Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
The Schmooze

Titanic Victim’s Hebrew Pocket Watch Hits Auction Block For $20K

Every few years since the Titanic sank in 1912, a new bundle of artifacts resurface.

Just recently, a Hebrew inscribed timepiece, that belonged to Sinai Kantor — a Russian immigrant who perished along with 1503 other passengers aboard the doomed ship — was put up for auction. This coming Saturday, the century-old watch, will sell at the Heritage Auctions, starting at $20,000.

34-year-old Sinai and his wife, Miriam, were among 80 other Jewish travelers on the Titanic, which, surprisingly, even had a kosher kitchen on deck. The newly publicized relic sheds light on the little-known Jewish history behind the British Passenger Liner. Both second-class passengers were aspiring to be doctors in America, but only 24-year-old Miriam survived in a lifeboat.

The face of the pocket watch features Moses holding the Ten Commandments with muscled arms and the back of the watch has Hebrew letters 1 through 12.

“This timepiece with Hebrew characters is a touching reminder that we Jews were there,” said Marshall Weiss, editor and publisher of The Dayton Jewish Observer. “We were part of that temporary, stratified community, dreaming of the Golden Land, until for so many, time stood still.”

“A watch is a display item, and a watch with a Hebrew face with Moses on the back was something you wanted to have noticed,” Jonathan Sarna, professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University, told the Religion News Service. For Kantore, his watch was not merely a time-telling device, but a way of telling people that he was proud to be a Jew.

Bonnie Azoulay is an Lifestyle intern at the Forward.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.