After protests, Jerusalem’s controversial ‘United Purim’ parade draws depressed turnout
Thousands line route to watch floats and entertainment troupes, but attendance far lower than expected; hostage families lead parade after agreement reached with municipality
Gavriel Fiske is a reporter at The Times of Israel
Jerusalem’s official Purim parade went off without a hitch on Monday, after being mired in controversy due to protests from relatives of hostages held in Gaza and others directly affected by Hamas’s October 7 massacre and the Gaza war, who petitioned the city to abandon the parade due to the ongoing conflict.
Jerusalem’s parade, returning for the first time after 42 years, was at first called “Adloyada for the Children of Israel,” but after a meeting between representatives of the hostage families and Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Lion last week, the name of the event was changed to “United Purim.”
At that meeting, it was decided that there would be fewer musical performances along the one-kilometer route of the parade in downtown Jerusalem, and all the performances would be lower in volume. An online petition asking Lion and the city council to reconsider holding the Monday event had gathered over 6,500 signatures as of last Thursday afternoon.
A joint Sunday press release from the Jerusalem Municipality and The Hostages Families Forum Headquarters noted that “the parade will be led by a display honoring the hostages held in Gaza for 171 days, alongside 134 yellow cranes representing each hostage.”
Monday morning was cold and misty in Jerusalem as the parade got underway, with dozens of floats and performance troupes making their way through the closed-off streets of central Jerusalem. Many of the performances featured local artists, puppet makers and dance groups, but the event drew participants from across the country.
The crowd was initially sparse, but thousands ended up lining Jaffa Street by the time the parade wound down, many of them in costumes. Zion Square was full of revelers of all ages who clapped and sang along with music from the passing floats.
Pictures of the hostages lined the route, but a small protest against the parade, held near the Mamilla mall with demonstrators holding signs reading: “It’s still October 7,” was largely overlooked by the crowd.
“In a year where there are 134 hostages, hundreds of dead, more than a hundred thousand Israelis who [are evacuated and] do not live in their homes — they have no joy,” protester Nir Argov told Channel 12.
“And now to hold Adloyada in Jerusalem? It is impossible to be happy. An entire nation is traumatized. The children can have parties and celebrations in the schools and kindergartens, but it is not appropriate to celebrate outside in the city,” Argov said.
“Adloyada,” an Aramaic phrase in the Talmud describing the commandment to drink oneself into a stupor as part of the holiday celebration, is also the name of Purim street festivities traditionally held around Israel.
This year Holon and Tel Aviv both canceled their wildly popular annual parades out of deference to families of hostages, evacuees, bereaved families, parents of combat soldiers and a melancholic national mood.
On Monday, Jerusalem’s Lion, wearing a “Bring Them Home Now” shirt, posed for pictures with a group of hostage families at the end of the route. A passing street band was called over to play the Israeli national anthem “Hatikvah,” and afterward the crowd applauded the families.
“We feel the pain of the families of those killed, we continue to embrace the families of the hostages and pray for their swift return,” Lion said earlier in the day, according to the Ynet news site.
Despite the revelry, turnout for the parade was far below the numbers expected by the municipality, Channel 12 reported on Monday. Preparations were made for tens of thousands of attendees, but only a few thousand ended up arriving, according to the report.
Jerusalem celebrates Purim one day after most of the rest of the world due to a Jewish law concerning cities that were walled at the time in which the Book of Esther historically took place. The capital city last had an Adloyada parade in 1982, according to a Jerusalem municipal official.
Jessica Steinberg and Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
