The People Vs Abraham

Today I attended, along with 699 other people in the community, our synagogue's event of the year. It was Judge Wapner, from People's Court, who is almost as old as Abraham, it seems. I feared for a moment there that the event would be siderailed as another, earlier occasion was, on the appearance of a senile Milton Berle . Uncle Milty was clearly pretty far gone into dementia. He thought he was performing in front of an adult audience in the Borsht Belt, and so his material was quite blue. Actually, it was a charity concert for children. I'll never forget my son's response to him. Jeremy, then about 10, heckled Berle, and was enthusiastically cheered for it. Though I wanted to sink into the floor, it was pretty funny.
On this occasion, the judge didn't actually have too big a part, and I think he was not actually senile, just very old and tired.
The two lawyers were Erwin Chemerinsky, as defense, and Jonathan Shapiro, prosecutor. They focused on the binding of Isaac, the story that Abraham heeded God's request to sacrifice his son Isaac on top of Mount Moriah. It's a pretty disturbing text, particularly since Isaac, who is of an indeterminate age, but probably an adult, asks his father, as they trudge up the mountain path, laden with wood and fire-making materials, where the sheep they are going to sacrifice might be. Despite the ominous reply, Isaac, never the sharpest tool, continues up the path.
Traditionally, the Rabbis have read this as proof of the soundness of Abraham's faith and his character, but modern Jews have much more trouble with this event, and want to read it as a sign of just the opposite: Abraham has done other dubious things, including the intended sacrifice of Ishmael and his mother, prompted by his wife's request, not by God's.
I personally have seen it as God testing Abraham, but not the way the rabbis originally think. He is testing to see if Abraham has understood his moral failings in the past--after all, Abraham twice palmed off his wife as his sister in order to save his own life, and once before threw out Hagar and his first son, Ishmael, into the desert to die. This is why, I think, God stresses that Isaac is Abraham's "only son," something that is patently untrue.
But on to the trial. The judge explained to us that the criteria for judgment would be contemporary California law, and that in order to find Abraham guilty of attempted murder, we must find him guilty of malice, the intention to commit bodily harm, and premeditation.
The prosecutor went first, and he had the easier task. He showed the action and plan Abraham had, getting up early, packing up his son and the murder weapon (which, Shapiro pointed out, was not a knife at all, but a cleaver). He lied to his son, and tried to cover up the truth about the impending act of violence, and tied his son up to subdue him.
Then Chemerinsky made a more complex and subtle argument for Abraham's innocence. He said that Abraham never intended to kill Isaac, because he knew that God had sworn that Isaac would be the future of Abraham's line, so he wanted to see whether in fact God was worthy of his worship, or whether he was not a truly compassionate God at all. In all this time, Chemerinsky argued, he never intended to kill Isaac when it came to crunch.
In this scenario, which actually recreates a Chasidic reading of the text, Abraham is a trickster, kind of like Odysseus, a story-teller and manipulator of facts, who gains all he has by his wits.
I can see this reading, and think it is apt.
Finally, I voted for not guilty, not because I find Abraham's actions praiseworthy (I don't), but because they are moral failings, not legal ones.