A Hebrew Watch from a Jew Who Sailed on the “Titanic”

When the Titanic set sail from the English port of Southampton to New York City, it had on board hundreds of prospective immigrants hoping to settle in the U.S. permanently; among them were Sinai and Miriam Kantor, originally from Vitebsk. The Kantors were just two of some 80 Jews aboard the ship, including Congressman Isidor Straus of New York who, together with his brother Nathan, had founded Macy’s department store; the Titanic even had its own kosher kitchen. While the Kantors were not nearly so wealthy as Straus, they were far better-off than most Jewish passengers on the vessel, as Sinai Kantor’s Hebrew watch—recently put up for auction—suggests. Menachem Wecker writes:

Sinai Kantor . . . took with him [on the Titanic] a Swiss-made pocket watch embossed on the back with a seated Moses holding the Hebrew-inscribed Ten Commandments. The timepiece, a symbol of Kantor’s Jewish faith, survived. Kantor did not. He was among 1,503 passengers who died on the Titanic’s maiden voyage. . . . When women and children were prioritized for rescue, Miriam, who was twenty-four, survived in lifeboat number 12.

On its face, the seawater-rusted watch, which is three inches in diameter, contains the Hebrew letters corresponding to the numbers one through twelve, though the watch hands are missing. On the back, a muscular Moses, clad in biblical garb, holds the . . . Ten Commandments in front of five palm trees and an arch with Doric columns. . . . [A]n accessory of this sort would have been a posh, luxury item, which was intended to be conspicuous, said Jonathan Sarna, professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University. . . .

In coming generations, many Jews would wear jewelry adorned with Stars of David or otherwise publicly demonstrate that they were Jewish. In much the same way, Kantor clearly wanted everybody to know he was proud to be Jewish, Sarna said.

Read more at Religion News Service

More about: History & Ideas, Immigration, Jewish history, Titanic

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF