Rabbi Rami Goldberg
A strong currency sounds like good news. For Israel right now, it is more complicated than that.
The shekel has risen dramatically against the dollar, and for anyone moving money into Israel from abroad, the math has gotten painful. A $10 million investment that once converted to roughly 35 million shekels now yields closer to 28 million. That seven million shekel gap is not an abstraction. It is salaries, it is expansion budgets, it is the difference between hiring and laying off.
The consequences are already showing up in real decisions. A startup CEO who raises capital in dollars recently told a colleague at one of Israel’s major accounting firms that he was halting all new hiring in Israel — the dollar simply wasn’t going far enough anymore. That same week, Wix announced layoffs of 1,000 employees. These are not isolated data points. They are a pattern, and the pattern matters because behind every one of those jobs is a family, a mortgage, a grocery bill.
Israel’s economy is heavily dependent on foreign investment, particularly in the tech sector. When the dollar yields fewer shekels, companies find themselves operating on budgets that shrank without any change in their actual spending. The money didn’t go anywhere — the exchange rate just made it worth less the moment it landed.
Add to this the political dimension. Israel is heading toward national elections, and political uncertainty has its own effect on investor confidence. A strong currency combined with an unclear political horizon is not a formula that makes foreign capital feel welcome.
The book of Proverbs puts the underlying principle clearly: “Give me neither poverty nor wealth — feed me with the food I need, lest I be full and deny You” (Proverbs 30:8-9). A blessing that arrives in excess, without the wisdom to manage it, carries its own dangers. The shekel’s strength is real, but so is the disruption it is causing.
The analogy that comes to mind is Joseph reading Pharaoh’s dream. Seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine — and the point of the story is not the abundance, it is what you do with it. Egypt survived because someone was paying attention, planning ahead, and refusing to be lulled into complacency by good years. Israel’s current moment calls for the same kind of clear-eyed stewardship.
None of this means the Israeli economy is in crisis. It isn’t. But prosperity has its own tests, and right now Israeli businesses and policymakers are being asked to navigate one of them.
Rabbi Rami Goldberg, Israel365’s Director of Strategic Relationships, has spent over twenty years navigating Israeli business and investment. He is available for individual conversations with people who want to better understand what the Israeli investment landscape currently looks like. These are not sales calls. Rabbi Rami is happy to share his knowledge of the market, discuss what questions are worth asking, and help people figure out whether this is something worth exploring further.
If you’d like to schedule a conversation with Rabbi Rami, click here.
