Simon Liebling, MD

On Substack, I’m continuing my series on residency case conference with a new article about just how challenging it can be to make those sessions truly participatory. Engaging residents consistently requires not only maintaining a library of activities and teaching techniques, but spending time on advance planning to determine when best to deploy them.

On Medium, I wrote about my favorite Yiddish short story, I.L. Peretz’s “If Not Higher.” Peretz’s story is a beautiful testament to an ethos of humble service, and I turn to it often while thinking about how to find meaning in medicine even when patients are beyond our ability to heal.

Also on Medium, I wrote about Philadelphia’s Ellis Island, the Washington Avenue Immigration Center. Countless Jewish refugees from Eastern Europe arrived on that pier in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but little has been done to mark their memory. Their stories, which capture the experience of living under and fleeing violent antisemitism, serve both as a bulwark against contemporary antisemitism and as an exhortation to remain vigilant for the gathering specter of persecution.