If you remember, Rabbi Berland of Breslav had said that the value of the dollar would rise to 4.5NIS by Cheshvan. At the time the dollar was dipping into the low 3s, and people were very cynical about this "prediction".

It turns out that the dollar has been fighting back and has managed to climb to a recent high in interday trading today of 3.8365.

It still has a way to go before it hits 4.5, but it looks now that Rabbi Berland was not too far off. He predicted it and everybody laughed. looks like I am going to be listening to him as my financial advisor over those guys from Lehman Brothers....

Rav Eliezer Berland is a very spiritual rabbi. He is the head of one of the major streams of Breslav Hassidim, and he is Rosh Yeshiva of the Shuvu Banim yeshiva in the Old City of Jerusalem.

Rav Berland, in this past weeks shiur, announced that the dollar, by the month of Cheshvan, would reach an exchange rate of 4.50 (back to about its original high a few months ago before it began freefalling).

This was announced in the past weeks Hashavua B'Yerushalayim newspaper, and has since been a topic of discussion..

I have no idea why the dollar is so important that he would make predictions about that, rather than predicitions like the various recent prophetic predictions about Mashiachs arrival or other issues, but so he predicted. Perhaps the exchange rate is somehow connected to Mashiachs arrival (note how the predicted date of both events are very close to each other)...

I also wonder if it does happen and the dollar does rise to a rate of 4.50, will the various tzedaka organizations still run their collections at the rate of 4:1 as they are doing now, or will they move back to the international market rate?

I guess if you are a follower of Rav Berland, you are going to be buying as many dollars as you can now and sticking them under your mattress...