Jewish executive among missing after Amtrak crash
Rachel Jacobs, a 39-year-old mother, was recently hired as CEO of an education start-up; death toll rises to 7
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A Jewish woman reported to be missing in the wake of an Amtrak train derailment near Port Richmond, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday apparently found inspiration for her early nonprofit work from her Jewish connections.
Rachel Jacobs, a 39-year-old mother of a 2-year-old, was still missing Wednesday morning, after the train accident that killed at least seven people and injured more than 200 others.
Officials warned the death toll could rise from the incident that took place late Tuesday along the busy northeast US rail corridor linking Washington and New York, as some of the 243 people believed to have been on the train had not yet been accounted for.
“We are heartbroken at what’s happened here. We’ve not experienced anything like this in modern times,” Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter told reporters.
“We’ll get to the bottom of it and figure out what happened, why it happened, but that will take some time.”
Jacobs was recently hired as the CEO of ApprenNet, an online education start-up based in the University City section of West Philadelphia.
The 1997 graduate of Swarthmore College was commuting back and forth from her Manhattan home, which she reportedly shared with her husband and son.
Jacobs, who grew up in the Detroit suburb of Huntington Woods, Mich., spoke of her deep connection to Jewish community in a 2011 interview she gave as a Detroit fellow with Repair the World, a national nonprofit Jewish service-learning program that has a West Philadelphia-based branch.
“When we think about what it means to be Jewish, it’s very much focused on building community,” she said in describing Detroit Nation, a nonprofit group she co-founded in 2010 to help Detroit natives stay connected and involved even if they didn’t live there.
She said her family had always been involved in the Jewish and general communities of Detroit. “Going back to high school, I was very involved with NFTY,” she said of the Reform movement’s youth group. “I was the social action president for the Michigan chapter.”
She said the concept for Detroit Nation came from a “germ of an idea” started by the Jewish Federation in Detroit, and the Federation helped support it initially. It was modeled on Diaspora Jewry’s connection with Israel. “There was this huge diaspora of Detroiters who had grown up with very similar values, and really wanted to maintain a connection to the city whether they lived there or not.”
Witnesses who had been traveling aboard Amtrak Train 188, which went off the rails as it went into a turn, described scenes of panic and chaos, as passengers banged into one another when train cars tumbled over.
After the crash, which took place at about 9:30 pm Tuesday (0130 GMT Wednesday), shell-shocked and bleeding travelers were seen limping from the wreckage, while rescuers used flashlights to search for victims.
Nutter said officials were working to reconcile the passenger manifest with the lists of injured, and officials encouraged anyone who may have left the scene without being counted to contact Amtrak.
Train services between Philadelphia and New York were likely to be suspended for the rest of the week, the mayor said.
“Along the Northeast Corridor, Amtrak is a way of life for many,” President Barack Obama said in a statement.
“From Washington, DC and Philadelphia to New York City and Boston, this is a tragedy that touches us all.”
The Times of Israel Community.