aspartame

Last Sunday, we went to see "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" performed by my brother's church. They did a really good job, and my sister-in-law and niece were both in the production. It was lively, and the songs certainly get stuck in your head, which means it just keeps giving and giving. I can't imagine what it must have been like for Ruth and Ashley with all the rehearsals going on for weeks. I have seen the musical before; I think it was put on by Winona State when I was in high school, but I forgot how truly terrible the actual bible story is.

As with most disorders, in order to get full impact, you have to go back to the childhood of the father, Jacob. This is where the family dysfunction gets going. Although, dysfunction is a pretty continuous theme from Abraham to Isaac, and on and on throughout the bible. This is the general idea of the story, though not a comprehensive summary:

Jacob and Esau, twins born to Rebekah and Isaac after they prayed for conception, are divided first by the lord while still in the womb and second by the attentions of their parents who each love one more than the other. Once, when Esau was starving and came to Jacob for bread, Jacob made Esau give up his birthright in exchange for sustenance.

(I will not be looking to the bible for any parenting advice. Pete and I did not pray for conception; we did something else entirely, and it was much more enjoyable and biologically necessary. Were this fetus twins, which it isn't, I hope I would not choose one over the other. It clearly only leads to one sibling threatening to let the other starve right in front of him if the other doesn't pay up, and it also apparently leads to the other being completely incapable of taking care of himself.)

When Isaac was dying, he asked his favorite, Esau, to get him savory meat. Rebekah overheard this and dressed Jacob up as Esau and sent him instead so that Jacob would get the father's blessing before he died instead of Esau.

(I will also not be getting relationship advice from the bible. What kind of marriage is this, anyway? Although I do love the term "savory meat".)

Thusly, Esau missed out on his father's blessing and his birthright, both to his brother, Jacob, and he was a little pissed about this. Esau decided to slay Jacob once the mourning period was over--nice of him to wait it out--but Rebekah warned Jacob and told him to flee. Jacob went to stay with his uncle.

He took a liking to his cousin, Rachel, and agreed to serve her dad for seven years so he could marry her. At the end of the seven years, however, dad disguised Leah, the eldest daughter, as Rachel, which Jacob did not know until morning (caring husband), so he had to serve another seven years to marry Rachel. He didn't love Leah so much, but he loved Rachel, so the lord gave Leah children and not Rachel. Even the handmaid had children by Jacob. And then the other maid had children by Jacob. Finally, Rachel had one son whose name was Joseph. In the end, "the man increased exceedingly, and had much cattle, and maidservants, and menservants, and camels, and asses."

And children.

(OK, who ARE these people? If this is supposed to be a parable that will teach us to learn from the mistakes of our elders, it fails miserably. Are any of the citizens of the old testament happy? Nice? Well-adjusted?)

At one point in the story, Dinah, Jacob's only daughter (oh yeah, by the way, he had a daughter), was "defiled" by the uncircumcised son of a prince who then asked to marry her. Jacob's sons said that she could only marry him if all the men in the city were circumcised, to which the men submitted. When they were still sore and at their weakest, two of Jacob's sons went into the city and "slew all the males."

(Awesome!)

Then they cleaned out the city of animals and crops and anything valuable.

(What have I learned from this story so far? Do as your parents did, even if it wasn't such a good idea when they did it; favor one child over the other; let the lord make decisions for you; enter into agreements and then renege and kill people and steal all their stuff; have lots of kids with many different people; generally deceive others; and run away if you are threatened with retribution because you are chosen by god. Cool.)

Rachel died giving birth to another son, leaving Jacob with twelve: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Is'sachar, Zeb'ulun, Joseph, Benjamin, Dan, Naph'tali, Gad, and Asher. By four different women.

(None of these names are on the list for boys.)

Jacob loved Joseph best and was not shy about letting everyone else know. (He clearly had not learned anything from the ill effects of favoritism his parents demonstrated). He gifted the boy with a coat of many colors, which did not make him a favorite with his brothers. Joseph, in turn, actively lorded his favored status over them, telling them about dreams in which their sheaves of corn bowed to his sheaves of corn. After hearing a few of these dreams, the brothers decided to kill Joseph. Reuben said, "Nah, we won't kill him outright, but we will cast him in the pit and leave him there." That's much better. Even better than THAT, they decided to sell him into slavery because he's their brother, after all. So Joseph went to Egypt, and the brothers dipped his colored coat in goat's blood and presented it to their father as evidence of his death. And Jacob was sad. Very, very sad.

(It was at this point in the play that I felt like crying. Jacob is there weeping and clutching the shreds of the bloodstained coat, the brothers are singing, and I think we are supposed to see it as ironic and funny because they are acting sad and then winking at the audience. But basically, there are no good characters on the stage. Jacob has been horrible to his twin brother and unfair to his sons, and he has four wives. The brothers have let envy and resentment take them over and have sent their brother into slavery. Joseph was arrogant and selfish.)

In Egypt, Joseph was bought by one of Pharaoh's officers, Mr. Potiphar. Unfortunately, Mrs. Potiphar took a liking to Joseph, and Joseph eventually wound up in jail. He becomes Pharoah's dream interpreter, and then the governor, and when his starving brothers come begging for food, they don't recognize him, which is TOTALLY believable. Joseph asks for Benjamin, who has not accompanied them. He takes the oldest prisoner and makes them go back for his youngest brother. When they come back with Benjamin, Joseph gets verklemmt and tells the brothers who he really is. He has them to bring the whole family back down to Egypt. Jacob dies at 147 years old (heck, that's nothing. Abraham was 175 and Isaac was 180; don't get me started on the old guys in the earlier chapters of Genesis), and it's such a happy ending.

I don't understand why this particular story was chosen to be a musical. I don't feel that I have learned anything about appropriate moral or ethical behavior. I would find it more appropriate for a benevolent OverLord to have intervened long ago and told these people to knock it off and be compassionate to one another. At least, at the end, the OverLord could have given everyone involved a taste of their own medicine as punishment for their wrongdoing. Not eye-for-an-eye, but just a little perspective. A "teachable moment", if you will.

Actually, the best thing would be if one--just one--of the humans in the story had stepped up at some point to be the better person and put a stop to all the madness. Take some responsibility!

I think I might be taking this too seriously. Then again, maybe not. A lot of these ancient stories get tossed around in simplistic forms without ever being questioned, and they should be questioned, especially when believers are using parts of this book to justify behavior, "morality", and interventions into politics, among other things.

At any rate, I should get back to the fact that the church members involved in the production did a really good job with the material, and they showed a lot of talent, which I did appreciate. And afterwards, we had pizza with the family, which is always a good time, even if Pete did feel the need to point out that there was Aspartame in the Diet A&W Caffeine-free Root Beer, and I shouldn't be having it. More restrictions of which I am very well aware, thankyouverymuch.

"It's amazing you two lived," quipped my mom, referring to my brother and I.