Wednesday, May 16, 2018 10:57 PM

A voice about a meter above me calls out "Hello! Happy holiday!" A stream of bubbles cascades around my head. I look up and see a woman on stilts with bright purple lips and a flowered crown. She sprays suds from a squirt gun into the air. Signs in the square at the heart of the city say "Shavuot Happening" (with "Happening" spelled out in Hebrew letters) and "American Fair." At tables and stands, boys throw balls at tin can ziggurats, toss rings at arrays of Coke bottles, and fling darts at balloons. Little girls with painted faces dance on a stage to "Uptown Funk" and, yet again, the Eurovision winner. Parents take pictures of children with backdrops of Super Mario Brothers and of cows. A man with a blue face and hands poses with a gilded picture frame. Another man, his face painted white and with angel's wings, stands on a podium, waving wands slowly in the air, making even more bubbles. Across the street, on another stage, boys perform a cryptic play about the giving of the Torah. Each holds a photograph and wears a headband labeled with the name of a mountain. At his usual corner, the man with the amplified banjo sings "Five Hundred Miles." His next song has beautiful lyrics that I try to memorize so I can research them online. Later, at home, I remember that I wanted to find them, but the memory of the words is gone.