Chelm strikes Israel again!

As you probably know, over the past few years moves have been made in Israel and abroad to change the way people spend money and make the life of the crook more difficult.  Limitations on the use of cash and passing cheques to third parties, preference to immediate debit cards rather than the familiar credit cards (to avoid people getting over their heads in debt) etc etc.

Now suddenly the Bank of Israel has come out with "teken 501".  Heard of it?  Apparently few have.  I have a confession to make, neither had I until now.  A search on the web produced almost no results and the best I could come up with was http://www.kavim-yh.co.il/Articals/Standard501BankOfIsrael.aspx in Hebrew.  OK, there are always new rules to learn, so what's the big Chelmness here?  Ah, it comes into effect in two weeks and the authorities haven't bothered to equip either the public or even the banks with any serious information about it.  Ask your bank and they will tell you differently from the bank next door.  Now that is Chelm.  Even the link I provided above is not authoritative so it would be wise not to rely on it.

So what is it all about in a nutshell?  Even though cheques (or checks if you prefer) will probably go the way of typewriters and cart-horses before too long, from now they have to be in a precise format with a place everything on them prescribed to the millimeter!  And you thought the Soviet Union has died?  What to do with the zillions of unused or used and undeposited cheques out there?  Ask a silly question and you may get a silly answer.  And again, the link above tries to help but may not be correct.

But not to worry.  In the age-old tradition of Israeli regulations, this one will have to be delayed and the energetic President of the Institute of CPAs is working hard to achieve that as well as clear FAQs for the public.  

Oh, and if you think our political situation is worthy of Chelm, look up any British newspaper.  But if you really want to see what happens when it all goes south, read up on what is currently going on in the republic of Moldova, birthplace of, no, really, Avigdor Liberman!

And just for laughs, here is a great one from Saturday night live: https://youtu.be/4m4OHi7NXuI

UPDATE:
True to form, at the very last minute clarifications came out.  The old cheques are still usable until they run out or until somebody changes their mind about that.