100 Lirot Hanukkah - Egyptian Lamp

This issue belongs to Israel's long-running annual Hanukkah coin series, each year honoring a distinct lamp style from a different Jewish diaspora community. The 1980 edition features the Egyptian type — a flat, saucer-like oil lamp form common to North African Jewish communities. Egypt's Jewish population, once numbering over 75,000, had been almost entirely expelled or displaced following the 1948 and 1956 wars, making the choice of this lamp a quiet acknowledgment of a community that no longer existed in any meaningful numbers in its country of origin.

The .500 fine silver specification was standard for the Israeli commemorative program of this period, a compromise between cost and collectibility as bullion prices spiked following the Hunt Brothers' silver market crisis of early 1980.