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A 19th-century painting of the Western Wall could fetch $3M at Sotheby’s
(New York Jewish Week) – A hyper-realistic 19th-century painting of worshippers at the Western Wall that spent many forgotten years in a synagogue’s storage room is headed to auction at Sotheby’s New York on Thursday.
The painting, “The Western Wall,” created in the late 1880s by German artist and illustrator Gustav Bauernfeind, is expected to fetch an estimated $2 to $3 million.
In his day, 1848-1904, Bauernfeind, who had some Jewish ancestry, was a well-known “Orientalist” painter who stood out for his realism and focus on architecture. This particular piece was donated to a synagogue in Southern California in the mid-1980s by the family of Theodore Cummings, a former U.S. ambassador to Austria and confidante to President Ronald Reagan. However, many years ago, during renovations on the synagogue, the painting was placed into storage — where it remained until the executive director of the congregation discovered the piece last summer.
The director of the synagogue, which wishes to be anonymous, reached out to Benjamin Doller, a Sotheby’s senior auctioneer and its chairman of the Americas, who has previously auctioned several of Bauernfeind’s paintings. Doller immediately hopped on a plane to California to see the painting in person.
“It just knocked my socks off, basically,” Doller, who specializes in 19th-century art, told the New York Jewish Week. “I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is just incredible.”
“Even though they sent me the dimensions, until you stand in front of something, you really don’t get the sense of the scale,” he said of the painting, which is nearly 4 feet by 3 feet. “The quality was fantastic and the condition was amazing — it’s in really spectacular condition.”
“The Western Wall” depicts, in remarkably realistic fashion, a diverse set of worshippers huddled together at the base of Judaism’s holy site, known in Hebrew as the Kotel. Some Jews wear the fur hats known as shtreimels, while others wear fezzes and still others wear black hats and kippot. Nearly all of the men are wrapped in prayer shawls, while women are shown in the rear of the scene, their hair and bodies wrapped in colorful scarves and shawls.
Etchings of Hebrew names appear in the nearest corner of the wall, likely foreshadowing the modern practice of leaving notes and prayers inside the cracks of the wall, Doller said. Because Bauernfeind was a realist painter, the painting is considered an accurate depiction of what the Western Wall likely looked like at the time.
“It’s a very interesting historical document of how the area in front of the Kotel looked in the late 19th century before the whole area was cleared to create the big space that it is now,” Claude Piening, the senior international specialist for 19th-century European paintings at Sotheby’s, told the New York Jewish Week. “He was a master at painting perspective.”
Bauernfeind, who was born in Sulz am Neckar, Germany, began his career as an architect but turned to painting later in his life. Much of his work focused on the buildings and scenes of Palestine, where he traveled extensively in the 1880s before permanently moving to Jerusalem with his wife and son in 1896. He died there in 1904.
The painting is considered a highlight of this year’s “Masters Week,” a weeklong series of curated auctions that include “rare and exciting masterpieces from the 14th to 19th centuries,” according to Sotheby’s. “The Western Wall” will be on the block as part of the Master Paintings Part I auction that begins on Thursday at 10:00 a.m. at Sotheby’s headquarters on the Upper East Side.
Doller and Piening aren’t ruling out the possibility that it could go for higher than the estimate.
“The last time a comparable work came up was in 2007, and it made $6 million from a very low estimate,” Piening said.
That painting, “The Wailing Wall,” also by Bauernfeind, was of a similar scale, but featured only a dozen or so worshippers — as opposed to the packed crowd of “The Western Wall.”
“It’s just a very rare thing to appear on the market,” he added.
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The post A 19th-century painting of the Western Wall could fetch $3M at Sotheby’s appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Iranian Media Claims Obtaining ‘Sensitive’ Israeli Intelligence Materials
FILE PHOTO: The atomic symbol and the Iranian flag are seen in this illustration, July 21, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
i24 News – Iranian and Iran-affiliated media claimed on Saturday that the Islamic Republic had obtained a trove of “strategic and sensitive” Israeli intelligence materials related to Israel’s nuclear facilities and defense plans.
“Iran’s intelligence apparatus has obtained a vast quantity of strategic and sensitive information and documents belonging to the Zionist regime,” Iran’s state broadcaster said, referring to Israel in the manner accepted in those Muslim or Arab states that don’t recognize its legitimacy. The statement was also relayed by the Lebanese site Al-Mayadeen, affiliated with the Iran-backed jihadists of Hezbollah.
The reports did not include any details on the documents or how Iran had obtained them.
The intelligence reportedly included “thousands of documents related to that regime’s nuclear plans and facilities,” it added.
According to the reports, “the data haul was extracted during a covert operation and included a vast volume of materials including documents, images, and videos.”
The report comes amid high tensions over Iran’s nuclear program, over which it is in talks with the US administration of President Donald Trump.
Iranian-Israeli tensions reached an all-time high since the October 7 massacre and the subsequent Gaza war, including Iranian rocket fire on Israel and Israeli aerial raids in Iran that devastated much of the regime’s air defenses.
Israel, which regards the prospect of the antisemitic mullah regime obtaining a nuclear weapon as an existential threat, has indicated it could resort to a military strike against Iran’s installations should talks fail to curb uranium enrichment.
The post Iranian Media Claims Obtaining ‘Sensitive’ Israeli Intelligence Materials first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israel Retrieves Body of Thai Hostage from Gaza
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz looks on, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, in Jerusalem, Nov. 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
The Israeli military has retrieved the body of a Thai hostage who had been held in Gaza since Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack, Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Saturday.
Nattapong Pinta’s body was held by a Palestinian terrorist group called the Mujahedeen Brigades, and was recovered from the area of Rafah in southern Gaza, Katz said. His family in Thailand has been notified.
Pinta, an agricultural worker, was abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz, a small Israeli community near the Gaza border where a quarter of the population was killed or taken hostage during the Hamas attack that triggered the devastating war in Gaza.
Israel’s military said Pinta had been abducted alive and killed by his captors, who had also killed and taken to Gaza the bodies of two more Israeli-American hostages that were retrieved earlier this week.
There was no immediate comment from the Mujahedeen Brigades, who have previously denied killing their captives, or from Hamas. The Israeli military said the Brigades were still holding the body of another foreign national. Only 20 of the 55 remaining hostages are believed to still be alive.
The Mujahedeen Brigades also held and killed Israeli hostage Shiri Bibas and her two young sons, according to Israeli authorities. Their bodies were returned during a two-month ceasefire, which collapsed in March after the two sides could not agree on terms for extending it to a second phase.
Israel has since expanded its offensive across the Gaza Strip as US, Qatari and Egyptian-led efforts to secure another ceasefire have faltered.
US-BACKED AID GROUP HALTS DISTRIBUTIONS
The United Nations has warned that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli blockade of the enclave, with the rate of young children suffering from acute malnutrition nearly tripling.
Aid distribution was halted on Friday after the US-and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said overcrowding had made it unsafe to continue operations. It was unclear whether aid had resumed on Saturday.
The GHF began distributing food packages in Gaza at the end of May, overseeing a new model of aid distribution which the United Nations says is neither impartial nor neutral. It says it has provided around 9 million meals so far.
The Israeli military said on Saturday that 350 trucks of humanitarian aid belonging to U.N. and other international relief groups were transferred this week via the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza.
The war erupted after Hamas-led terrorists took 251 hostages and killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, in the October 7, 2023 attack, Israel’s single deadliest day.
The post Israel Retrieves Body of Thai Hostage from Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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US Mulls Giving Millions to Controversial Gaza Aid Foundation, Sources Say
Palestinians carry aid supplies which they received from the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in the central Gaza Strip, May 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed/File Photo
The State Department is weighing giving $500 million to the new foundation providing aid to war-shattered Gaza, according to two knowledgeable sources and two former US officials, a move that would involve the US more deeply in a controversial aid effort that has been beset by violence and chaos.
The sources and former US officials, all of whom requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said that money for Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) would come from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which is being folded into the US State Department.
The plan has met resistance from some US officials concerned with the deadly shootings of Palestinians near aid distribution sites and the competence of the GHF, the two sources said.
The GHF, which has been fiercely criticized by humanitarian organizations, including the United Nations, for an alleged lack of neutrality, began distributing aid last week amid warnings that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli aid blockade, which was lifted on May 19 when limited deliveries were allowed to resume.
The foundation has seen senior personnel quit and had to pause handouts twice this week after crowds overwhelmed its distribution hubs.
The State Department and GHF did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Reuters has been unable to establish who is currently funding the GHF operations, which began in Gaza last week. The GHF uses private US security and logistics companies to transport aid into Gaza for distribution at so-called secure distribution sites.
On Thursday, Reuters reported that a Chicago-based private equity firm, McNally Capital, has an “economic interest” in the for-profit US contractor overseeing the logistics and security of GHF’s aid distribution hubs in the enclave.
While US President Donald Trump’s administration and Israel say they don’t finance the GHF operation, both have been pressing the United Nations and international aid groups to work with it.
The US and Israel argue that aid distributed by a long-established U.N. aid network was diverted to Hamas. Hamas has denied that.
USAID has been all but dismantled. Some 80 percent of its programs have been canceled and its staff face termination as part of President Donald Trump’s drive to align US foreign policy with his “America First” agenda.
One source with knowledge of the matter and one former senior official said the proposal to give the $500 million to GHF has been championed by acting deputy USAID Administrator Ken Jackson, who has helped oversee the agency’s dismemberment.
The source said that Israel requested the funds to underwrite GHF’s operations for 180 days.
The Israeli government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The two sources said that some US officials have concerns with the plan because of the overcrowding that has affected the aid distribution hubs run by GHF’s contractor, and violence nearby.
Those officials also want well-established non-governmental organizations experienced in running aid operations in Gaza and elsewhere to be involved in the operation if the State Department approves the funds for GHF, a position that Israel likely will oppose, the sources said.
The post US Mulls Giving Millions to Controversial Gaza Aid Foundation, Sources Say first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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