Shortly before the Nazi occupation of France in 1940, a prominent Jewish family, led by Robert Bing, fled their Paris home. Among the possessions they left behind was a l9th-century work by Gustave Courbet, the French realist painter. The Courbet was seized by the Nazis and, according to a handwritten note that accompanied the seized work, the painting was intended for the collection of Hermann Göring. After the war, a London art dealership acquired the painting, and turned it over to the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge.

Now, a British government panel has determined that the painting should be returned to the heirs of Robert Bing, who died in 1993. The report did not fault the museum for accepting the looted Courbet, which it received through a donation in 1951, nor did the report place any value on the painting.

On March 27, the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs hosted an international conference, bringing together think-tank and policy center representatives from 30 Middle East and African states. Panelists and participants discussed the prospects for enlarging and enhancing the Abraham Accords, and the potential areas for Gulf-Africa-Israel partnerships in the fields of counterterrorism and national security, food and water security, and the environment.

Photo courtesy Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs

The number of antisemitic incidents in the United States in 2022 was the highest since the Anti-Defamation League began keeping track in 1979, the group announced.

The A.D.L. report documented 3,697 incidents last year, a 36% rise from 2021. A majority were characterized as harassment, including online, but the tally also included 111 assaults and more than 1,200 occasions of vandalism.

A painting by Wassily Kandinsky that spent decades in a Dutch museum after its Jewish owner was murdered in the Holocaust has sold at auction for $44.9 million. “Murnau mit Kirche II” (Murnau with Church II) set a record price for the Russian artist in a sale at Sotheby’s in London. Completed in 1910, the brightly colored landscape of a Bavarian village foreshadows the bold abstract imagery of Kandinsky’s later work.

The Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven returned the painting last year to the descendants of German-Jewish art collectors Johanna Margarete Stern and Siegbert Samuel Stern. Siegbert Stern died in 1935, and Johanna fled Nazi Germany for Amsterdam, where she was forced to sell much of her collection. She was arrested after the Nazis occupied the Netherlands, and died in the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944.

Sotheby’s said proceeds from the sale will be shared among 13 surviving Stern heirs, and will also fund further research into the fate of the family’s collection.

In 2013, Dutch museums identified 139 artworks as Nazi loot, including paintings from masters such as Kandinsky, Henri Matisse and Paul Klee.

Random Reads offers Shofar readers only two selections this time, yet both document compelling stories of notable Jews who shaped history. We recommend both with high marks.

The Women Of Rothschild: Untold Story of the World’s Most Famous Dynasty

In this book, Natalie Livingstone reveals the role of women in shaping the legacy of the famous Rothschild dynasty, synonymous with wealth and power. The writer follows the women from the dawn of the 19^th century to the early years of the 21^st. As Jews in a Christian society and women in a deeply patriarchal family, they were outsiders. Excluded from the family bank, they forged their own distinct dynasty and became influential hostesses and diplomats, choreographing electoral campaigns, advising prime ministers, advocating for social reform, and trading on the stock exchange.

A State At Any Cost: The Life Of David Ben-Gurion

In this definitive biography, Israel’s leading journalist-historian Tom Segev cites previously unreleased archival material to give an original account of David Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister of the modern state of Israel. The result is a full and startling portrait of a man who sought a state “at any cost” — at times through risk-taking, violence and unpredictability, and at other times through compromise, moderation and reason. Segev’s Ben-Gurion is neither saint nor villain, but certainly one of the historically great leaders in modern Jewish history.