In a critical analytic fashion, Shalom Spiegel approaches the Akedah, the story of the offering of Isaac to God in the Book of Genesis. The stimulus for this venture began with the reading of a long forgotten poem on the Akedah, written by a twelfth century rabbi who had witnessed the violence against the Jews during the Crusades and cried to God for deliverance. Without bias the author examines the details and apparent gaps, slips of the pen, and errors of text to offer a new Biblical exegesis or rather uncover an old one, long censored. Such a