The new Israeli shekel
Currency · ILS · ₪ · 2 countries and territories
The Bank of Israel holds the sole legal authority to issue the new shekel, which replaced the hyperinflated old shekel on 1 January 1986 at a rate of 1,000 to one. Its first notes had gone into circulation on 4 September 1985. Beyond Israel it is used as de facto legal tender in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, which have no legal tender of their own.
The sign
The ₪ joins the first Hebrew letters of shekel (ש) and hadash (ח), the word for new. Where the sign is missing, amounts are written with the abbreviation NIS, or ש״ח in Hebrew and ش.ج in Arabic.
- ISO code
- ILS
- ISO number
- 376
- Subunit
- agora, 1/100
- ISO name
- New Israeli Sheqel
An amount, written out
₪1,234.50
- ₪1,234.50English
- 1,234.50 ₪HebrewIsrael
- ١٬٢٣٤٫٥٠ ₪ArabicPalestine
The sign in code
HTML, CSS, JavaScript, UTF-8
- HTML
₪₪- CSS
content: "\20AA";- JavaScript
"\u20AA"- UTF-8
0xE2 0x82 0xAA- UTF-16
0x20AA- UTF-32
0x000020AA
Where the Israeli New shekel is the official currency
Israel issues it. The Palestinian territories, with no legal tender of their own, use it as de facto legal tender beside the Jordanian dinar and the US dollar.
Legal tender alongside it
About the Israeli New shekel
Who issues the shekel and where it is made
Israeli law gives the Bank of Israel the sole right to issue legal tender: banknotes, coins, commemorative coins and special coins. Its Currency Department issues the money and regulates the supply of cash to match demand. The printing and minting happen abroad. Orell Füssli prints the banknotes in Switzerland, and the Korea Minting and Security Printing Corporation strikes the coins.
Commemorative coins are struck in silver or gold. The bank sells them to collectors in Israel and abroad through a marketing company.
How Israel took three zeros off its money
The state began in 1948 with the Palestine pound, issued by the Anglo-Palestine Bank and pegged to sterling. In 1952 the bank became Bank Leumi Le-Yisrael and the money became the Israeli pound. The Bank of Israel took over issuing notes in 1955. In 1960 the pound's fraction changed from 1,000 prutot to 100 agorot.
A debate in the 1960s objected that lira, the pound's Hebrew name, was a loanword from Latin. A law told the finance minister to rename the currency shekel and left the date to him. The change came on 24 February 1980, at ten pounds to one shekel.
That shekel lost value fast, and by the early 1980s the loss had become hyperinflation. The 1985 Economic Stabilization Plan brought it under control, and the new shekel followed. The lowest new notes reused the designs of the highest old ones with the figures changed, and those small values later became coins. The shekel has been freely convertible since 1 January 2003.
Why the West Bank and Gaza use it
The Palestinian territories have no official legal tender. Article 4 of the Paris Protocol of 1994 lets the Palestinian Authority adopt more than one currency, and the record for Palestine lists three: the shekel, the Jordanian dinar and the US dollar. The dinar is widely accepted in the West Bank. In the Gaza Strip the Egyptian pound is often used as well, though it is not one of the three.
What the third series of notes carries
The Bank of Israel issued the third series between September 2014 and November 2017, starting with the 50 and ending with the 20 and the 100. Each note carries the portrait of a Hebrew poet: Rachel on the 20, Shaul Tchernichovsky on the 50, Leah Goldberg on the 100 and Nathan Alterman on the 200.
All four notes stand 71 mm tall. Their lengths step up with the value, from 129 mm for the 20 to 150 mm for the 200, and the series adds features for blind and partially sighted users. A 500 note was planned after Yitzhak Rabin's assassination in 1995. Inflation stayed low enough that it was never needed, and it was never issued.
The coins run from 10 agorot up to 10 shekels. The five shekel coin arrived in 1990 and the ten in 1995. The two followed on 9 December 2007, and the five agorot coin left circulation on 1 January 2008.
How sheqel turned into shekel
For its first two series the Bank of Israel wrote the name in a Hebrew transcription: sheqel, with the plural sheqalim. The third series adopted the standard English spelling, shekel and shekels, and changed the Arabic form on the notes as well. In 2022 the bank announced coins with the new English inscription and with unit names in Arabic on the 10 agorot and the half shekel. The ISO list still carries the older form, New Israeli Sheqel.
Common questions
Questions about the Israeli New shekel
Is the shekel legal tender in the West Bank and Gaza?
It works as de facto legal tender there, because the Palestinian territories have no official legal tender of their own. The Paris Protocol of 1994 allows the Palestinian Authority to adopt additional currencies. Palestine's record lists the Jordanian dinar and the US dollar beside the shekel, and the dinar is widely accepted in the West Bank. The Egyptian pound is often used in the Gaza Strip too, but only informally.
What do the two letters in ₪ stand for?
The sign combines ש, the first letter of shekel, with ח, the first letter of hadash, the Hebrew word for new. Read together they give the Hebrew abbreviation for new shekel, ש״ח, which English renders as NIS and Arabic as ش.ج. Where a font lacks the sign, those abbreviations stand in for it.
Why did the old shekel have to be replaced so soon?
Israel introduced the first shekel on 24 February 1980, at ten Israeli pounds each, after a law replaced the Latin-derived name lira with a Hebrew one. The pound had already been losing value against foreign currencies through the 1960s and 1970s. In the early 1980s the losses turned into hyperinflation. Once the Economic Stabilization Plan of 1985 had contained it, the new shekel took over on 1 January 1986 and one new shekel bought 1,000 old ones. The first low-value new notes looked like the high-value old ones, with three zeros taken off.
Should it be spelled shekel or sheqel?
Both appear in official use. The Bank of Israel wrote sheqel and sheqalim until its third series of banknotes, which began in 2014 and switched to shekel and shekels. Coins followed with an updated inscription announced in 2022. ISO 4217 still names the currency New Israeli Sheqel.