Israel Banknotes 5 Lirot Note 1973 Bank of Israel
Obverse: Portrait of Henrietta Szold; Hadassah Hospital on Mt. Scopus in Jerusalem; the denomination "Five Israeli Pounds" and "Bank of Israel" in Hebrew.
Reverse: Lion's Gate in the Old City of Jerusalem; "Bank of Israel" in Hebrew, English and Arabic.
Watermark: Profile of Henrietta Szold.
Sign for the blind: Three black dots in the lower left-hand corner of the front.
Colour of numbering: Black.
Signatures: Governor of the Bank Moshe Sanbar; Chairman of the Advisory Council David Horowitz.
Design: Paul Kor, Adrian Senger.
Year: 1973.
Date of issue: March 11, 1976.
Ceased to be legal tender: March 31, 1984.
Size: 128 X 76 mm.
Dominant colour: Brown.
Israel Banknotes - Israel Paper Money
Fourth Series of the Israeli Pound
1973-1975 Issue
Henrietta Szold
Henrietta Szold, (born Dec. 21, 1860, Baltimore, Md., U.S.—died Feb. 13, 1945, Jerusalem), American Jewish leader, who was a founder of Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America.
Szold was of a German-speaking Hungarian immigrant family; her father was a rabbi. After graduating from public high school in 1877, she taught French, German, Latin, science, mathematics, and history at the Misses Adams’ School girls’ academy in Baltimore, Maryland, for 15 years. Having studied Hebrew and the Talmud with her father, she also taught classes in her father’s synagogue. In 1889 she organized a night class in American history and customs for newly arrived Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe, and the experiment was so successful that several more classes were formed to meet the demand. In 1893 she helped a Baltimore immigrant group organize Hebras Zion, perhaps the first Zionist society in America.
Also in 1893 Szold became editorial secretary of the five-year-old Jewish Publication Society. During her 23 years in that post she was largely responsible for the publication of English versions of Moritz Lazarus’s The Ethics of Judaism, Nahum Slouschz’s Renascence of Hebrew Literature, and other works and for a revised edition of Heinrich Graetz’s five-volume History of the Jews. She worked on the American Jewish Year Book from its first issue in 1899 and from 1904 to 1908 was its sole editor. She also contributed articles to the Jewish Encyclopaedia. She was an early member of the Federation of American Zionists (organized in 1897), a member of the federation’s executive council from 1899, and a contributor to its monthly Maccabaean. After the death of her father in 1902 she and her mother moved to New York City, where she took courses at the Jewish Theological Seminary.
A trip abroad in 1909, including a visit to Palestine, confirmed Szold in the belief that the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine was of overriding importance. On her return to New York she involved herself more deeply in Zionist activities, becoming secretary of the Federation of American Zionists in 1910. On Feb. 24, 1912, she led the women of her Hadassah Study Circle, to which she had belonged since 1907, in forming the Hadassah Chapter of the Daughters of Zion; in 1914 the group’s name was changed to Hadassah, the Hebrew name for the biblical Queen Esther. The organization sent a team of two public health nurses to Palestine in 1913.
Szold traveled widely to organize chapters of Hadassah. Through the efforts of Justice Louis D. Brandeis and Judge Julian W. Mack she was provided a modest income in 1916 that allowed her to resign from the Jewish Publication Society and to devote full time to Zionist work. In 1918 she led in organizing the American Zionist Medical Unit—sponsored jointly by Hadassah, the Zionist Organization of America, and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee—and in forwarding its 44 doctors, nurses, other health personnel, and some 400 tons of equipment and supplies to Palestine.
In 1920 Szold went to Palestine herself. She worked indefatigably for three years to supervise and to raise funds for the unit, which in 1922 was reorganized as the Hadassah Medical Organization. She also organized and became first president of the Histadrut Nashim Ivriot (Jewish Women’s Organization). She returned to the United States in 1923. In 1926 she resigned as president of Hadassah, and she was again in Palestine in 1927–30 and from 1931 to her death. In 1931–33 she served in the Vaad Leumi, the executive committee of the Knesset Israel (Palestinian Jewish National Assembly). From its creation in 1933 she was director of the Youth Aliyah, an agency created to rescue Jewish children from Nazi Germany and bring them to Palestine. Late in life she founded Lemaan ha-Yeled, an institution dedicated to child welfare and research; after her death it was renamed Mosad Szold (The Szold Foundation). Szold died in Jerusalem, in the Hadassah-Hebrew University Hospital she had helped make possible.
Lion's Gate in the Old City of Jerusalem
The Lions' Gate (Hebrew: שער האריות Sha'ar ha-Arayot, Arabic: باب الأسباط, also St. Stephen's Gate or Sheep Gate) is located in the Old City Walls of Jerusalem, Israel and is one of seven open Gates in Jerusalem's Old City Walls.
Located in the Eastern Wall, the entrance marks the beginning of the traditional Christian observance of the last walk of Jesus from prison to crucifixion, the Via Dolorosa. Near the gate’s crest are four figures of leopards, often mistaken for lions, two on the left and two on the right. They were placed there by Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent to celebrate the Ottoman defeat of the Mamluks in 1517. Legend has it that Suleiman's predecessor Selim I dreamed of lions that were going to eat him because of his plans to level the city. He was spared only after promising to protect the city by building a wall around it. This led to the lion becoming the heraldic symbol of Jerusalem. However, Jerusalem already had been, from Biblical times, the capital of the Kingdom of Judah, whose emblem was a lion (Genesis 49:9).
In another version, Suleiman taxed Jerusalem's residents with heavy taxes which they could not afford to pay. That night Suleiman had a dream of two lions coming to devour him. When he woke up, he asked his dream solvers what his dream meant. A wise respected man came forward and asked Suleiman what was on his mind before drifting to sleep. Suleiman responded that he was thinking about how to punish all the men who didn't pay his taxes. The wise man responded that since Suleiman thought badly about the holy city, God was angry. To atone, Suleiman built the Lions' Gate to protect Jerusalem from invaders.
Israeli paratroops from the 55th Paratroop Brigade came through this gate during the Six-Day War of 1967 and unfurled the Israeli flag above the Temple Mount.
Historian Moshe Sharon notes the similarity of the sculpted lions to similar pairs at Jisr Jindas and Qasr al-Basha in Gaza. All represent the same Sultan: Baybars. Sharon estimates that they all date to approximately 1273 C.E.
The gate is part of the city's extant walls, built by Ottoman Sultan Suleiman in 1542. The walls stretch for approximately 4.5 kilometers (2.8 mi) and rise to a height of 5–15 meters (16–49 ft), with a thickness of 3 meters (9.8 feet). All together, the Old City walls contain 43 surveillance towers and 11 gates, seven of which are presently open.