20 New Shekels The Israeli Museum

Issued as part of the Bank of Israel's long-running commemorative series dedicated to Israeli museums, this piece honors the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, which opened in 1966 and houses the Shrine of the Book — the permanent home of the Dead Sea Scrolls since their acquisition from the Jordanian antiquities market in the 1950s. The museum itself was built in part with a major donation from James de Rothschild's estate, a condition of which tied the funding specifically to a national cultural institution in West Jerusalem.