I see it as part of the social justice J.: You like to say you’re the best terrain and my personal responsibility as klezmer violin-playing pediatrician in a queer person and a Jew. These are the the Bay Area. What’s that about? kids who need us to support and advocate ILANA SHERER: Classical violin was a for them in the way the generation before huge part of my life from age 5 through advocated for me. high school. At a Hillel event in college, I sat next to someone in a klezmer band. There How do you explain the rise in trans or was a deep learning curve, but I played nonbinary children? through college and then in medical school. Kids are now taught they can be whoever I’ve played quite a bit here but it’s more they want to be. Not all kids who experilimited now because of my kids. I grew up ment will continue identifying as transgenin a pre y mainstream Jewish community der, but they feel comfortable exploring it. and klezmer helped me see there were other In the past, a boy wearing a dress would ways to connect to Judaism. Once I entered get teased. Now, kids have the freedom to the klezmer/Yiddish world, I thought about explore how they present and dress. how this is what my grandparents spoke, and how Yiddish culture has these really With a relatively small body of strong le ist roots. research, how do you know which
treatment protocols to follow?
Did you always know you would be a We don’t start any medical intervention doctor? until puberty. Most children who present When I was growing up, I was o en told as transgender now do so early, sometimes by my parents and others ‘You’re going to as early as 2 or 3, but we don’t need to do be a doctor,’ but I wouldn’t go along with anything but support and love them until what people thought I should do. For a time puberty. Then, they can take hormone blockI thought I might be a research scientist, ers, which are fully reversible. but then I realized I didn’t like working in South Dakota’s state representatives a lab. There was one person there who was introduced a law that would make it illegal a medical student studying to become a for doctors to give such hormone blockers pediatrician. I went along with them to a to children, but ultimately, it was defeated. clinic and thought ‘This is what I want to It’s so heartbreaking. Doctors providing this do.’ Everyone was right all along, but I had to care in climates like that are my heroes. I fi gure it out myself. admire those who are sticking their necks out. I feel very protected and lucky to be in When did you choose to specialize in the Bay Area. ■
gender-variant children?
I worked at an LGBT health center during “Talking With” focuses on local Jews who are doing medical school. We treated a lot of trans- things we find interesting. Send suggestions to gender people, many of whom experienced sueb@jweekly.com.
