David Luria 1932-2025

David Luria 1932-2025

From rags to riches, from goodness to goodness to goodness: the story of a true mensch

Eli Beer talks to David Luria in Englewood as they stand by an ambucycle Mr. Luria donated. David Luria is talking to Eli Beer, left, in orange glasses, United Hatzalah’s president and founder. Behind them, in the front row, Gary and Nina Glaser, Englewood’s Mayor Michael Wildes, and the Glasers’ grandson and son, Asher and Andrew Glaser watch. (United Hatzalah)
Eli Beer talks to David Luria in Englewood as they stand by an ambucycle Mr. Luria donated. David Luria is talking to Eli Beer, left, in orange glasses, United Hatzalah’s president and founder. Behind them, in the front row, Gary and Nina Glaser, Englewood’s Mayor Michael Wildes, and the Glasers’ grandson and son, Asher and Andrew Glaser watch. (United Hatzalah)

No matter who you ask about David Luria, who died last Friday at 92, you hear the same thing.

He was a real mensch, everyone says. He was a role model. The world is divided into two groups of people — the people who loved him, and who he loved, fiercely and wholeheartedly, and the people who’d never met him.

Yes, he had a rags-to-riches story, but that wasn’t the deepest truth about him. The deepest truth was goodness.

And they’re not just saying this, everyone said. It’s true. It might not always be true, but when it came to David Luria, it’s true.

So who was David Luria?

His daughter, Nina Glaser of Oradell, tells some of his story.

Her father was born in the Bronx in 1932. His parents also were born in the Bronx; their parents came from Minsk. (The family name sounds Sephardic, but it probably was shortened from something more deeply Ashkenazi, Ms. Glaser said.) His father, Nathaniel, died when David was just 7 and David’s brother, Harold, was 14; his mother, Pauline Miller Luria, remarried, but not until both her sons were married.

“My father was not a very good kid,” Ms. Glaser said; he got himself into trouble at school. “He was very mischievous. So my grandmother needed him in school for a longer day than he could get at public school, so she went to the Salanter Yeshiva” — a school that later moved north and west and combined with two others to become the Salanter Akiba Riverdale Academy, better known as SAR, the modern Orthodox powerhouse — “and said, ‘Would you please take my son?’

“My grandmother had no money, so he went to school on a full scholarship.

“That’s why, later in life, when my dad was able to give, he donated to every scholarship fund. He wanted to make sure that anyone who wanted a Jewish education could have one. He was instrumental in helping them get it.”

Mr. Luria did not go to college, his daughter said. “He had to work to support himself. His brother’s in-laws owned a grocery store, so he bought into the business. He had a toy route. He opened a furniture store.

“My father was not afraid to take chances.”

Friends of United Hatzalah honored David Luria and the Glaser family in September at bergenPAC. From left: Gary, Andrew, and Nina Glaser; David Luria; United Hatzalah’s president and founder, Eli Beer; Rabbi David-Seth Kirshner of Temple Emanu-El of Closter; Elissa Glaser, and Arielle and Jordan Herzog look on as Mara Soverinsky, United Hatzalah’s NJ Regional Development Officer, displays the plaque.

Mr. Luria was drafted in 1952; he was sent to Korea during the conflict but after a stint on the front lines, he was moved to the logistics department. “He married my mom, Hilda Klein Luria, who also was from the Bronx, in 1954,” Ms. Glaser said.

“My father had quite a few jobs. Sometimes he’d work two jobs to support his family. We lived in an apartment in the Bronx; that’s where I was born.” When Ms. Glaser was in second grade, the family — including Nina’s 10-year-old sister, Susan— moved to Yonkers. The girls went to public school there. The family belonged to two shuls, the Northeast Jewish Center and then the Midchester Jewish Center. Both were Conservative; Mr. Luria was strongly committed to the movement.

When Ms. Glaser was 2 years old, her mother got sick, “and she spent most of her married years being unwell. She had a variety of illnesses — cancer being one of them, and also asthma, diabetes, and lupus.

“She had a lot of problems, and my dad did everything in his power to keep her alive and comfortable.” Despite that range of serious problems, but at least in part because of the love and care that surrounded her, “my mother lived until she was 84 years old.

“And my father never complained. He never said ‘why me?’ They’d continue to make plans to go on vacation, which often would have to be canceled, because my father said that it was always good to have something to look forward to.”

During that time, “my father worked for Neptune Worldwide Movers. He was in the collections department. He realized that if he could collect for Neptune, he could collect for himself, so he went into business for himself in 1976.” He opened a collections agency, called DPL, for David Paul Luria. “He worked in our home,” Ms. Glaser said. He had a desk and a telephone, and he went door to door, canvassing, looking for accounts. He’d tell everybody, ‘If you don’t get paid, I don’t get paid.’”

Mr. Luria was good at what he did, and his business grew; he soon had an office and a staff in Yonkers. “He decided it would be nice to acquire other agencies so his business could get bigger.” He did, and it did.

Mr. Luria always volunteered his time. When he could afford to donate money, he did— but he never stopped volunteering.

“He volunteered on the shul board,” Ms. Glaser said. “He also helped to collect dues, and he was president of the Men’s Club. My dad also was involved in Rotary. He had a 100 percent attendance record after more than 15 years; wherever he was, he’d find a meeting.

“I used to volunteer at the Jewish Guild for the Blind, and my father took over my job there,” Ms. Glaser said.

As they got older, the Lurias’ lives changed. “My parents became snowbirds,” Ms. Glaser said. “My mother had a breathing problem, and it was better for her to be in Florida for the winter.

“My father always had a dog, and he would never crate the dog on the plane. So my mother would fly to Florida with the housekeeper, and my father and I would drive down with the dog. Then I’d leave him the car and fly back home.”

David Luria and his daughter Nina Glaser are flanked by Schechter Bergen’s Ricky Stamler-Goldberg and Steve Freedman.

The family has always been extraordinarily close. Ms. Glaser oversaw as much of her parents’ lives as they would allow her to.

About 12 years ago, “when my mom started really having health issues, I couldn’t manage them as well from here, so my dad and I decided that they could move into an independent living place near me,” Ms. Glaser said. She investigated many and found that Five Star in Teaneck would be best for her parents.

When he moved to Bergen County, Mr. Luria immediately started volunteering at local institutions. “I was very involved in Schechter” — that’s Schechter Bergen in New Milford — “where I worked on development as a volunteer for many years,” Ms. Glaser said. “My dad helped me with that. He also would serve lunch there.

“After my mom died, about six years ago, I called Ricky Stamler-Goldberg” — the assistant head of school for general and Jewish education — and I said that I was looking for a way for my dad to fill his days. Did she have anything? ‘Oh, yes, absolutely,’ she said.

“So he got involved with an eighth-grade class. They had a great relationship. One year, they had my dad walk down the aisle with them at graduation.”

Mr. Luria also volunteered with the Adler Aphasia Center in Maywood.

Mr. Luria belonged to the Jewish Community Center of Paramus/Congregation Beth Tikvah, to Temple Emanu-El of Closter, and to Congregation Brothers of Israel in Long Branch, where both he and the Glasers had homes.

“He always wanted to do for other people,” Ms. Glaser said. “For him, the greatest gift was giving to people when he could get nothing in return. That’s why he would go to a nursing home to visit people from Five Star who were there. And he’d ask who doesn’t get any visitors, and he’d spend time with them.

“He thanked God for making dreams come true that he’d never dreamt.”

In September, the Glaser family “had the good fortune to donate ambulettes to United Hatzalah,” Ms. Glaser said. “The beit midrash at Schechter is dedicated to him. We tried to do everything to honor him when he was still alive.

“We wanted him to shep naches.”

Her father died erev Shabbat, Ms. Glaser said. “His body couldn’t be moved until Shabbat was over, and we couldn’t get a shomer. So his four grandchildren — and each one of them was sure that they were the favorite grandchild — and very close friends said tehilim until Shabbat was over.

David Luria and his close friend Debbie Toll volunteer at a pre-K class at Schechter Bergen.

“Nobody asked them to do that. My dad had earned their respect, and their love. They admired him. There was nothing he would not do for anybody. You could count on him unconditionally. He would look at their nametags so he could address every waiter and waitress by name. He’d ask about their day.

“But my dad never sugarcoated things. He would say, ‘Not so grand. Not so grand. Keep it down.’

“We were extraordinarily close. And he was extraordinary.

“For 91 years, he was healthy. On Good Friday, we found out that he had lymphoma, and he had nine hard months, but he had 91 really good years. That was a gift.

“To us, he was a tzadik,” she concluded.

Gabe Cohen is Temple Emanu-El’s assistant rabbi. He grew up in Hillsdale, and “I knew David for a long time,” he said. “I grew up in the shul in Paramus. And then I got to know him again as a rabbi in Closter.”

He has some vivid images of Mr. Luria that make clear who he was.

“I was home for Shabbat when I was at Rutgers, and I was standing off to the side in the small chapel as David chanted the haftarah.” Mr. Luria was a skilled davener, and he could be counted on to lead any service or deliver any haftarah, even without notice.

“David was chanting with tears running down his face,” Rabbi Cohen said. “It was his brother’s yahrzeit, or his brother’s bar mitzvah Torah portion. He had to stop to collect himself. We rarely hear people chant the haftarah with that kind of meaning, but he was that kind of person.

“In his last few months, when his health was failing, I would call him, or he would call me, and my first question always was ‘How are you doing?’ and instead of answering, he would always ask about my family.

“And then on the Thursday before he died, I visited him. He was on his deathbed. He was pretty much out of it. But when I walked to him, his eyes opened. He asked me how my wife was doing.”

That was exactly the kind of person Mr. Luria was, Rabbi Cohen said. “He was compassionate. He cared. He never cared about himself, only about other people.

This is a sign that David Luria — aka Poppi — stood near one of the ambucycles he donated.

“He was a special person.”

Arthur Weiner is the rabbi of the JCC of Paramus.

“He was an outstanding mensch,” he said. “An outstanding father and grandfather. He was devoted to Jewish life and the Jewish community. He was a leader in Jewish life, and especially in synagogue life, in any community that he lived in.

“He was a true friend — he was like a father figure to me.

“He faced his recent health challenges with love, courage and dignity.

“It sounds so cliched, but it’s true. He knew how to form relationships across the generations. I saw him do it. I will miss him terribly.

“Rabbis say that certain types of losses impoverish a generation,” Rabbi Weiner concluded. “That’s what this loss represents to many of us. No one lives forever — but it’s a pity that David Luria couldn’t.”

Steve Freedman is the head of school at Schechter Bergen. He and Ms. Stamler-Goldberg talked about the man they both loved.

“He was probably one of the most remarkable, most special human beings I have ever met,” Mr. Freedman said. “The love and the interest in others that radiated from his heart was authentic. If you were talking to him, it felt like you were the only person who mattered to him. And it was real.

“He would tell you that we were doing a mitzvah by having him come and volunteer, because he would say that we were giving him something to do. But really, he was performing a profound mitzvah.

“He was an extraordinary role model. The students loved him to the point that a few years ago, the eighth grade made him an honorary eighth-grader.

“He would read stories to the 4-year-olds, and they loved him.

“Last week, when he died, the students were all hugging each other, comforting each other. What kind of person makes that kind of impact?

“He touched children’s lives. They saw the dignity of what elderly people have to offer, and the wisdom and gentleness and love he had to offer.

“This is not an exaggeration — we should all aspire to be the kind of person he was.”

“He was just such a special man,” Ms. Stamler-Goldberg said. “I have known him for decades because of his family. He exuded love. He was a true exemplar of Jewish values. Everything about him — the way he raised his children, the way he taught them about tzedakah, the way he gave his time.

“If he met you, he’d know the name of your spouse, your parents, and your children. He truly cared.

“As he got older, he said that we should give him nonsense to do, because ‘if I don’t do it, someone else will have to do it.’ Nothing was too small for him, and nothing was too big.

“He cared about everything. He was an exceptional human being. He was truly loved, and he will be truly missed.”

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