We Don’t Just Win Nobel Prizes..

..We also win Coin of the Year!

A 2-New Sheqalim coin from the Bank of Israel has been named Coin of the Year by Krause Publications.

The “Jonah In the Whale” silver coin was chosen the best of 10 individual category winners by an international panel of coin experts.

The coin’s obverse features the face value in Hebrew and English, the Israel state emblem, “Israel” in Hebrew, English and Arabic, the mint year, the inscription “Jonah in the belly of the fish,” Jonah 2:1 in three languages and the prophet Jonah in prayer. The reverse depicts Jonah praying from the belly of the whale: “Thy billows and thy waves passed over me … yet I will look again towards thy Holy Temple …”

“We would like to congratulate the Bank of Israel on the beautiful design,” said Coin of the Year coordinator Lisa Bellavin. “Its simplicity speaks volumes and invokes a little bit of wonder. It shows that where coin design is concerned, sometimes less can be more.”

And yeah, there’s Arabic on the coin (apartheid fail whale, anyone?)

3 thoughts on “We Don’t Just Win Nobel Prizes..”

  1. I’m waiting for the Arabs to claim that the whale is actually a map of gGreater Israel swallowing up Egypt down to the Nile and Lebanon and Turkey up to the Bosporus.

    1. I just got back from my colonoscopy and I’m still a little woosy from the sedation, but is there actually a lower case “g” in front of the capital “G” in “Greater?” This really is an actual reality check for me and not just an excuse to belittle Shy Guy (there’ll be ample opportunity for that in the future.)

  2. is this in circulation or just a collectors piece? I didnt see it…altho I didnt get many 2s in change. Change is so inconsistent in Israel. Sometimes you get 4 1s, sometimes 2 2s. I love the currency tho. Its so much fun to use, more colorful, easier to count, etc. They need to dump the 10 agorot tho.

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