Auction of Safra Jewels Raise $38 Million for Charity
An auction of jewels belonging to billionaire Lily Safra raised nearly $38 million for charity.
The auction, “Jewels For Hope: The Collection of Mrs. Lily Safra,” was held Monday at Christie’s Geneva.
Proceeds from the auction were set to go to 32 charitable organizations through The Lily Safra Foundation. Among the organizations are: ALEH: Caring for Israel‟s Disabled; A Computer for Every Child, Israel; Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Edmond and Lily Safra Children’s Hospital, Tel Hashomer, Israel; and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra
A 32-carat Burmese ruby-and-diamond ring sold for $6.7 million, a world record for any ruby sold at auction, Forbes reported. In all 70 pieces of jewelry were sold.
Safra is the widow of Lebanese banker Edmond Safra, who died in 1999. She has a net worth of $1.2 billion, according to Forbes’s most recent listing of the world’s wealthiest individuals.
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
