108 Fun Facts About Israel

Which US president recognised Israel eleven minutes after the state came into being in May 1948?

Truman acted over the objections of his own secretary of state, George Marshall, who feared recognition would damage relations with the Arab states.

Who proclaimed the establishment of the State of Israel and became its first prime minister?

David Ben-Gurion resigned in 1953 to live and work on a remote desert kibbutz, but returned to politics in 1955 and led the government again until 1963.

Which four countries share a land border with Israel?

Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt border Israel: Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east and Egypt to the south-west; the Mediterranean forms the western coast.

Which city in northern Israel, the childhood home of Jesus in the Gospels, holds the Basilica of the Annunciation?

Nazareth was so little regarded in the Gospels' day that Nathanael asks, 'Can anything good come from there?'; it is now a busy city and a centre of Christian pilgrimage.

Roughly how many times saltier than the ocean is the Dead Sea?

About 10 times: its water is roughly 34 per cent salt against the ocean's 3.5, too harsh for fish or plants, which is how the lake got its name.

What is the Hebrew name for the Sea of Galilee, the lowest freshwater lake on Earth?

Kinneret is popularly traced to kinnor, the Hebrew for harp, after the lake's shape, but scholars derive it from an ancient walled city of the same name on its shore.

Which desert covers the south of Israel?

The Negev covers more than half of Israel, and its vast Ramon Crater looks like a meteorite strike but was carved out by erosion.

Which Red Sea resort is Israel's southernmost city?

Eilat was the last ground taken in Israel's war of independence: troops crossed the roadless desert, reached its police post without a fight and raised a flag hand-drawn in ink.

Which mountain cluster, home to a ski resort, holds the highest point under Israeli control?

Mount Hermon carries Israel's only ski resort on its southern slopes, and its melting snow feeds the springs that become the Jordan River.

Which city, Israel's third-largest, is built on the slopes of Mount Carmel?

Haifa climbs Mount Carmel from its bay; after Britain opened the deep-water port in 1933, a pipeline carried crude oil across the desert from Iraq to refineries built beside it.

The garden terraces climbing Mount Carmel surround the golden-domed shrine of which religious community?

Baháʼí pilgrims come for the Shrine of the Báb, a founding figure of the faith who was shot by firing squad in Persia in 1850; his followers buried his remains on Mount Carmel in 1909.

Tel Aviv was founded in 1909 as a suburb of which ancient port city?

Jaffa was swallowed by its own suburb: Tel Aviv, laid out on sand dunes north of the ancient port, outgrew it and absorbed it in 1950 as Tel Aviv-Yafo.

Tel Aviv's name is the Hebrew title of a 1902 novel by which Zionist thinker?

Theodor Herzl's utopian novel Altneuland ('Old New Land') appeared in 1902; Nahum Sokolow titled his Hebrew translation Tel Aviv, pairing 'tel' (ancient mound) with 'aviv' (spring).

Tel Aviv's White City is a UNESCO-listed district of some 4,000 buildings in which architectural style?

Bauhaus-style blocks fill the White City, built from the 1930s by immigrant architects trained in Europe, who swapped the style's big glass walls for small recessed windows and shaded balconies to beat the heat.

Jerusalem's Old City is divided into Jewish, Christian, Muslim and which other quarter?

Armenian monks settled in Jerusalem in the fourth century, soon after Armenia became the first kingdom to adopt Christianity, and the quarter grew up around their monastery of St James.

Israel's parliament is called what?

The Knesset takes both its name and its 120 seats from the Knesset HaGdola, the Great Assembly of 120 sages and prophets in Jewish tradition.

Which voting system elects Israel's parliament?

Proportional representation treats the whole country as one constituency and hands each party list seats in line with its national vote, so small parties get in and Israel is governed by coalitions.

What is Israel's currency?

The new shekel replaced the old shekel at 1,000 to 1 in the mid-1980s, after inflation had run at more than 400 per cent a year.

Which Nobel Peace laureate was prime minister when Israel's 1985 plan ended its hyperinflation?

Shimon Peres, leading a unity government, won the trade unions' backing for painful spending cuts, and inflation fell from over 400 per cent a year to under 20 within two years.

Which commune by the Sea of Galilee is known as the 'mother of the kibbutzim'?

Degania's defenders stopped Syrian tanks at the edge of the settlement in the 1948 war and turned back the advance; one tank was left where it halted as a memorial.

The 1917 Balfour Declaration supporting a Jewish national home in Palestine was a letter to whom?

Lord Rothschild, a leader of Britain's Jewish community, received the letter from Arthur Balfour to pass on to the Zionist Federation; what its promised 'national home' meant has been disputed ever since.

The father of political Zionism convened the First Zionist Congress in 1897 in which city?

Basel was the second choice: the congress was planned for a German city until Jewish leaders there objected, and afterwards its organiser wrote in his diary, 'At Basel I founded the Jewish State.'

Which linguist, who moved to Jerusalem in 1881, drove the revival of spoken Hebrew?

Eliezer Ben-Yehuda made his son Ben-Zion the first child in modern times raised on Hebrew alone, and began the Hebrew dictionary his widow and a younger son carried on after his death.

What does Hatikvah, the title of Israel's national anthem, mean?

'The Hope' was sung as the Zionist anthem from the 1890s and at Israel's founding, yet the government made it the official national anthem by law only in 2004.

The two blue stripes on the Israeli flag are modelled on what?

A tallit prayer shawl, white with dark stripes, was the model: a 'flag of Judah' shown in Boston in 1891 borrowed its pattern, and the Zionist movement took up a similar banner in 1897.

In which war of June 1967 did Israel capture the West Bank, Gaza, Sinai and the Golan Heights?

The Six-Day War, 5–10 June 1967, opened with Operation Focus, a surprise air strike that destroyed most of Egypt's air force on the ground within hours.

Which two leaders signed the Camp David Accords in September 1978, witnessed by Jimmy Carter?

Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin signed the accords at the White House on 17 September 1978; they shared that year's Nobel Peace Prize, and the Egypt–Israel treaty followed in March 1979.

Which prime minister was assassinated in November 1995 after signing the Oslo Accords?

Yitzhak Rabin, Israel's first native-born prime minister, was shot on 4 November 1995 by Yigal Amir, a Jewish extremist opposed to the accords, as he left a rally held to support them.

Which future Israeli prime minister grew up in Milwaukee and trained there as a teacher?

Golda Meir, born in Kyiv, came to Milwaukee at eight, trained as a teacher and joined the Labor Zionists, then left in 1921 to work on a kibbutz in Palestine; 48 years later she was prime minister.

What event forced Israel's prime minister to resign in April 1974?

The Yom Kippur War opened with Egypt and Syria's surprise attack on 6 October 1973; an inquiry's damning report on Israel's unpreparedness brought the government down the following April.

In which country did Mossad agents capture Adolf Eichmann in 1960 before his trial in Jerusalem?

Mossad agents seized Eichmann near his home outside Buenos Aires, Argentina, in May 1960, hid him for nine days and smuggled him out to Israel, where he was tried and hanged in 1962.

The 1976 Entebbe hostage rescue took place in which country?

The hostages were held at Entebbe airport in Uganda, whose dictator Idi Amin backed the hijackers; Israeli commandos flew some 4,000 km on the night of 3–4 July 1976 and brought nearly all of them home.

Masada, the clifftop desert fortress, was fortified as a refuge by which king?

Herod the Great built Masada's palaces, cisterns and casemate wall around 37–31 BC as a refuge; Josephus records its Sicarii defenders dying by mass suicide when Rome breached it in 73 or 74 AD.

Which self-defence system did Imi Lichtenfeld develop for Israel's armed forces?

Krav Maga was born of necessity: Lichtenfeld, a boxer and wrestler, helped Bratislava's Jews defend themselves against antisemitic attackers in the 1930s, then trained the Haganah and Israel's army.

The Western Wall in Jerusalem is a retaining wall of which structure?

The Western Wall was never part of the Temple itself: it held up the platform of the Temple Mount, and became Judaism's great place of prayer because access to the Mount above is restricted.

Native-born Israelis are nicknamed 'sabras', a word that also names which desert fruit?

Prickly pear: the cactus fruit is thorny outside and sweet inside, which is how native-born Israelis are said to be, tough on the surface and gentle underneath.

What title does Yad Vashem confer on non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust?

Righteous Among the Nations were once each honoured with a tree planted at Yad Vashem; when the hillside ran out of room, their names were carved on walls of honour in its garden instead.

Which future Hollywood star was crowned Miss Israel in 2004?

Gal Gadot then served two years as an army combat fitness instructor, and says that training won her a first Hollywood role, as a weapons expert in Fast & Furious.

Which singer's song Toy won Eurovision for Israel in 2018?

Netta Barzilai's 'Toy' won in Lisbon with 529 points, Israel's fourth victory, and under the contest's custom that brought the 2019 edition to Israel.

Shakshouka reached Israel with Jewish immigrants from which region?

North Africa's Jews brought shakshouka, eggs poached in a spicy tomato sauce, when they emigrated to Israel in the 1950s and 60s, and it went from immigrant cooking to a national staple.

Falafel, a street-food favourite in Israel, is most widely thought to be of what origin?

Egyptian is the usual answer: falafel most likely began in Egypt as ta'amiya, made from fava beans, though its origin is uncertain, and chickpeas took over as it spread through the Levant.

Which Israeli navigation app did Google buy in 2013 for about a billion dollars?

Waze grew out of FreeMap Israel, a volunteer project Ehud Shabtai started in 2006 so that drivers themselves could build a free Hebrew map of the country.

Netafim, founded at Kibbutz Hatzerim in 1965, pioneered which farming technology?

Drip irrigation was engineer Simcha Blass's invention; in 1965 he took it to Hatzerim, a desert kibbutz looking for an industry, and their company sold the first commercial drippers a year later.

Israeli firm M-Systems filed a 1999 patent for which gadget?

The USB flash drive patent was filed by M-Systems in April 1999, but firms in Singapore and China claim the invention too, and the rival patents have been fought over in court.

Which is Israel's oldest university, with a cornerstone laid in 1912?

The Technion almost taught in German: its board chose that language in 1913, and the outcry that made it switch to Hebrew months later helped settle Hebrew as the language of the future state.

The research institute in Rehovot is named after which chemist, who became Israel's first president?

Chaim Weizmann, the chemist whose acetone process aided Britain in the First World War, became president in 1949; the Daniel Sieff Institute he founded in 1934 was renamed for him that year.

A 2009 bestseller gave Israel a lasting nickname for leading the world in what?

Start-ups per capita: Dan Senor and Saul Singer's book Start-up Nation counted more per head than anywhere else, and credited army service and waves of immigration for the appetite for risk.

Sorek, near Tel Aviv, opened in 2013 as the world's largest facility of what kind?

Sorek is a seawater desalination plant using reverse osmosis, producing about 624,000 cubic metres a day when it opened in 2013; desalination supplied roughly a third of Israel's drinking water by 2014.

Israel's first Olympic medal, a silver in 1992, came in which sport?

Judo star Yael Arad, short of sparring partners at home, trained with the men's team coach; she narrowly lost the Barcelona final and came home a national hero, and Oren Smadja won a judo bronze at the same Games.

At which Olympics were eleven members of the Israeli team murdered by Black September?

At Munich 1972, Black September gunmen seized the Israeli team's quarters in the Olympic Village; eleven athletes and coaches died, nine of them in a botched rescue at Fürstenfeldbruck airfield.

The 1950 law granting Jews the right to immigrate to Israel and gain citizenship is called what?

The Law of Return was widened in 1970 to cover anyone with a Jewish grandparent, and their spouses: a broader test than religious law, which traces Jewishness through the mother.

The earliest widely accepted mention of 'Israel', from around 1200 BC, is a victory boast by which ruler?

Egyptian pharaoh Merneptah had a victory stele carved boasting that Israel was laid waste and left without seed, so the earliest accepted record of the people claims they had been wiped out.

Which Israeli author wrote the global bestseller Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind?

Yuval Noah Harari wrote Sapiens in Hebrew, working up the lectures of a world history course he taught undergraduates in Jerusalem; the English edition followed three years later.

Ilan Ramon, the first Israeli astronaut, died in 2003 aboard which Space Shuttle?

Columbia broke apart minutes before landing, at the end of a 16-day science mission; Ramon, a fighter pilot, was reportedly among those who had bombed Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981.

In 2018 which language lost its official status in Israel and was given a 'special status' instead?

Arabic had been an official language alongside Hebrew for decades; when the 2018 nation-state law demoted it, passing 62–55, Arab lawmakers ripped up copies of the bill in the chamber.

Which Israeli writer shared the 1966 Nobel Prize in Literature with Nelly Sachs?

S. Y. Agnon, born Shmuel Yosef Czaczkes in Galicia, took his pen name from 'Agunot', the first story he published in Palestine, and later made it his legal surname.

Which gas field off Israel's coast, discovered in 2010, began production in 2019?

Leviathan lies deep under the Mediterranean; since its gas began flowing on the last day of 2019 it has made Israel an energy exporter, supplying its neighbours as well as its own grid.

Which Hebrew theatre company, once a Moscow studio, has been Israel's national theatre since 1958?

Habima, Hebrew for 'the stage', worked under Stanislavski's Moscow Art Theatre after the 1917 revolution, then left the Soviet Union on a world tour and settled in Palestine in 1931.

Which scientist turned down an offer to become Israel's president when the office fell vacant in 1952?

Albert Einstein wrote that he was deeply moved but could not accept the largely ceremonial post; he later left his papers and literary estate to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Visitors leave more than a million of what each year in the cracks of Jerusalem's Western Wall?

Prayer notes are never thrown away: twice a year the wall's rabbi and his assistants collect them and bury them in the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives.

Which Israeli actress, crowned Miss Israel in 2004, later played Wonder Woman on the big screen?

Gal Gadot entered the pageant only because her mother and a friend sent in the application, and she followed the crown with two years as an army combat trainer.

Which founding member of the rock band KISS was born Chaim Witz in northern Israel in 1949?

Gene Simmons spent his early childhood in the town of Tirat Carmel and left at eight, when he and his mother emigrated to Queens, New York.

Which Emmy-winning American spy thriller was adapted from the Israeli drama Prisoners of War?

Homeland was in the works before its source reached viewers: a Hollywood studio bought Prisoners of War, called Hatufim in Hebrew, before the series had aired in Israel.

Which future American TV sex therapist trained as a teenage sniper in the Haganah in Jerusalem?

Ruth Westheimer stood just 4 feet 7 and learned to assemble a rifle in the dark; on her 20th birthday an exploding shell almost cost her both feet.

Which Israeli illusionist became a 1970s television sensation by appearing to bend spoons with his mind?

Uri Geller came unstuck on The Tonight Show in 1973: Johnny Carson's staff prepared their own props and kept his team away from them, and he could not perform a single feat.

Which tile game did Ephraim Hertzano first make by hand in his Israeli backyard and sell door to door?

Rummikub grew from those homemade sets into Israel's best-selling export game, and in 1980 it was named Germany's Game of the Year.

On which day does Israel's working week begin, since its weekend is built around the Jewish Sabbath?

Sunday is an ordinary working day in Israel: the typical week runs from Sunday to Thursday, leaving Friday and Saturday as the weekend.

Beresheet, a privately initiated Israeli spacecraft, crashed in 2019 while attempting to land on what?

The Moon still holds the wreckage of Beresheet, and perhaps some stowaways: tardigrades, the microscopic 'water bears', were sealed in resin and added to the lander at the last minute.

Which self-defence system did boxer and wrestler Imi Lichtenfeld develop for Israel's army?

Krav Maga, Hebrew for 'contact combat', grew out of Lichtenfeld's years as a street fighter defending Jewish neighbourhoods in 1930s Bratislava.

Bamba, the puffed corn snack that is one of Israel's leading snack foods, is flavoured with what?

Peanut butter flavour may be doing Israeli children good: a 2008 study concluded that peanut allergy is rare in Israel because so many infants eat Bamba.

Ilan Ramon, the fighter pilot who became the first Israeli astronaut, died aboard which space shuttle?

Columbia broke up on re-entry in 2003 with Ramon and six crewmates aboard; 22 years earlier he had been the youngest pilot in Israel's strike on Iraq's unfinished nuclear reactor.

Which instrument made Israeli-American Itzhak Perlman famous after he played The Ed Sullivan Show at just 13?

Violin soloists usually stand, but Perlman plays seated: he caught polio at the age of four and has walked with leg braces and crutches ever since.

Which Israeli historian turned his undergraduate world history lectures into the bestselling book Sapiens?

Yuval Noah Harari wrote the book in Hebrew first; the English edition did not appear until 2014, and Homo Deus, a sequel about humanity's future, followed.

Which song made Dana International the Eurovision Song Contest's first transgender winner, for Israel in 1998?

Diva won in Birmingham with 172 points and then became a hit single well beyond Israel, reaching number 11 in the UK charts.

Which Israeli general and defence minister wore a black eye patch after a sniper's bullet hit his binoculars?

Moshe Dayan was scanning Vichy French positions from a rooftop when he was hit; the muscle damage meant he could not be fitted with a glass eye, so the patch became his trademark.

Which Israeli politician's older brother Yonatan was the only Israeli soldier killed in the 1976 Entebbe raid?

Benjamin Netanyahu's brother commanded the elite Sayeret Matkal unit on the raid, which rescued 102 of the 106 hostages; he was born in New York City and went to high school in America.

The Hebrew word 'shalom', which Israelis use for both hello and goodbye, literally means what?

Peace is the core meaning, and it runs through other everyday greetings too: 'Shabbat shalom' wishes someone a peaceful Sabbath.

Which Israel-based maker of countertop drinks machines did PepsiCo buy for $3.2 billion in 2018?

SodaStream is older and less Israeli than it looks: it was founded in England in 1903 as an offshoot of a London gin distiller.

Which crested bird that probes the ground with its long bill won a 2008 vote to become Israel's national bird?

The hoopoe was chosen in a national survey of 155,000 citizens organised by the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel.

Which red wildflower, honoured with a month-long blooming festival, was voted Israel's national flower in 2013?

Anemone blooms blanket the country's southern desert in red after the rains, while the wild flowers of the north come in a mix of other colours.

In the Hebrew name for the star on Israel's flag, 'Magen David', what does the word 'magen' literally mean?

Shield is the literal meaning, which is why the name of Israel's ambulance service, Magen David Adom, translates word for word as the Red Shield of David.

The menorah on Israel's national emblem is copied from a carving on which ancient Roman monument?

The Arch of Titus shows the menorah the Romans captured in the First Jewish-Roman War; the emblem, chosen after a design competition, sets it between two olive branches.

Which golden-roofed shrine, the world's oldest surviving work of Islamic architecture, dominates Jerusalem's skyline?

The Dome of the Rock owes its shine to a tale of thrift: tradition says 100,000 gold dinars left over from its construction were turned into plates to cover the roof.

The word Armageddon comes from the Hebrew name of which ancient hilltop city in northern Israel?

Megiddo became a byword for the end of the world through a single verse: Revelation sets the final battle at 'Har Megiddo', Mount Megiddo, which Greek turned into Armageddon.

Bedouin of the Ta'amireh tribe found the first of nearly 900 ancient scrolls in desert caves beside which site?

Qumran's scrolls lay hidden in eleven caves in the cliffs around the ancient settlement, and some of those caves could be reached only through the settlement itself.

Which city in Galilee, the childhood home of Jesus in the New Testament, is known as 'the Arab capital of Israel'?

Nazareth is home to Israel's largest Arab Christian community, and its Church of the Annunciation is counted among the largest Christian places of worship in the Middle East.

Makhtesh Ramon, a 40-kilometre-long crater in Israel's southern desert, was created by which natural process?

Gradual erosion, not a meteorite or a volcano, hollowed out the world's largest crater of its kind, which today lies inside Israel's largest national park.

Ptitim, sold abroad as Israeli couscous, was invented in 1953 as a wheat-based substitute for which scarce food?

Rice was scarce in the austerity years, so the prime minister asked the Osem food company to devise a stand-in, and the first ptitim were even shaped like grains of it.

Native-born Israelis are nicknamed 'sabras' after which plant, seen as tough on the outside and soft inside?

Prickly pear cactus is 'sabra' in Hebrew, and the image stuck so firmly that a talking cactus called Kishkashta became a character on Israeli children's television.

Operation Solomon flew more than 14,000 Jews to Israel in just 36 hours in 1991 from which country?

Ethiopia's airlift set a world record for passengers on a single aircraft: one Boeing 747 carried at least 1,088 people, including two babies born during the flight.

Which airline, Israel's flag carrier, serves only kosher meals and flies no passengers on the Sabbath?

El Al, whose name means 'to the skies', started out flying leased aircraft, then bought its first planes of its own, two DC-4s, from American Airlines.

An ordinance issued by a British governor in 1918 requires all buildings in Jerusalem to be faced with which stone?

Limestone quarried locally, known as Jerusalem stone, was made compulsory by governor Ronald Storrs, whose ordinance banned 'inappropriate' materials such as plaster and tin.

In Israeli hotels and hospitals, what does a 'Shabbat elevator' do so that observant riders press no buttons?

Stops at every floor is the whole trick: the lift runs automatically, because religious law bars observant Jews from operating electrical switches on the day of rest.

Which jam-filled fried treat, brought to the region by Polish Jewish immigrants, do Israelis eat at Hanukkah?

Sufganiyot are cooked in oil for a reason: the fried foods of Hanukkah commemorate the miracle of the Temple oil.

What do Israeli drivers do on the highway when the siren sounds on Yom HaZikaron, the national Memorial Day?

Stop and stand in silence: for one minute the whole country halts, and the first siren sounds the evening before, because a day in the Hebrew calendar begins at sunset.

Which kind of contest for teenagers from around the world is held in Jerusalem every Israeli Independence Day?

A Bible quiz, the International Bible Contest, tests middle and high school students on the Hebrew scriptures; a version for adults was originally the main event.

Which breed, developed from semi-wild pariah dogs that Bedouin used as herders, is Israel's national dog?

The Canaan Dog owes its recognition to animal behaviourist Rudolphina Menzel, who came across the free-ranging dogs in the 1930s and found them simple to domesticate.

Which star conductor led the 1936 inaugural concert of the orchestra that became the Israel Philharmonic?

Arturo Toscanini conducted an orchestra that violinist Bronisław Huberman had founded just as many Jewish musicians were being dismissed from their posts abroad.

Which American modern-dance pioneer co-founded Israel's Batsheva Dance Company in 1964 with one of her wealthy patrons?

Martha Graham's technique dominated the company's early years, and the troupe shed her style only gradually after its patron withdrew her funding in 1975.

Which Galilee city, the highest in Israel, became the 16th-century centre of the mystical Kabbalah movement?

Safed filled with scholars after Spain expelled its Jews in 1492: the Kabbalist Isaac Luria settled there, as did Joseph Caro, author of the law code Shulchan Aruch.

Which paddle-and-ball game, played on the sand since the 1920s, do Israelis call their national beach sport?

Matkot, Hebrew for 'racquets', turns up in a painted beach scene from the early 1930s, and Brazilians play the same game under the name frescobol.

Which poet from Austrian Galicia wrote the 1870s verses that became the words of Israel's anthem, Hatikvah?

Naftali Herz Imber read his poem aloud to farmers in the early Jewish villages; a teenager from Rishon LeZion then set it to a melody he knew from Romania.

Which kind of animal from Israel's Hula Valley was written off as extinct in the 1990s, then found alive in 2011?

Frog experts call the Hula painted frog a living fossil: it vanished when its marshes were drained in the 1950s, and it is the only surviving member of its genus.

Which religious minority of Galilee and Mount Carmel has been required by law since 1956 to serve in Israel's army?

Druze men are conscripted alongside the Jewish majority, but unlike Jewish women the community's women are exempt from the draft.

Which walled port in northern Israel held out against Napoleon in 1799, forcing him to retreat after two months?

Acre was Napoleon's first major strategic defeat: a Royal Navy flotilla under Sidney Smith reinforced the Ottoman defenders with extra cannon manned by sailors and marines.

Expelled from Asia's football body in 1974, Israel was admitted in the 1990s to the confederation of which continent?

Europe's UEFA took Israel in after nearly two decades without a home, during which its national teams were sent to World Cup qualifiers in Oceania, Europe and South America.

Timna Valley in Israel's far south, site of King Solomon's Pillars, has been mined since prehistory for which metal?

Copper ore has been dug at Timna since the 5th millennium BCE, and light green or blue sand still marks the ground near the ancient mines.

Which Jewish festival do Israeli towns celebrate with the Adloyada, a humorous street procession of floats and costumes?

Purim gives the parade its name: 'Adloyada' comes from a Talmudic saying that revellers should drink until they 'no longer know' blessed Mordecai from cursed Haman.