A feast of full-size bobbleheads at Holon Purim parade
The city’s 27th Adloyada event features caricatures of singing celebrities, fiery dragons and more than 4,000 entertainers along the parade route
Jessica Steinberg, The Times of Israel's culture and lifestyles editor, covers the Sabra scene from south to north and back to the center
It’s not really a parade without floats or giant blow-up bobbleheads, and the central Israeli city of Holon is celebrating its 27th Adloyada Purim parade on Thursday with four new faces: eight-foot-high heads featuring the faces of singers Netta Barzilai, Omer Adam, Eden Ben Zaken and Stephane Legar.
“Netta [Barzilai] is a pretty obvious choice this year,” Haim Mesika, who directs Holon’s cultural activities, including the Adloyada event, said of Israel’s winner at the 2018 Eurovision. “Stephane has really become known this year” — perhaps best known for his 2018 hit, “Comme Ci Comme Ca — “and who doesn’t know Omer Adam or Eden Ben Zaken?”
The new, oversized heads are worn by real people, and were made in Eastern Europe based on caricature sketches by cartoonist Dudi Shamai.
“We wanted them to be interesting caricatures that are geared for Purim,” said Mesika. “We’re not making fun of anyone, but they should be fun.”
Mesika also wanted them to be accessible to the public, and not as enormous as some of the other floats that are ridden down the one-kilometer parade route.
The parade aims to channel a Brazilian carnival, said Mesika, with some 50 floats and balloons, as well as another 4,500 participants, including dancers, singers, choirs, street performers and acrobats entertaining the expected crowd of 150,000 to 200,000 people.
“It’s very colorful,” he said.
Mesika is in his second year as the director of Adloyada, and said he’s been thinking about the Purim parade since September.
“You have to protect a brand like this, which touches so many people,” he said. “You also want to make sure you’re including the public, that you’re coopting them in this entire thing.”
The Adloyada Parade take place on Thursday, March 21, starting at 12 p.m., Sokolov Street in Holon.
