Nava Applebaum was a 20-year-old Israeli-American woman who was murdered together with her father on the evening before her wedding by an Arab suicide bomber.Journalist Yossi Klein Halevi described the incident as an “epic tragedy”, and wrote: “If a new book of Tanach were ever written about the modern return to Zion, it would have to include the story of the Applebaums.”

Nava Applebaum was the eldest daughter of David and Debra Applebaum, the third of six children.

Nava Appelbaum HY”D

Her father, David Applebaum, was a prominent emergency room doctor well known for work on methods for assisting suicide bombing victims.He was born in Detroit, Michigan, and moved to Chicago, Illinois, as a teenager. After being ordained as a rabbi, he attended Northwestern University and graduated with a Masters in Biology. David then attended the University of Toledo Medical Center. He moved to Israel in 1982, and traveled back at times to practice in the United States.

Dr. David Appelbaum HY”D

Nava Applebaum first met her fiancé, Chanan Sand, when she was 17 and he was 16, at an Ezra religious youth group, where they both served as youth group advisers. A year later they were engaged but delayed their wedding for two years.As part of her two-year Sherut Leumi service (alternative national service), Applebaum worked with children with cancer.She planned on studying chemistry or genetics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and her goal was to find a cure for cancer.

The Couple That Was Never To Be

Sand and Applebaum scheduled their wedding for September 10, 2003, (14 Elul) in Ramat Rachel, a kibbutz south of Jerusalem.

A few hours before the bombing, on September 9, Applebaum attended the mikveh (ritual bath), as required by Halakha (Jewish law) for all brides prior to their wedding. She then began helping her family with the wedding arrangements, when her father decided to take her out for a “father-daughter” talk before her wedding and to get coffee for everyone who was tired from the wedding preparations. They went to Café Hillel in Jerusalem.

Cafe Hillel the next day

At around 11:20 pm, a security guard Alon Mizrahi,stationed at a nearby pizza parlor noticed a man walking by with a bulky square-shaped box under his shirt. He yelled at the man to stop, but the man refused. The security guard did not want to shoot him in the back, for fear that it would detonate the bomb. Nava and her dad I were ready to leave,when someone called from home on the cell phone to ask them to bring home a milkshake. 
Suddenly, a loud explosion was heard over the phone. The suicide bomber had  blown himself up. The attack was perpetrated by the Hamas member Ramez Abu Salim who had been a student at Bir Zeit University.

David and Nava’s family members, knowing that they were inside the coffee house, tried calling them. But no one picked up their calls. The older children in the family immediately ran over to the coffee house. They came home without clear news, so the family took a taxi to the hospital.  Nava was killed together with her father, the security guard who tried to help and 4 others. She was dead by the time she was reached by paramedics.

At the hospital, the hospital’s director saw the family: “Where’s David?” he asked. “We need his help here!” 

“I’m looking for him, too,” Mrs. Devora Applebaum told him, her heart beating rapidly. The hospital’s emergency staff quickly realized that this time their beloved head would not be among those giving aid. His family was asked to wait in a side room. Their hearts filled with foreboding as they saw the staff racing back and forth, averting their gaze from the family members as they passed. 

Eventually, Dr. Applebaum’s son, head of the trauma emergency first aid clinic that his father had established, approached his mother, sobbing uncontrollably. “Which one?” Devora asked frantically. Between sobs, her son managed to burst out: “Both, Ima, both of them!” * 

The double tragedy, of a bride on the eve of her wedding day, and her father, the beloved doctor who had saved so many lives, shocked the whole country. Even the international media covered the story in depth. Thousands attended the funeral, many of them total strangers. During the shivah week, multitudes visited the family to console them personally, while many more came just to stand outside their home and weep with them. 

Applebaum’s fiancé, Chanan Sand, collapsed in the emergency room of Shaare Zedek Medical Center upon hearing that his fiancée had not survived. She was buried the next day adjacent to her father in the Har HaMenuchot cemetery, in the western part of Jerusalem.

Hundreds of friends and relatives traveling to Israel for the wedding arrived to find that they would be attending her funeral instead, on the day she was supposed to get married.  Instead of attending his own wedding at that hour, Chanan Sand was escorting his fiance’s body to the grave. Instead of placing a ring on her finger, Sand placed the ring in her grave..

 The wedding ring that was placed in Nava’s grave.

A few days after the bombing, another engaged couple decided to hold their Sheva Brachot celebrations at the site of the suicide attack. The choice of venue was intended “as a sign of ‘continuity’”. The celebration was video-conferenced to numerous Jewish communities around the world.

A few days after the bombing, another engaged couple decided to hold their Sheva Brachot celebrations at the site of the suicide attack. The choice of venue was intended “as a sign of ‘continuity’”. The celebration was video-conferenced to numerous Jewish communities around the world.

Numerous memorials and charity projects were undertaken in memory of Nava Applebaum. The top of Applebaum’s unworn wedding gown was made into a covering for the Torah ark at Rachel’s Tomb. It is inscribed: “Nava Applebaum, A Bride for Eternity.” The skirt of the wedding gown was formed into a wedding canopy for other couples to stand beneath during their chuppah ceremony.

 The wedding dress that became the curtain for Rachel’s tomb

Dr. Paige Applebaum Farkas, a Teaneck, New Jersey, resident and second cousin to David Applebaum, and her brother, Dr. Eric Applebaum, also of Teaneck, raised money to build a special room for brides at the mikvah in the Har Homa neighborhood of Jerusalem.

A memorial service honoring Nava and her father held in New Jersey one year after their deaths drew over a thousand people.

The Naava Applebaum Circle of Life Endowment was established by the Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem, and it supports the Sherut Leumi service, in which Nava Applebaum participated.

All Bat Mitzvah girls (12-year-old girls, who at that age become responsible for their actions according to Jewish law) of Moriah School in Englewood, New Jersey receive a book of Psalms inscribed in the memory of Nava Applebaum.

A dowry fund was also established, the Naava Applebaum Kallah Fund, for brides that cannot afford the basic wedding necessities.

In 2006, Nava’s brother Yitzchak was in medical school. At that time, her sister Shira was a paramedic planning on attending medical school. When Shira got married she used Nava’s wedding gown as part of the canopy.

Applebaum’s fiancé, Chanan Sand, was unable to date for several years after her death because of his grief, but became engaged in 2009 and married in 2010. Members of the Applebaum family attended the engagement party and the wedding.

In October 2011, Ibrahim Dar Musa, who was involved in the planning of the suicide attack, was released from prison as part of the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange.

Had she lived, Nava would have been 33 today.