A shekel is the basic unit of money in Israel, similar to how the dollar is used in the United States or the pound in the United Kingdom. If you visit Israel and want to buy a falafel sandwich or a book, you'll pay for it in shekels.

The shekel has an ancient history stretching back thousands of years. In biblical times, a shekel was actually a unit of weight used for measuring silver and gold, before coins were invented. Ancient merchants would weigh out silver on scales to make trades. The word comes from a Hebrew root meaning “to weigh.” Eventually, the shekel became an actual coin used in parts of the ancient Middle East.

When the modern state of Israel was founded in 1948, the country later revived this historic name for its currency. Today's Israeli shekel (often abbreviated as NIS, which stands for “New Israeli Shekel”) is divided into 100 smaller units called agorot, just as a dollar is divided into 100 cents.

You might encounter the word shekel in history books about ancient civilizations or in stories set in biblical times, where people paid temple taxes in shekels or bought land with them.