Prutah app for iPhone and iPad

Up-to-date halachic value of a prutah (פרוטה), and a machatzit (half) hashekel (מחצית השקל), with the latest values available in the Today screen.

The prutah was a Talmudic era bronze (or copper) coin. The value was equivalent to the weight of half a barleycorn (generally accepted as 1/40th of a gram) of silver. The value of a prutah (שווה פרוטה) has halachic significance as the minimum amount acceptable to establish kiddushin (marriage) and as the minimum amount that can be given as tzedakah (charity).

On erev Purim, there is a custom to give three half-denomination coins of the local currency to charity, to recall the half-shekel (machatzit hashekel) that was donated annually to the Temple treasury in the month of Adar. Sephardi practice is to give the value of three coins, each of which is worth the amount of a Torah half shekel (approximately 10 grams of silver total).

Up-to-date currency exchange rates retrieved from Yahoo Finance.