I Don’t Work on Shabbos

I

often get questions from people who are contemplating going into medicine, and I tell them all the same thing: My great-grandfather, Sam Levine, didn’t work on Shabbos.

You know his story, so familiar we forget how extraordinary it is: Arrived in Ellis Island in 1898 with just the clothes on his back, got fired every Friday because he wouldn’t work on Shabbos. Each week he had to find a new job, but of course some weeks he couldn’t, and his family literally starved. But my great-grandfather refused to work on Shabbos.

A hundred years later, I eat sushi, pulled brisket, and cholent on Thursday nights and can’t even imagine what it feels like to watch your kids waste away from malnutrition. Work on Shabbos? Of course I don’t work on Shabbos.

Then I finished med school and had to apply for a residency.