On Sunday, December 4, 2005, at the 9 and 11 am services, Trinity Players presented When the Angels Cried: The Story of Abraham and Isaac, by Neil Olsen, inspired by the Legend of the Jews. It was also presented at Congregation Mishkan Israel in Hamden on Friday, January 20, 2006.
CAST & CREW
God: Jack Tebes
Satan: Margy Lamere
Abraham: Warner Marshall
Isaac: Dan Tebes
Sarah: Gail Novaco
Angel: Gail Novaco
Ishmael: Sharon Challenger
Eliezer: John Hoda
Narrator: Anna Foster
Director: Bob Sandine
Playwright: Neil Olsen
Producers: Wendell Piehler & Laura Patrie
Stage Mgr.: Sharon Challenger
Lighting: Alex Patrie
Music: Wendell Piehler & Walden Moore
Parts of this work are adapted from the Jewish scholar Louis Ginzberg's "Legends of the Jews." These Legends are variations of bible stories which have been handed down as folk tales over the centuries, from many lands and in many languages. Ginzberg spent most of his life in collecting these legends, translating them from Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Syrian, Aramaic, Ethiopic, Arabic, Persian, and Old Slavic, and assembling them into a seven volume book.
These tales all differ somewhat from the Bible stories. Adam had a previous wife to Eve and got a divorce. Cain is forgiven. Moses visits hell and paradise. And Angels are uppity; they argue with God and tell him it is a mistake to create man; they are always saying I told you so. And God argues back. Like the concurrent Christian stories of saints and miracles, they offer a view into medieval Jewish people's hopes and fears, and how they used their religion, and at times rewrote it, to help them go on living their daily lives.
This play takes as its frame work the translation from Ginzberg's German Manuscript by Henrietta Szold, with its King James style verbiage. The scenes with God and Satan and Archangel Michael retain the glorious cadences and Thees, Thous and escheweths of the translation. But we, in America, have our own wonderful tradition, our own Jewish legends extending biblical history into the present. It may be found subtly in the great gift of Humor give by the emigrant Jews to America, in the works of the Marx Brothers, Jack Benny, George Burns and dozens of others, including the great scholar, philosopher, and unsubtle biblical commentator: Mel Brooks. The play might be described as Abraham, Isaac, and Job meet Mel Brooks.
In the legend, God makes a "bet" with Satan, as in the book of Job. If God asks him, Abraham will sacrifice his only son Isaac. In good Jewish traditional fashion, Abraham uses humor to attempt to deflect God's command, and then he attempts to bargain with Him, but to no avail. Abraham has to explain this to Sarah, and deploying a typical husband strategy, lies to her. Sarah's farewell to Isaac is funny yet poignant; she knows when a son goes off it may always be for the last time. There is often in the bible a somewhat sniffy attitude toward second sons and stewards - if you are not the direct line of descent, you are not blessed. So I gave rejected Ishmael and Steward Eliezer a production number to cheer them up. It has a familiar tune.
And when Isaac goes with Abraham up to the mountain, and Isaac agrees God has commanded the sacrifice, the sacrifice is no less powerful for the attempt to understand it with humor. And even the uppity Angels, who never wanted man created, cry at the sight of Father Abraham, so that their very tears stop the knife from descending. In the end, with the blowing of the ram's horn, and God's unwavering promise is secured: the tribe of Israel shall flourish even to the end of time.
These scenes from the sermon drama tell the story:
