10 New Sheqalim Shmuel Yosef Agnon

Agnon remains the only Hebrew-language writer to have received the Nobel Prize in Literature, awarded in 1966. He shared that year's prize with Nelly Sachs — an unusual split that paired two Jewish authors whose work processed Jewish experience from radically different angles, one rooted in the shtetl and pre-war Galicia, the other in the Holocaust. Israel issued commemorative coinage honoring Agnon across multiple decades and denominations, partly because his face had already appeared on the 50-sheqel banknote before the currency revaluation of 1985.