"Woe to the world that has lost its leader and woe to the ship that has lost its captain," said Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu in his funeral eulogy to Rabbi Avraham Shapira Friday morning. "The ship is drowning at sea and there is no one to steer it," Rabbi Eliyahu said.
Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv, said that "a great orphanhood" has befallen the people of Israel, the rabbinical Courts, Jerusalem and the Rabbanut with Rabbi Shapira's passing. "A great light has gone out," he said, as people sobbed all around him. "There are so many orphans."
Chief Sephardic Rabbi Shlomo Amar, said that there would never again be greatness in the Torah like that of Rabbi Shapira. The Rabbi "stood like a young man and fought the Torah's fight" on issues like civil marriage, he said.