Hey, I’m Noam Weissman and this is Unpacking Israeli History, the podcast that takes a deep dive into some of the most intense, historically fascinating, and often misunderstood events and stories linked to Israeli history. This episode was generously sponsored by the Zalik Foundation Junior Board. If you want to sponsor an episode of Unpacking Israeli History, or if you just want to say hey, be in touch at noam@unpacked.media.
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Have I ever mentioned how much I love doing this podcast? I really, really do. I cherish every episode, every opportunity I get to teach a piece of Israeli history that people may not know. And to learn! I learn something new every single episode. No joke.
But if you’re a regular listener – and I hope you are – you know there are some episodes I love more than any other. More than our two part-ers or three part-ers or five part-ers. More than the live interviews.
My favorite episodes are the Israel Open Mics – the episodes where we choose a topic based on a question submitted by a listener, and we build an episode out of it.
I love them because… not to get too mushy here… but I love you, our audience. You’re smart and thoughtful and you’re curious. You also ask me questions that lead me and my team on fact finding missions to discover fascinating elements of Israeli history that I never knew so much about, and for that, dear listener, I am truly grateful.
Truly.
For this week’s episode, we reached way down into the Unpacking Israeli History mail bag… just kidding. It’s email. Obviously. Noam@unpacked.media – hit me up! But we scrolled way down in the Unpacking Israeli History email and found this question from Ellie.
She writes:
“Dear Noam, Love the pod. Thanks for all you do.”
My pleasure, Ellie. Thanks for the kind note.
Ellie continues:
“The other day, my friend asked me if today’s Shekels are the same as the shekels in the temple days, and I said, “no, that’s why they’re called ‘New Israel Shekels.’” Was I right? I realize I could just Google it, but I’ve found I really enjoy hearing you explain Israel stuff, so I figured I’d just ask you!”
Well, Ellie, I’m glad you did, because this episode is going to give me a reason to unleash my inner numismatist.
A numismatist, as we all know, is someone who engages in numismatics – that is, they study and collect currency. Coins… paper money… the whole deal.
I’ll admit… I’m not much of a collector. Actually, when I was a kid, you won’t be surprised that I collected baseball, football and basketball cards, and I am forever frustrated with myself for selling a Willie Stargell card I somehow got my paws on in the mid 90’s and I low key collected rocks too. Yep, now you know. But, now, I am not so into collecting this (outside of books…You’re so cool, Noam!). I mean, I use currency like everyone else does, so that I can purchase things like food and clothing and pizza (which is food).
I’m no collector. But currency has always fascinated me. Because understanding currency is essentially understanding history.
For millennia, kingdoms and countries have used currency to spread messages and share and promote stories. They pressed images of heroes and conquests onto bits of metal and sent them into the world. They etched national symbols into small circles and flooded the marketplace. Every coin was a combination public service announcement, propaganda item, and history book.
If you want a perfect, fascinating example of this in Jewish History, I highly recommend you check out our sister podcast from Unpacked – Jewish History Nerds, hosted by the incredible Jonathan Schwab and Yael Steiner. They do a whole episode on Judea Capta coins, a series of coins minted by the Roman emperor celebrating, of all things, the capture of Jerusalem. It’s a really wild topic, and you should absolutely make that your next listen. Link in the show notes.
This wasn’t just an ancient phenomenon, though. Today’s currency is chock full of national symbols and stories. I think we all remember that scene from National Treasure where Nicholas Cage explains the symbolism on the back of the 1 dollar bill? Man, to a burgeoning numismatist like myself, that scene was everything. Nick Cage just gets it. “Put… the bunny… back… in the box.” Con Air, 1997 – my sweet spot of cultural references up until 2003!
The idea is, you can learn a ton about a place by what they put on their money. And Israel is a particularly interesting example. Because they have gone through four different currencies since they came into existence.
For reference, the U.S. has had the same currency since the 1780’s. Sure, the money has gone through different looks… it’s been printed in different denominations. The faces on the front have changed. But the US dollar we use to buy an iced brown sugar oatmilk shaken espresso today (yes, that’s my drink of preference) is essentially the same currency that George Washington used to buy his boring black coffee, or whatever they drank. (Did they just chew on coffee beans back then? Someone write in, let me know.)
Meanwhile, Israel’s currency today – the New Israeli Shekel – is the fourth national currency since the country’s founding, and that was only 78 years ago.
And if having four different currencies wasn’t enough, Israel also changed the design of its currency time and time again. Over the years, images on Israeli currency have ranged from rural landscapes, to politicians and historical figures and, most recently, to poets.
So in today’s episode we’re going to try to answer what I see as the two big questions around Israel’s currency.
Question number 1. What’s the deal with all the switching? Like, what was wrong with the first currency? Or the first three?
And question number 2. If currency is like a key to understanding a country’s values, what can Israel’s many, many currencies tell us about what truly matters to Israel?
I’m sure those are the questions you had in mind in your email, Ellie. And I’m happy to help.
It’s Israel Open Mic time, everyone.
Currency #1: The Anglo-Palestinian Pound
The story of Israel’s founding is a story of tenacity. Of seizing opportunities and facing the consequences. It’s a story of chutzpah.
And the story of Israel’s first currency is very much the same. Creating the very first Israeli money took a combination of suave statesmanship, secrecy, and straight up breaking the law.
I’ll set the scene. It was 1947, and the Jews of the Yishuv – that’s pre-Israel Palestine – were building toward statehood. They knew the days of British rule over the region were numbered, and they wanted to be ready to seize the opportunity for independence when it came.
Under the sturdy leadership of David Ben Gurion, they built a society – a national infrastructure that, they hoped, would sustain a new state. That meant creating Israeli labor unions. Farms. School. Trash disposal systems…
It also meant creating an Israeli currency. Both for practical and symbolic reasons.
Up until then, Jews and Arabs and everyone else living in British Mandatory Palestine was using the British-backed Palestine Pound. It was basically a Middle Eastern version of the British pound sterling – England’s own currency. That wasn’t going to just stick around once the British left. A new currency would have to replace it.
That was the practical reason. But there was also a nationalistic, deeply symbolic reason.
And that is… nations have their own currency! Having a national currency is a symbol of independence. It’s a symbol of sovereignty. It’s a symbol of pride. And for a new state whose very existence would be denied and threatened time and time again, that symbol was extremely important.
But here’s where things get a little more complicated.
Because when I say that nations have their own currency…it’s not only Israelis who use shekels as their currency. Palestinians in the West Bank primarily use the Israeli New Shekel in their day-to-day lives. After the Oslo Accords in the 1990s, Israel and the newly created Palestinian Authority signed what’s called the Paris Protocol, which essentially tied the Palestinian economy to Israel’s. The Shekel became one of the main legal currencies in Palestinian areas, alongside the Jordanian dinar and, to an extent, the U.S. dollar. In Gaza, too, despite Hamas governance, the Shekel remains the dominant currency in circulation, largely because of economic dependence on Israel for trade and goods.
And if currency is supposed to symbolize sovereignty, that creates a kind of tension. On the one hand, Israel’s currency tells a story of independence, identity, revival. On the other hand, millions of Palestinians use that same currency without having a state of their own issuing it. It’s not totally unique, there are other places in the world where this happens. Countries like Ecuador and El Salvador use the U.S. dollar as their official currency. Kosovo and Montenegro use the euro, even though they’re not part of the European Union. But in those cases, it’s usually an economic choice. Here, it’s wrapped up in a much more complicated political reality. Which means that even something as simple as the coins in your pocket can reflect not just nationhood, but also the unresolved questions around it.
So let’s rewind to the moment when that symbol didn’t exist yet, and had to be created from scratch. The job was assigned to the largest private bank in the Yishuv – the Anglo-Palestine Bank. They were tasked with creating an Israeli currency and doing it quickly.
The problem was where to print the new money. And how. Enter Eliezer Sigfried Hoofien – a Dutch Jew who moved to Israel in 1912 to take on the role of Deputy Director at the Anglo-Palestine Bank. By 1947, after putting in a solid 30 years, he had risen to Chairman of the Board of Directors. And as Chairman, he was able to persuade the American Banknote Company of New York to take on the job.
Look, I don’t know how he did it. But this arrangement was shaaaady.
First of all, the US State Department would blow a gasket if they knew New York was printing money for a non-existent state. So they loopholed it. They didn’t print the word “legal tender” anywhere on the bill.
They basically printed high quality toy money. Monopoly money. Israel had to add the phrase “legal tender for payment of any amount” after the fact.
Also, the American Banknote Company insisted that their names didn’t appear on the bill. Probably because of how sus that loophole was.
There was also the issue that when the banknotes were ordered, no one knew what the name of the new state would be, let alone the name of the currency. So they just kept the same name as the old one.
That’s right, Israel’s first national currency was called… the Palestine Pound.
How anticlimactic is that?
And what did these bills look like? What symbolism adorned Israel’s very first national currency? Which icons of Jewish history graced the front? Herzl? Weizman? Moses? How about King David?
Nope. It was nobody.
For the first currency, there was no time to select a design committee or commission portraits. They needed their money and they needed it fast.
So they didn’t bother with an original design. They looked for whatever was lying around, and they ended up finding some old plates the American Banknote Company had used to print Chinese money. So they used those.
The resulting bill had a nice design, with geometric patterns, some beautiful Hebrew, Arabic and English printing, but no faces. No symbols. No “Israel.”
The official bills reached Europe by ship, and were then flown in secret, of course, to Israel. They reached the shores of the brand new nation in July ’48, and began circulation in August.
So if the currency of a nation is supposed to reflect its history and values… the appearance of Israel’s first money didn’t quite do its job. But the story of how that money came to be certainly did. It paints the picture of a people, of a nation, determined to pursue the road toward statehood, no matter what the world says… no matter what the law says.
It’s the same sensibility that led Ben Gurion to get up in Tel Aviv Museum in May of 1948, under the threatening gaze of the neighboring countries, and declare the existence of a Jewish state in their ancestral homeland.
It was the philosophy: “Do what we need to do. Figure out the rest later.”
And “later” didn’t take long to arrive.
Currency #2: The Israeli Pound: 1951 to 1980
Three years. That’s all it took for Israel to abandon their first currency and embrace something new.
To be fair, the days of the newly minted Palestine Pound were always numbered. There was a lot about it that was, shall we say, not ideal. Remember, the name of the country – the name Israel – didn’t even appear on the bill yet.
And not only that, in 1951, The Anglo-Palestine Bank transformed into a new company called Israel National Bank – or Bank Leumi L’Yisrael. A new bank meant a new currency.
And so the Israeli Pound was born – or “Lira Yisraelit” in Hebrew.
Other than finally including the all-important name Israel – there for everyone to read in Hebrew, English and Arabic – the bills themselves didn’t look that different from their predecessors. No faces. No national symbols.
But there was one more significant change.
At first, one Lira, one Israeli Pound – like the Palestine Pound before it – was divided into 1000 mils. Like, instead of 100 cents to a dollar, they had 1000 mils to a pound. But soon after the Israeli pound was introduced, Israel switched the name from “a mil,” to a “pruta.”
For those Talmud-heads among us, a Pruta was a coin from Mishnaic times, during the period of the Second Temple. The term referred to a coin of minimal value. And if you think of 1/1000th of 1 Israeli Pound – which at the time was worth about 3 American dollars – the term fit. A Prutah was pretty much useless.
But the name signified an important shift. It was the first time Israel used their national currency as a celebration of Jewish culture and connection to the land. The term Pruta tied Israel’s modern currency to ancient Jewish history, and it sent an important message: We’re not here by coincidence. This is our home. This is where we belong. This is where we, as a people, are ultimately from.
For me, that feels like quite the profound message.
The next major change of currency wouldn’t occur for almost thirty years. But in those three decades, the Israeli Pound underwent multiple transformations.
The first major redesign came in 1955.
The reverse – the back of the bill – still held abstract, geometric designs. But the obverse…(NERD CORNER ALERT: obverse is the term for the front of a bill or coin. Feel free to drop that at parties and see how many friends you have left after.)
The obverse now held images of the land of Israel, including an ancient synagogue and a landscape of the Golan mountains and sea of Galilee. One held a desert scene from the Negev with a settlement and farm equipment. The final bill showed the Jezreel valley with settlements and cultivated fields. Truly, they were gorgeous. If these bills could talk, they’d tell of the history, natural beauty and modern achievement of the Jewish State.
The Israeli Lira series would undergo three more redesigns before it was removed from circulation in 1980. Don’t worry, I’m not going to describe the front and backs of every bill. But you can bet your bottom lira I’m going to give you the highlights:
Let’s start with 1960, the first revamped Liras.
The reverse of the bills featured historical sites throughout Israel, while the landscapes on the obverse of the bills were replaced with Israeli archetypes – Israelis from different walks of life. There’s the muscular pioneer woman holding a basket of locally-grown oranges. The fisherman. The builder, holding his tools against the backdrop of an industrial city. And the scientist, gazing at a test tube. Probably finding the molecular structure of whatever helped create Waze.
For this version of the Israeli Pound, the focus wasn’t the land of Israel. It was Israelis.
Let’s be clear, there were still representation issues here. Images on five bills couldn’t – and didn’t – represent all Israelis. For instance, I’ll note that no religious figures made an appearance. Nevertheless, for what it’s worth, this is one of my favorite versions of Israel’s currency. Future versions feature Israeli luminaries, leaders, artists… But this one makes a statement I love. The money didn’t celebrate a person. It celebrated the People of Israel.
Also, in 1960…Goodbye Pruta, and hello Agurot! The name Agura also represented a connection to ancient Jewish history – the term Agura was mentioned in the book of Samuel.
Notably, the switch to the Agura wasn’t just a name change. Where there used to be 1000 Prutas in one Pound, it was now 100 Agurot to one Pound.
Due to much more complicated factors then we’re going to get into here – around this time, Israel’s currency began declining. Whereas in 1952, one Israeli pound equaled more than 2 dollars, by 1960, the pound equaled about 33 cents.
And that leads us to the next redesign:
1970. For the first time, Israel joins the ranks of those countries who feature major figures on their currency.
First the new bill. On the brand new 100 pound note… it’s the father of modern Zionism himself, Theodore Herzl. Other notes include Chaim Nachman Bialik – Israel’s national poet. Another Chaim, Chaim Weizmann, President of the Zionist Organization and Israel’s first President. And Albert Einstein. He may not be an Israeli celebrity, but Weizmann called him “the greatest Jew Alive,” and Ben Gurion offered him the President job after Weizmann died. He declined, but that didn’t stop him from getting a spot on the 5 pound note.
And then, 1977 – the fourth and final series of the Israeli Pound.
By the late 70’s, inflation was going haywire. In 1977, an Israeli pound was worth less than one American dime. To keep up with the need, another new bill was necessary – a 500 pound note.
That meant it was time for a new design.
Once again, the obverse had portraits of Israeli and Zionistic giants. But the reverse featured a very intentional motif – the gates to the Old City of Jerusalem. This was a decade after the Six Day War and the reunification of Jerusalem, and the bills were designed to celebrate that massive inflection point in Israeli and Jewish history.
As for the faces… Weizmann and Herzl stayed on. They made the cut. New faces included Henrietta Szold, an American Jewish Zionist leader and founder of Hadassah Hospital. And Sir Moses Montefiore, a British banker known for his philanthropy in pre-Israel Palestine.
And for the new 500 pounder? None other than the first Prime Minister of Israel… David Ben Gurion.
With the Israeli Pound, Israel held the same currency for three decades. But the money’s transformation during that time was vast – from a kind of generic-looking, purely practical bill to one that celebrated the land, the people, even the military victories of Israel.
In some ways, the transformation of the currency mirrored the transformation of the country itself from a fledgling state just trying to survive to a military, agricultural and industrial powerhouse establishing itself in the greater world.
There was just one part of the currency left unchanged – the name. And that, too, was about to get a Jewish makeover.
Currency #3: The Israeli Shekel: 1980-1985
As early as 1969, the Knesset passed a law to change the currency from the Pound to the Shekel. About time, right?
And yet, the first shekel didn’t see the light of day until 1980.
The term Shekel holds a deep, historic meaning. The word comes from the Torah, where it referred not to currency, but to a specific unit of weight – “shekel” being derived from the term “mishkal,” which means weight.
Eventually, the name “shekel” was applied to an actual piece of money that was used by the Jews and others during the times of the second Jerusalem Temple, beginning around the 5th century BCE.
(NERD CORNER ALERT: This is a total digression, but I find this story fascinating.
At a certain point during the Temple period, Jews used something called the Tyrian Shekel, because it was minted by the Roman Empire in the city of Tyre in Lebanon. The Tyrian Shekel was known to have a really great purity rate of silver – like 95% – so Jews used those Shekels and only those Shekels – to fulfill the half-shekel obligation.
But then, in 19 BCE, the mint at Tyre closed and the Romans started using an inferior shekel – something with only 80% purity. That wasn’t pure enough for the Temple, so the religious leaders appealed to the Emperor for permission to keep producing a Tyrian-like Shekel for Temple use. The Emperor agreed on one condition. The new Shekels had to keep the exact imagery of the old Tyrian Shekels. The Jews agreed.
But here’s the part I find absolutely wild.
The image on the obverse of the Tyrian Shekel was none other than the Phoenecian god Melkhart – more commonly known to the Greeks and Romans as Hercules.
Which means that Temple Jews were explicitly making coins with the image of a Greek god FOR TEMPLE USE.
That’s bananas! Do you remember the story of Chanukah? Introducing a Greek god into the Jewish Temple was basically the worst thing that can happen. And here we are, circa 19 BCE, creating Greek god coins explicitly to bring into the temple! Crazy, right??)
Okay, sorry, I just had to share that. Back to our story. Bottom line, the Shekel coin was super important during the times of the Second Temple.
So this new name-swap wasn’t a willy-nilly change. It was a statement. A formal way to tie Israel’s currency, and its modern existence, to the Jews’ historic presence in the land.
Which is a beautiful idea. Buttttt the timing was tough. Inflation was only getting worse, maybe even borderline out of control. And as a result, when the shekel first came out, it was kind of a mess.
Initially there were just four denominations of shekels – the 1, 5, 10 and 50. But as inflation soared over time, another 5 bills were added, ranging from 100 to 10,000 Shekels.
The new bills featured a combination of ancient and recent Jewish figures. You had French banker and ardent Zionist philanthropist Baron Edmond de Rothschild. You had Maimonides – AKA Rambam – 12th century Sephardic Jewish philosopher, scholar and writer, set against text from his iconic work, the Mishneh Torah. There was Levi Eshkol, third Prime Minister of Israel, and Golda Meir, the fourth.
If currency reflects not only major people, but major events in a country’s story – as it did with the gates of Old Jerusalem – the face on the 100 Shekel note was a perfect example. That face belonged to Vladimir Ze’ev Jabotinsky, and that face on that bill told the story of the most dramatic election outcome in Israeli history. An election that to this day is still referred to as “The Mahapach,” “The Upset.”
Jabotinsky was a Zionist activist and writer – and the founder of Revisionist Zionism, which was the political polar opposite of the socialist, labor-oriented Zionism of Ben Gurion. He died in 1940, but his influence is still all over Israeli politics.
In 1977, for the first time since the country’s founding, the right wing Likud party – a party rooted in Jabotinsky’s philosophy – won a plurality in the Knesset, unseating Labor for the first time ever. The new Prime Minister, Menachem Begin, considered Jabotinsky a mentor. So Jabotinsky’s face on the 100 Shekel bill – just one denomination above Ben Gurion’s on the 50 – was highly symbolic.
The Shekel came out, and almost immediately, it failed. It barely had a chance to find its footing before hyperinflation sent it tumbling down a steep, steep slope.
To give you a sense, when it was first released in 1980, the exchange rate was 7.5 Shekels for one dollar. By ’84, as Israel’s economy was plummeting, that number went up to about 107.5 shekels to one dollar. It probably wasn’t much of an exaggeration to say that the lower denominations of Shekels weren’t worth the paper they were printed on.
Israel was in need of a change – a bold plan to rescue the economy and preserve its standing on the international stage.
That plan came in 1985. And with it, of course, came a new currency.
Currency #4: The New Israeli Shekel (1985)
1984 brought two important things. Raging inflation, and Israeli elections. And there was no doubt about it – for whoever took on the role of Prime Minister, fixing the economy would be priority number one, and it was urgent.
The winner of that heavy responsibility was Shimon Peres. He, and a cadre of economists put together a plan that consisted of five major points.
I’ll be honest, I don’t understand them all that well, but of course I’ll put links in for you econ nerds. But what I will say is that it was unpopular and it was brutal. It led to a recession. People struggled to buy food. Businesses went under. Kibbutzim saw their debts pile up beyond repair. Israel’s socialist beginnings were basically crushed in the face of a new, more practical, more financially sustainable capitalism.
But… most important of all, it was successful. So successful that even today, Peres’s Israel Economic Stabilization plan is still studied as a model for other economies in crisis. And the fact that Peres was able to push such a bold plan through a divided Knesset is a testament to his undeniable skill as a statesman.
Part of the stabilization plans involved a new currency – or really, a currency reset.
The previous currency had the perfect name – the Israeli shekel. And nobody wanted to lose that. So the government put their heads together and named this new currency the new Israeli shekel. I mean, why go with something complicated when you can just add “new” to the title and call it a day?
They just better hope they don’t have to do this again. What would be next? The New-er Israeli Shekel? The New New Shekel?
The main difference between the New Israeli Shekel – NIS, or Shekel Chadash in Hebrew – and the old one was re-evaluation.
The 1,000 Shekel bill became the new 1. The 5,000 became the new 5, and the 10,000 became the 10. And they each kept the faces of Maimonides, Levi Eshkol and Golda Meir respectively.
There were also four new bills: 20, 50, 100 and 200. Some of the new faces on those continued the trend of historical or political personalities. There was Moshe Sharett, Israel’s second Prime Minister, and Itzchak Ben-Zvi the second – and longest-serving – President of Israel. There was also Nobel Prize-winning novelist and poet Shai Agnon. And the 200 Shekel note bore the face of Zalman Shazar, another President of Israel, who also served as the Minister of Education.
It’s here that I need to take a quick moment to acknowledge something that’s been bothering me for almost this entire episode. So far, I’ve named 15 or so people whose faces made it onto Israeli money.
We’ve met some of these folks in greater detail in other episodes – including Herzl, Ben Gurion, Jabotinsky and Golda Meir. But I just breezed past Henrietta Szold and Sir Moshe Montefiori and even Chaim Nachman Bialik, giving you no more than the slightest peek. Mea Culpa, friends. I’m sorry. You don’t just put anyone’s face on money – these are people who helped build and shape the modern State of Israel, and they deserve better! We just don’t have the time here.
That said, I’m going to spend at least another moment on Zalman Shazar because, as you know, I’m an educator through and through. And my main man Zalman here was the Minister of Education under Ben Gurion who passed Israel’s Compulsory Education Law in 1949. It basically established the public schooling system, ensuring free education for every child and teen in Israel. His face on the 200 Shekel note is a statement of how much Israeli society values its children’s education – not only as a necessary utility, but as a key factor in Israel’s growth and success over the decades.
Which is why the reverse of the bill – just opposite Zalman Shazar’s face – isn’t a landscape or a historical site. It’s an image of a girl writing at a desk, her eyebrows furrowed in concentration as Hebrew letters float in the background.
Since the New Shekel debuted in 1985, there have been only two new releases. The first one in 1999 kept the same exact images. The main differences were enhanced anti-counterfeiting measures and accessibility features for the vision impaired. By this time, the 1, 5, and 10 Shekel notes had been phased out, replaced with 1, 5, and 10 Shekel coins.
The newest release – Israel’s most recent currency update – happened ten-ish years ago and brought with it a significant shift in design priorities. For the first time since Herzl and Weizmann appeared on the Pound in 1970, not one politician or major historical figure was featured on Israel’s money.
Instead, the New Shekels feature the faces and the work of four poets. So when you go to Israel today and hold a bill in your hand, you will see the faces of four people: Rachel Blaustein, AKA Rachel the Poetess, is on the 20 shekel bill. Shaul Tchernikovsky is on the 50, Leah Goldberg is on the 100 shekel bill, and Nathan Alterman is on the 200. You may know these names, or you may not. If you’re Israeli, you’re likely familiar with these poets and their work. All of them write about nature and love for the land of Israel. And all have had their poetry turned into songs that many Israelis can sing from memory.
Ok… but why put them on the money? I get having Herzl there. And the Prime Ministers. And icons of Jewish history like Maimonides.
Even the gates of Jerusalem were featured to celebrate a monumental victory and turning point in the Israeli story. That’s what artwork on currency is supposed to do, right? Tell stories! Teach history! Express national values!
So, what do today’s New Shekels say about Israel?
Well, for one thing, it puts the focus on Israeli culture as a source of national pride. It’s an acknowledgement that it’s not just politicians or philanthropists who bring about a country’s growth and success – it’s the thinkers and the writers. It’s the people who absorb the land into their very being and turn it into artistic expressions that become the backbone of a national ethos.
Highlighting poets in particular also speaks to the pride Israel holds in Hebrew.
Israel is one of the only countries founded alongside the revival of an ancient language. The development of modern Hebrew into a living, widely-spoken language was a massive accomplishment. And there’s no surer sign that a language is truly alive than when it’s elevated and adapted into poetic expression.
That’s why there’s such an emphasis on Hebrew literature and poetry in Israeli schools. That’s why the work of these poets and others has been turned into songs taught to children across the nation. It’s a celebration not only of the land, but also of the language.
These four poets were not all contemporaries. Rachel the Poetess and Shaul Tchernikovsky were born in the 19th century and died before the founding of the state. Leah Goldberg and Nathan Alternman kept working into the 1960’s. But through their work, all four played a role in elevating the Hebrew language to new levels of life and beauty. Which, to me, seems a very fitting thing to celebrate on national currency.
Of course, nothing in Israel is completely without controversy. And the release of these new bills was no exception. All four featured poets are of Ashkenazi descent, which has led many detractors to accuse the government of minimizing or ignoring the contributions of Mizrahi poets to the national culture. And of course, they’re right. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has already suggested featuring Spanish poet from the Middle Ages Rabbi Yehuda Halevi as a response to those concerns.
But if there’s one thing I know for sure based on the story of Israel’s currency, it’s that no design is final. Priorities change just as national identity changes. And it’s only a matter of time before new faces are chosen to share new stories and express new values through Israel’s ever-evolving currency.
So thank you again, Ellie. This was a fun episode to get into, and fellow numismatists, get at me. You know where to find me.
Unpacking Israeli History is a production of Unpacked, an OpenDor Media brand. Follow us wherever you get your podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, leave us a rating on Apple or Spotify, it really helps other people find our show. And one more time, I love hearing from you. So email me at noam@unpacked.media.
This episode was produced by Rivky Stern. Our team for this episode includes Danny Hoffman and Rob Pera. I’m your host, Noam Weissman. Thanks for being here, see you next week.