The recent earthquake in Haiti recalls the earthquake that virtually destroyed Tsefat in 1837 and claimed the lives of some four thousand residents.
In a eulogy for the victims of that earthquake, Rabbi Moshe Sofer, the rav of Pressburg and author of Chasam Sofer, suggested that this tragedy occurred because Jews for close to a century had chosen to live in Tsefat rather than in Jerusalem and "it was the envy of Jerusalem which caused this."
