20 New Sheqalim 1993, Israel
| in Krause book | Number: 54с |
| Years of issue: | 1993 |
| Edition: | |
| Signatures: | Governor of the Bank: Yaakov Frenkel, Chairman of the Advisory Committee: Shlomo Lorincz |
| Serie: | 1985 - 1991 Issue |
| Specimen of: | 12.04.1988 |
| Material: | Cotton fiber |
| Size (mm): | 138 x 76 |
| Printer: | N. V. Grafische Inrichting Johann Enschede en Zonen, Haarlam |
* All pictures marked 
are increased partially by magnifying glass, the remaining open in full size by clicking on the image.
** The word "Specimen" is present only on some of electronic pictures, in accordance with banknote images publication rules of appropriate banks.
Description
Watermark:
Moshe Sharett.
Avers:
Moshe Sharett (Hebrew: משה שרת, born Moshe Shertok (Hebrew: משה שרתוק) 15 October 1894 - 7 July 1965) was the second Prime Minister of Israel (1954-55), serving for a little under two years between David Ben-Gurion's two terms. He continued as Foreign Minister (1955-56) in the Mapai government.
Born in Kherson in the Russian Empire (today in Ukraine), Sharett immigrated to Ottoman Palestine as a child in 1906. For two years, 1906-1907, the family lived in a rented house in the village of Ein-Sinya, north of Ramallah. In 1910 his family moved to Jaffa, then became one of the founding families of Tel Aviv.
He graduated from the first class of the Herzliya Hebrew High School, even studying music at the Shulamit Conservatory. He then went off to Constantinople to study law at Istanbul University, the same university at which Yitzhak Ben-Zvi and David Ben-Gurion studied. However, his time there was cut short due to the outbreak of World War I. He served a commission as First Lieutenant in the Ottoman Army, as an interpreter.
In 1922, Sharett married Tzipora Meirov (12 August 1896 – 30 September 1973) and had two sons and one daughter, Jacob, Yael and Chaim.
After the war, he worked as an Arab affairs and land purchase agent for the Assembly of Representatives of the Yishuv. He also became a member of Ahdut Ha'Avoda, and later of Mapai.
In 1922 he went to the London School of Economics, and while there he worked for the British Poale Zion and actively edited the Workers of Zion. One of the people he met while in London was Chaim Weizmann. He then worked on the Davar newspaper from 1925 until 1931.
In 1931, after returning to Mandatory Palestine, he became the secretary of the Jewish Agency's political department. After the assassination of Haim Arlosoroff in 1933 he became its head.[citation needed]
During the war via his wife Zipporah, Sharett became embroiled in the question of emigration of refugee Jews stranded in Europe and the East. Some Polish refugees, children with and without parents were deported to Tehran with the Soviet's agreement. The "Tehran Children" became a cause celebre in the Yishuv. Sharett flew to Tehran to negotiate their return to Palestine. The success of these negotiations and others was a hallmark of Sharett's more cerebral approach to practical problems. He met with Tel Aviv bound Hungarian Jewish refugee representative Joel Brand, fresh off the plane from Budapest. Yishuv leadership mistrusted Brand, and the British thought him a criminal. Sharett's response was to hand the self-appointed liberator over to the British authorities, who drove Brand to prison in Egypt. Sharett's General Zionism was deeply concerned in making Palestine a commercially viable home land; secondary was the deep emotional concerns of the murder in the Diaspora which by 1942 was in German hands. Like Weizmann, whom he admired, Sharett was a principled Zionist, an implacable opponent of fascism, but a practical realist prepared to co-operate fully with the Mandate.
Sharett, as Ben-Gurion's ally, denounced Irgun's assassination squads on December 13, 1947, accusing them of playing to public feelings. Atrocities escalated, mainly upon Jews, but with reciprocal revenge killings; by the end of the war 6000 Palestinian Jews, 1% of the population, had died. Sharett held the foreign policy post under the Agency until the formation of Israel in 1948.
Sharett was one of the signatories of Israel's Declaration of Independence. During the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, he was Foreign Minister for the Provisional Government of Israel. Yigal Allon went to see Sharett at Tel Binyamin (Ramat Gan), his home. Allon wanted permission to capture El-Arish, destroy the base to prevent it falling into British hands. Allon could not find Ben-Gurion at Tel Aviv, because the Prime Minister was at Tiberias. But Sharett told the general that it would be unconstitutional to order an attack over the head of the Prime Minister. Moreover, it would provoke, thought Sharett the British to side with the Egyptians. When Allon explained a plan to feint an Egyptian withdrawal before invading the area between Rhaffa and Gaza, well within Israel's borders, Sharett gave it the nod. But on the telephone Ben-Gurion totally rejected the proposal. President Truman ordered troops withdrawals from the war zone, and on 1st Jan 1949, Israeli troops left Sinai and evacuated El-Arish. After a brief Egyptian counter-attack a ceasefire was called, with Egyptian troops marooned in the Faluja Pocket; Israelis had saved the Negev for good.
Sharett was elected to the Knesset in the first Israeli election in 1949, and served as Minister of Foreign Affairs. On 10 March he was part of the first cabinet. A historic armistice was signed with Lebanon, so withdrawal was required from Southern Lebanon on 23 March. International negotiations hosted by Britain took place on the Greek island of Rhodes at Suneh, King Abdullah's residence when Israel's emissaries, Yigael Yadin and Walter Eytan signed with Transjordan. Knowing the Jordanian position on the Hebron Hills, Yadin told Sharett that surrounded by hostile Arab states, Israel had to sign the Transjordan over to Iraq. American Dr.Ralph Bunche, who drafted the UN treaty for Sharett's office, received the Nobel Peace Prize. The final agreement was signed at the "Grande Albergo delle Rose" in Rhodes (now the Casino Rodos) on April 3, 1949. Ominous violence lay ahead for the new state, warned Sharett during a debate on June 15, in which he reminded the Jewish people of their vital interests. A fourth and final agreement was signed with Syria on 17 July; the War of Independence had lasted one year and seven months. In the elections that followed, Labour formed a coalition, deliberately excluding Herut and the Communists at Ben-Gurion's behest. As Foreign Minister, Sharett established diplomatic relations with many nations, and helped to bring about Israel's admission to the UN. He continuously held this role until he retired in June 1956 including during his period as Prime Minister.
In the debate on how to deal with the increasing infiltration of fedayeen across the borders in the years leading to the 1956 Suez Crisis, Sharett was sceptical of the reprisal operations being carried out by the Israeli military.
In January 1954 David Ben-Gurion retired from politics (temporarily as it turned out), and Sharett was chosen by the party to take his place. During his time as Prime Minister (5th and 6th governments of Israel), the Arab-Israeli conflict intensified, particularly with the Egypt of Nasser. The Lavon Affair resulting in the resignation of Pinhas Lavon, the Defense Minister, brought down the government. When David Ben-Gurion returned to the cabinet Pinchas Lavon was a civilian adviser to Prime Minister Sharett. But when he returned from the war, he was presented with a fait accompli; it had been the convention, but no longer for a career diplomat, to be chosen to become a Minister of Defense, a portfolio once controlled by the Prime Minister's office, now taken by Ben-Gurion. 
On this day (12/05/) in 1949, Israel’s flag was hoisted at the United Nations, the day after the Jewish State was accepted.
Below are people watching this ceremony.
Revers:
The view at Tel-Aviv of 1920s. Centered is The Herzliya Hebrew Gymnasium (הגימנסיה העברית הרצליה), in Tel-Aviv, from which Moshe Sharett graduated in 1920s.
The Herzliya Hebrew Gymnasium (Hebrew: הַגִּימְנַסְיָה הָעִבְרִית הֶרְצְלִיָּה, HaGymnasia HaIvrit Herzliya, Also known as Gymnasia Herzliya), originally known as HaGymnasia HaIvrit (lit. Hebrew High School) is a historic high school in Tel Aviv, Israel.
The Herzliya Gymnasium, founded in 1905, became the first high school in the world to teach in Hebrew, and the historic high school building built in 1909 was the first public building of the newly founded Tel Aviv. During the work of the gymnasium, many of its graduates became prominent figures in Israeli society and culture.
In 1905, Yehuda-Leib and Fana Metman-Cohen, who immigrated to Palestine from Odessa, opened a private school in Jaffa. The school’s opening announcement said it would last nine years, “like in high schools in Europe and America,” and would include studying the Tanakh and Talmud, Hebrew (called the “ancient language” in the announcement), and Hebrew literature, French, English, German and Latin languages, physics, chemistry, zoology and botany, geology, mineralogy, history and drawing. All lessons were to be taught in Hebrew.
The school opened in a two-room building near the place where the Jaffa “square with the clock” is currently located. In the first year, only 17 students enrolled in it, as many parents were afraid to send their children to school with teaching in a revived, unstable language. However, the school quickly gained a good reputation, and the number of students began to grow. As a result, she had to be transferred to a more spacious building in Jaffa, and a year after the founding, on the initiative of a professor of geography, Dr. Haim Bograshov, she changed her status, turning into a public educational institution with her board of trustees.
Hebrew teaching was not the only innovation introduced in the gymnasium. She also became one of the first co-educational secondary schools for boys and girls. For the first time in the history of Tanach, it was taught not as a sacred, but as a literary and historical text, in accordance with the secular views of the founders of the gymnasium. Excursions and field research were included in the curriculum. Another tradition of the gymnasium was the annual trip to the tombs of the Maccabees during the celebration of Hanukkah. The innovative image of the gymnasium attracted attention in the countries of the dispersal, and wealthy Jewish families began to send their children to Palestine to study in it.
In 1907, at the VIII World Zionist Congress, a British deputy, the judge of the city of Bradford, Jacob Moser, proposed to collect an amount of 80 thousand francs for the construction of a separate building for the Hebrew gymnasium in Jaffa. The only condition was that the school was named after the father of secular Zionism, Theodor Herzl. When the money was collected, the construction of a new school building began on July 28, 1909 in the newly founded Jewish quarter of Akhuzat Bait, which soon turned into the city of Tel Aviv. The project for the new school building, now called the Herzliya Jewish Gymnasium, was developed by architect Joseph Barsky. The project was based on the artistic reconstruction of the First Jerusalem Temple, made in France at the end of the 19th century. The project, which was developed by another Odessa architect Friedland, Josef Avin from Lviv and director of the Bezalel Academy Boris Schatz, was published in the German-Jewish journal Ost und West and made Barsky famous far beyond Palestine. The construction of the building was carried out in 1909 and 1910 by the contractor Joseph-Eliyahu Slush. The new building was built at the end of Herzl Street - the main street of the new district, which ended at the gates of the gymnasium. It was the first public building in the new quarter, which became its cultural and community center.
By the 1950s, Tel Aviv’s layout had changed markedly, and Herzliya Gymnasium, where by that time about 1,400 children were studying in a building designed for several hundred, along with the entire district of Ahuzat-Bait, was away from the new center. The area began to decay, its buildings were demolished despite their historical value (for example, the house where the Hebrew classic Haim-Nahman Bialik lived) was demolished. In 1962, the building of the Herzliya Gymnasium was also destroyed, and the first Israeli skyscraper Migdal Shalom Meir was subsequently built in its place. The new building for the Herzliya Gymnasium was built on Jabotinsky Street, closer to the Yarkon River, by the same contractors who built the Migdal Shalom Meir (brothers Moshe-Binyamin and Mordechai Meirov, who themselves were graduates of the gymnasium). Currently, the contour of the facade of the historic building serves as the emblem of the Israeli Society for the Protection of Monuments; the same form was given to the gates of the new gymnasium building.
During the work of the gymnasium, many leading figures of Israeli society and culture came out of its walls.
Notable faculty:
Yosef Haim Brenner, writer
Zvi Nishri, physical education pioneer
Shaul Tchernichovsky, poet
Notable alumni:
Netiva Ben-Yehuda (1928-2011), Palmach commander, Hebrew scholar, and author
Miriam Bernstein-Cohen (1895-1991), actress
Aron Brand, pediatric cardiologist
Yitzhak Danziger (1916–1977), sculptor
Nachum Gutman, (1898–1980), painter, sculptor, and author
Ron Huldai, mayor of Tel Aviv since 1998 (as of July 2017)
Yaron London, (1940-), media personality, journalist, actor, and songwriter
Aharon Megged, (1920-2016), writer
Moshe Menuhin, (1893-1983), author
Yuval Neeman, (1925–2006), physicist
Elyakum Ostashinski, first mayor of Rishon LeZion
Moshe Sharett (1894–1965), second Prime Minister of Israel (1954–55)
Avraham Shlonsky (1900–73), poet
Giora Spiegel (born 1947), soccer player and coach
Avigdor Stematsky (1908–89), painter
Yemima Tchernovitz-Avidar (1909–98), author
Yair Lapid, (1963-) journalist, author, and politician; former Israeli Minister of Finance and chairman of the Yesh Atid
Party
Amos Luzzatto, (1928-), physicist
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