Posted on 09/11/2003 6:00:59 PM PDT by yonif
Shubert Spero said that almost every time he visited his son-in-law's home on Shabbat, the meal was interrupted by someone knocking on the door to ask a medical question.
It wasn't office hours. They interrupting a family meal, because David Applebaum, 50, the head of the emergency department at Shaare Zedek Hospital was everyone's personal doctor, Spero said.
Spero's daughter-in-law, Yehudit, added, "he was a busy person, but he made time for everyone." Relatives said he always did additional research or made that extra phone call to help people.
His son Natan said, "my father was one of the 36 righteous people in this world [which Jewish tradition teaches are living at any one time]. He dedicated his life to saving lives."
On Thursday, hundreds of mourners crowded into the Applebaum home to comfort the family, grieving for Applebaum and his daughter, Nava, two of seven victims in Tuesday's Jerusalem bombing.
They came with a long list of stories of the time Applebaum spent helping them out medically, of his dedication to Judaism, his devotion to his wife and six children, and to his rabbi, the late Aharon Soloveitchik.
In the early years of their marriage, Spero said, Applebaum would leave his wife on Rosh Hashana to blow the shofar for Soloveitchik. The rabbi was particular about how the shofar needed to be blown, but he trusted Applebaum to do it correctly, Spero said.
He repeated the story in the early evening, when US Ambassador Daniel Kurtzer joined the circle, in deference to the fact that Applebaum was also a citizen of the US.
The family showed Kurtzer Nava's wedding contract, which Applebaum had written out himself, in preparation the ceremony which would have been on Wednesday.
Applebaum's wife, Debra, told Kurtzer she had just heard that the man responsible for the attack was one of the 343 prisoners released this summer as part of the hudna.
"It adds anger to the misery," she said. Kurtzer made no direct response to her comment. He noted that 38 Americans had died in terror attacks in Israel and that US President George W. Bush has spoken out strongly against terror.
Natan Applebaum later pointed out his siblings to Kurtzer and said, "we're the continuation." Kurtzer wanted to know if that meant they were following their father's footsteps into the medical profession. Natan pointed his brother, Yitzhak, and then the siblings said almost at once, "and Nava was."
After Kurtzer left, Dr. Applebaum's younger sister, Geela Gordan, recalled a terror attack in Jerusalem more than a decade ago, when her brother continued to work on the wounded at the scene even though there was gunfire.
When Gordan was woken up at 2 a.m. on Wednesday, she worried something was wrong with her mother. It never occurred to her that something could happen to her brother, who she jokingly regarded as "superman."
At the funeral, she said, she had a sudden urge to unroll the tallit wrapped around his body, just to make sure it was him.
Forty-eight hours after this week's Jerusalem bombing, eight people remain hospitalized, including two people who are in serious condition. It was the 103rd suicide bombing since the outbreak of violence nearly three years ago.
Etgar Lefkovits contributed to this report.
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