As Memorial Day approaches, MDA EMTs and paramedics are deployed all over the country in order to medically secure Memorial Day events, memorial sites and military cemeteries where memorial assemblies will be held. MDA has 138 families who lost their loved ones in Israel’s wars, hostile acts and during their military service, and every year the central ceremony was held in the MDA center in the presence of the organization’s management, bereaved families, employees and volunteers.

One of the employees is Rabbi Dr. David Yaakov HaLevi Appelbaum HY”D, who was murdered in a suicide bombing in Jerusalem in 2003. Rabbi Dr. Appelbaum was born in the United States in 1952. In 1972, he completed his BA in psychology, and two years later completed a master’s degree in biology. And was admitted as a medical doctor in 1977. In 1977, he married Dvora and in 1981 immigrated to Israel with their two children and settled in Jerusalem, where they had four children.

Rabbi Dr. David Appelbaum began his career at MDA in Jerusalem in 1983, when he managed the mobile intensive care unit (paramedic) ambulances in Jerusalem, a position he held until the day of his murder. In 2002, he was appointed Director of the Emergency Medicine Department at Shaare Zedek Hospital in Jerusalem, and throughout the period he continued his role with the paramedic ambulances at MDA.

On Tuesday, September 9, 2003, a suicide bomber blew himself up in the Hillel cafe on Emek Refaim Street in Jerusalem. Seven people were murdered in the attack, including Rabbi Dr. David Yaakov Halevy Appelbaum and his daughter Nava Appelbaum HY”D, who was murdered the day before her wedding. Rabbi Dr. Appelbaum was 50 years old when he died, leaving behind a wife, two sons, three daughters and a sister, Rabbi Dr. Appelbaum and his daughter Nava were laid to rest in a Jerusalem cemetery.

Dr. David Appelbaum, who was one of the most important figures in the field of emergency medicine in Israel, described his experience in MDA and in the emergency room as a concept for the development of a new concept, based on an urgent care center model that already existed in the United States. As an alternative emergency room that treats a variety of urgent cases that do not require the hospital’s resources, and treated hundreds of cases of accidents, trauma, heart attacks and terrorist attacks, in the midst of a terrorist attack in the city center. Thus, in the midst of a terror attack in the city center in Jerusalem, with his characteristic coolness, he operated on an injured man. In 1986 he received the “Speaker of the Knesset Prize for Quality of Life”. His noble example continues to inspire and admire his family, his employees, his students, his colleagues and the thousands of patients who have come to know him and learn from him.

Yoni Yugodovsky, who once worked alongside Rabbi Dr. Appelbaum as a paramedic and director of the Jerusalem Region in MDA, said: “Dr. Appelbaum Z”L had great experience and patient care was always in his mind – that is how he trained the MDA teams. Dr. Appelbaum worked extensively to expand the knowledge of paramedics and EMTs in the city, while conducting training and case studies. He always supported people and promoted them professionally, not only within MDA but also outside the organization, he was a doctor with extraordinary knowledge, very meticulous in medicine and service level, he knew how to work and talk with anyone at the eye level. It is a great loss for us and for all those who knew and worked alongside it.

MDA Director-General Eli Bin: “Over the years, since the establishment of the State of Israel, unfortunately, many victims have joined the bereaved family. Among the victims was one of the best sons of the MDA family – Rabbi Dr. David Appelbaum, who was murdered along with his daughter Nava in a brutal terrorist attack, and the untimely death of Rabbi Dr. Appelbaum Z”L is an unbearable loss and his memory goes with us for many years. I support the Appelbaum family, who are the salt of the earth and those who follow it in the spirit of volunteerism in MDA in the clearest sense of the definition. May we know no more sorrow.”

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)