The city's name comes from the Hebrew word for sand ("hol"), due to the sand dunes it is built on. It is also the name of a city in the Bible (Joshua 15:51), though nobody knows where exactly that city was located.Holon was founded in 1940 as a merger of existing 5 neighborhoods.Though the city has a reputation as a boring working-class suburb, in recent years it has developed a variety of museums and attractions quite disproportionate to its size. Some attractions are completely unique in Israel, like "Dialogue In The Dark", an activity in the Israeli Children's Museum where you perform activities in complete darkness to understand what life is like for blind people.