Get Into The Purim Spirit – 2023

“Adloyada” is a contraction of the phrase “ad lo yada” or “Until one no longer knows,” referring to the Purim tradition of drinking into oblivion.

Many stories surround the Purim parties and “Adloyada ” parade held in “small Tel Aviv” at the beginning of the twentieth century, ego wars, fights, intrigues, organizations, slanders, lawsuits in court, and whatnot.

The first Purim parade was instituted in March 1912 by Avraham Aldema, a painting teacher at the Herzliya Gymnasium high school. It was also in the 1920s that dancer-choreographer-artist and Tel Aviv’s original man-about-town, Baruch Agadati, became involved in the festivities, organizing an annual Purim ball and instituting the Purim Queen pageant.

The competition between the celebrations — and the fact that Agadati wore fine clothes and charged entrance fees to his parties – led to a not-so-friendly rivalry between the bon vivant and the bohemians. a feud that ended up on the docks of the British court.

As in any market, there is no substitute for competition as a factor that encourages growth and development, and thus the “Purim Celebration Market” in small Tel Aviv flourished and since then the city has become a “non-stop city” flooded with celebrations all year round, ESPECIALLY during Purim

The parade never shied away from current politics, represented in floats like the one in 1926 that buried the British Mandate in a coffin, the 1933 float of Hitler holding a lance aloft before two corpses with the sign “Death to All Jews,” the three-headed dragon representing the Nazi regime in 1934, or the 1935 anti-profiteering crocodile. Interestingly, in 1933, the German Consulate in Jerusalem wrote to the mayor of Tel Aviv demanding an apology but Dizengoff refused, reportedly responding that it was amazing the critique wasn’t stronger. The Adloyada came to an end in 1936, the official reason given was the difficult situation of German Jewry and of Central and Eastern European Jewry, as well as [curfew] decrees by the British Mandatory authorities.

Following the establishment of the state of Israel, the Adloyada tradition was renewed and Tel Aviv hosted the parade from 1955 through the late 1960s. In the early 1980s, the Tel Aviv Adloyada tradition was revived by the Sheinkin Street avant-garde. The tone was in the spirit of punk rock/performance art street fairs that went on for days. But, the Sheinkin Adloyada bacchanal came and went. In 1998, a one-time Adloyada was held in Tel Aviv

Today, the word coined by Isaac Dov Berkowitz, “Adloyada,” has come to mean any Purim parade held in towns across Israel.