Sam Sable was slight of physical build, but to the community, he was a giant.

There was hardly a position in a community organization that he did not hold during his many years of service.

It wasn’t until the 1950s that I saw Sam in action at community meetings. I marvelled at his grasp of convoluted, even tortuous, issues facing the kahal.

Sam’s clear voice rang out in the halls of 150 Beverley St. at the offices of the United Jewish Welfare Fund, as he took principled position after principled position. While he was a strong advocate for the day school system at every opportunity, his purview was not restricted to that. There wasn’t an issue involving Jews and the Jewish community – locally, across Canada, in Israel and throughout the rest of the Jewish world – that didn’t attract his attention. And, while he could become exercised and even irate, he never lost his gentlemanly approach.

Over the years, as he withdrew from active participation, he maintained his interest in everything going on in the Jewish world around him. I recall that he attended a meeting of past presidents of UJA Federation of Greater Toronto just a year or two ago and offered comments and suggestions on each agenda item.

To be at a simchah attended by Sam, was to know that he would lead the Birkat Hamazon, for he delighted in doing so, and in a voice that required no microphone and in a manner that  demonstrated – every time, all the time – his love for his people and his religion.

Notwithstanding his commitment to Orthodoxy and his presidency of Shaarei Shomayim Congregation, he never shied away from participating fully in services conducted by the other streams of Judaism. It was neither in his personality nor in his religious belief to question the appropriateness of such participation. To him, a Jew was a Jew, and he never subscribed to boycotting a different mode of prayer to the same God.

An era has come to a close. I will miss him, as will so many others. He left not only a good name, but also an indelible mark on so many facets of this Jewish world. He left legacies for generations of schoolchildren and citizens, who knew him not, but who benefited from his good works and his benevolence.

Donald Carr is president of The CJN.