RABBI JACOBS’ TRIBUTE
“It is with difficulty,” said Rabbi Jacobs, of the Holy Blossom Synagogue, “that I can trust myself to speak on that sad calamity which has touched the heart of Canada and other parts of the civilized world so deeply in the past two days. Ah, it is such blows as these which teach us how fleeting is all human existence, how uncertain the span of life, how our earthly days are measured, our only hope in God. May this sad event remind us of the uncertainty of life and stir us all to a greater sense of our duty to the Great Creator and to each other. Events such as this have a great spiritual purpose to accomplish. They show how weak, how unstable, all our calculations are—how man proposes, but God disposes. May the Lord take into His safe-keeping the souls of the departed.”
Throughout the churches of England and America similar references were made to the catastrophe that carried so many souls swiftly to their doom and sympathy expressed for those who had suffered the loss of dear ones. To the bereaved Salvation Army especially was a wealth of Christian love and fellowship extended.