10 Lirot Let My People Go

Issued to mark the third anniversary of the Soviet Jewry movement's international campaign, this coin appeared as pressure on Moscow to permit Jewish emigration was reaching its first sustained peak. The phrase "Let My People Go" — borrowed from Exodus and adopted wholesale by the movement — had by 1971 become the slogan of organized protests across Western capitals. Israel's decision to put it on legal tender was a direct, deliberate provocation aimed at the Soviet government.

Mintage was split between circulation strikes and proof issues, with the proofs struck at the Jerusalem mint under contract arrangements common to Israeli commemoratives of this period.