Israel’s mounting inflation has made the smallest unit of currency, the prutah, of so little use that a bill has been presented today to the Knesset to establish a new basic unit. The bill divides the Israel pound into 100 units, each of which will be called an “agorrah.” The prutah represents one one-thousandth of an Israel pound.
The Israeli Treasury decided to abolish the prutah on recommendation of the State Bank that a coin representing the thousandth part of an Israeli pound no longer had any practical value and was not a negotiable currency.
The Israel pound was originally pegged to sterling and had a value of $3. 60 and the prutah was a useful coin. But with the Israeli pound at 60 cents, even a street beggar spurns the coin. The new coin, the “agorrah, ” will have a value of six-tenths of a cent. It is named after the earliest reported small coin in Jewish history. References to it are found in the First Book of Samuel.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
