Lester says, "My intent is to invite the reader into a new experience of the Divine." Lester takes his religion very seriously, as his account of his conversion in Lovesong: Becoming a Jew, shows. Thus When the Beginning Began is meant to enhance the experience of reading Genesis, not to trivialize it. "Play expresses the holy as surely as solemn piety. Maybe more so, sometimes," he says.

Lester makes it clear that he applies a modern Jewish interpretation of Genesis rather than a Christian one, and he cites God's driving Adam and Chavah out of Paradise. For many Christian theologians, Adam and Eve lose Paradise by disobeying God's command that they not eat of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. According to Lester, a Jewish interpretation is that the eating of the fruit was not a sin—in his...