Israel’s All-Male Banknotes Updated to Include Two Female Poets
Rachel Bluwstein on the Israeli 20 shekel banknote. Image by Bank of Israel
By Naomi Zeveloff February 2, 2017
Israeli banknotes will soon be graced with female faces of the Hebrew poetesses Rachel Bluwstein and Leah Goldberg.
When the banknotes are released at end of this year they will be the only Israeli bills with women on them currently in circulation.
Bluwstein, who will appear on the 20 shekel note (the equivalent of $5.30), was a Russian-born writer who immigrated to British Mandate Palestine. Known as “Rachel the Poetess,” the bill in her honor will feature a phrase from her poem “Kinneret” about the Sea of Galilee.
Goldberg, a Lithuanian-born writer who immigrated to Tel Aviv in 1935, will appear on the 200 shekel note (the equivalent of $53.20) alongside a phrase from her poem “White Days.”
Bluwstein and Goldberg aren’t the first women to appear on Israeli money. According to the Times of Israel, [Golda Meir was on a 10 shekel (about $2.66) Israeli banknote](about $2.66 “Golda Meir was on a 10 shekel (about $2.66) Israeli banknote”) until it was removed from circulation in the 1990s. The Israeli currency that preceded the shekel, the pound, also featured several women.
Contact Naomi Zeveloff at [email protected]
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
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.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Dive In
-
Fast Forward Trump says he and Netanyahu are ‘on the same side of every issue’ following talks on Iran, tariffs
-
Fast Forward California school board members accused of antisemitism during contentious meeting
-
Fast Forward Over 100 Chicago-area rabbis and cantors condemn Trump’s campus crackdown
-
Fast Forward An Israeli think tank used AI to analyze 4,400 American synagogue sermons. Here’s what it found.
Most Popular
- 1
News Who is Alan Garber, the Jewish Harvard president who stood up to Trump over antisemitism?
- 2
Opinion The dangerous Nazi legend behind Trump’s ruthless grab for power
- 3
News Student protesters being deported are not ‘martyrs and heroes,’ says former antisemitism envoy
- 4
Opinion What Jewish university presidents say: Trump is exploiting campus antisemitism, not fighting it
In Case You Missed It
-
Culture This Jewish New Yorker survived the Holocaust and the Hungarian Revolution, and is still helping others today
-
Fast Forward Trump says he and Netanyahu are ‘on the same side of every issue’ following talks on Iran, tariffs
-
Fast Forward California school board members accused of antisemitism during contentious meeting
-
Fast Forward Over 100 Chicago-area rabbis and cantors condemn Trump’s campus crackdown
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
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 comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag 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.