200 New Shekels Nathan Alterman

Nathan Alterman — poet, playwright, and political columnist — was a controversial choice for Israeli currency. His weekly "Seventh Column" in Davar made him arguably the most influential public intellectual of the pre-state and early statehood period, but he was also a committed supporter of the Greater Israel movement in his later years, which kept his canonization complicated long after his death in 1970. The decision to feature him on the highest-denomination note in the series was not without debate.

Orell Füssli has printed Israeli banknotes for decades, and Osnat Eshel's engraving work here is among the finer intaglio seen on modern Israeli issues.