David Applebaum

David Applebaum (; 1952–2003) was an American-born Israeli physician and rabbi. He was chief of the emergency room and trauma services of Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Medical Center. Applebaum was murdered in a Palestinian suicide bombing at Cafe Hillel in Jerusalem on September 9, 2003.

Biography David Applebaum was born in Detroit, Michigan. He attended high school at the Hebrew Theological College in Skokie, Illinois and received his rabbinical ordination from Rabbi Aaron Soloveitchik at the Brisk yeshiva in Chicago. Applebaum was a graduate of Roosevelt University in Chicago, with a master's degree in biological sciences from Northwestern University. He earned his medical degree at the Medical College of Ohio in Toledo, Ohio in 1978. He immigrated to Israel with his family in 1982.

Bombing

Applebaum was killed along with his 20-year-old daughter, Nava Applebaum, on the eve of her wedding. Applebaum had just returned from New York, where he addressed a symposium on terrorism marking the second anniversary of the September 11 attacks on the United States. He ended his remarks with: "From one moment to the next, we never know what will happen in the ER [emergency room], but it's in Jerusalem that real reality occurs."

Medical career Applebaum pioneered the idea of immediate care clinics in Israel, to divert non-emergency cases from hospital emergency rooms while delivering faster care to patients who would have had long waits for emergency room staff.

The British Medical Journal noted that Applebaum trained both Arab and Jewish physicians and nurses for his system of urgent care centers so that there would be staffing on the holy days of both religions. He was credited by The Lancet with "transforming" the delivery of emergency care in Israel.