An Old Post Revisited- The Akedah

I wrote this last month but decided to dig it up again.

The Akedah- All Sorts of Questions

I have been engaging in a discussion outside of the MOT circles about the Akedah over here that brought up a number of questions for me that I have mulled over the years.

1) Old Abe fought with G-d about Sdom and tried to save the city, where is argument here?
2) How can you sacrifice your children?
3) What happened to Yitzhak afterwards?

Now I suppose I can kind of buy into the line that discusses this within a historical context in which it may not have been seen as being completely meshugah to be asked to sacrifice a child, but that is a little tenuous for me.

I have wondered if this experience is part of the reason that Yitzhak was the father he was. Here is what I mean by this and some of this may stem from ignorance of the text, but I don’t recall hearing much that makes me think of him as being father of the year material. Clearly his relationship with Yaacov and Esav suffered because of this and one could extrapolate that the lesson of not playing favorites was lost on Yaacov.

In theory if Yitzhak had been more evenhanded there might not have arisen a situation of such acrimony with Joseph and his brothers.

Thoughts, comments, questions?