Though both Shubert and Iris were raised in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, their move to Cleveland was natural inasmuch as for almost all of the twentieth century the headquarters of the Spero family was in Cleveland. Earl Spero, Debra’s grandfather, was born in Cleveland but moved to Williamsburg during the early years of the Calvin Coolidge administration. Once there he helped found the Young Israel movement, and was baal tefilah first at the Young Israel of East Broadway and for fifty years thereafter at the Young Israel of Brooklyn, Williamsburg.
Earl was for decades the treasurer of Torah VaDaat, and together with his brother Ben Spero in Cleveland helped establish Torah U’Mesorah and the Spero Foundation. He also invented the first portable self-assembly sukkah, pocket siddur, zemirot booklet and published the Pocket Book series, the first English books devoted to Orthodox Jewish topics.
David Applebaum was energetic, with an everactive mind conjuring up new and practical solutions for quandaries in medicine as well as halacha. A man of big ideas yet gentle; professional yet warm; involved in serious community matters yet fun; opinionated yet modest; confident in his ideas yet knowing when to back off. And always busy.
He was a devoted disciple of the late Rabbi Aaron Soloveichik, who was his rebbe at the Brisk Yeshiva in Chicago, where he received s’micha, ordination. David was a walking repository of homespun Rabbi Soloveichik stories. He treated Rav Soloveichik wonderfully prior to and during his illness.
Though David lived in rabbinics, he practiced medicine, made it his career. David was actively involved in every institution touching his life. No doubt Nava would have achieved much in the years to come, but that future was stolen from her by the enemies of Israel and the Jewish people.
We all ask: When will this terrorism end? It will end when Israel uses the military force required to end it. ‘Cycles of violence’ continue only as long as neither side is capable of ending it. Israel has the capacity to end it just as the Americans stopped the Nazi brutality in World War II. Thus far, however, we Jews have displayed neither the will nor the stomach to achieve the victory that will finally subdue the other side and end the ‘cycle.’ The current stalemate will end with one of the sides being victorious. It had better be us, for the fatwas issued by almost all of Arabia’s mullahs call first for the slaughter of all Jews in Israel, then throughout the world.
For years now Israel has made major concessions, including the irrational gestures of freeing terrorists and withholding retaliation after terrorist attacks, providing guns to the ‘police’ of the Palestinian Authority, and forfeiting land, communities, and our historic and holy sites. None of these capitulations has ended the ‘cycle of violence’; instead they have emboldened an enemy seeing in these surrenders a fearful Israel willing to amputate itself, to twist and accommodate itself to every terrorist demand, in hopes of pleasing the jihadists into ceasing their murder. It has brought not peace but more murder: more affirmation that Allah is slowly defeating Jehovah.
Patience is a virtue; unlimited patience, however, bespeaks a fear to act. Making periodic overtures is understandable; ignoring the stated aims of your enemy calling for your destruction is suicidal. Watching the murder of those entrusted to your care is immoral: “Thou shalt not stand by idly while the blood of your brother is spilt.”
Being concerned more about – and feeling greater ‘nobility’ in safeguarding – the innocents among the enemy, when such restraint results in the death of the innocents among your own people, is a false ideology, especially when the so-called innocents crave your death and root for those murdering you. Some call such ‘concern’ sophistication, when in truth it is self-indifference. Not valuing the total worth of one’s loved ones and people is not civilized; it leads to a society’s inner demise. Such behavior is craven.
