100 Lirot Let My People Go

Issued in direct response to Soviet restrictions on Jewish emigration, this coin was part of a broader Israeli government campaign pressuring the USSR to release its Jewish population — a movement that gained significant international traction in the early 1970s. The phrase "Let My People Go" was the rallying cry adopted by activists worldwide, and striking it onto legal tender was a deliberate political act, unusual even by the standards of commemorative coinage.

The 1971 issue preceded the surge in Soviet Jewish emigration that followed the 1973 Yom Kippur War and subsequent diplomatic pressure.