1 New Sheqel Shmuel Yosef Agnon

Shmuel Yosef Agnon, born in Buczacz in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire, remains the only Hebrew-language author to have received the Nobel Prize in Literature, which he shared with Nelly Sachs in 1966. He accepted the prize in Stockholm wearing traditional Jewish dress, a deliberate and public statement. Israel's commemorative sheqel series has drawn repeatedly from literary and cultural figures, and Agnon — who had his personal library destroyed twice, once in a fire and once during a pogrom in Bad Homburg in 1924 — is among the most historically charged subjects in the program.