What were the origins of Rabbi Akiva? He was a penniless shepherd, and when he reached
the age of forty he was still illiterate. As a young man he hated rabbis and learning,
and once when older he confessed to a fellow rabbi “when I was a young man I would have kicked you
or any of the rabbis if you came near
me.” Akiva worked for one of the richest
men in Jerusalem, a man so rich that we only know him by his nickname, Kalba Savua, The Satisfied Dog. Once,
a daughter of Kalba Sabua, who is kown as Rachel, laid eyes on Aikba and
fell in love with him, seeing something remarkable in him and betrothing
herself to him. When her father heard of it, he vowed that she
would not benefit from his property. She went and married him anyway, and in
the harshness of winter. They had no bed and so slept on straw, and he had to
pick out the straw from his hair. 'If only I could afford it,' said he to her,
'I would present you with a Yerushalayim shel Zahav for you to wear in your hair.' This was a golden
tiara in the shape of the outline of the city, worn by a woman in her
hair, the most poetic and certainly
expensive jewlery there was at the time.
In time, they had a family. His children
were about to go to school and he continued as a shepherd. That day he was standing at the mouth of a
well, seeing how there was a gap in the stone where the water could flow out .
He asked: “Who carved this stone?” They said to him: “the water which flows
through it daily.” They said to him “Akiva, have you not read "Waters wear
away the stones" (Job 14:19)? Immediately Rabbi Akiva applied logicalprinciple
to himself. If the soft (water) has sculpted the hard (stone), how much more
so will the words of Torah, which are hard as iron, carve into my heart which
is flesh and blood? Immediately he went to learn.
He and his son went and studied from
teachers of children. Despite the children laughing, Akiva said to him [the
teacher]: Rabbi, teach me Torah. Rabbi Akiva held the top of his slate and his
son held the top of his slate. The teacher wrote aleph, bet for him and
he learnt it. From aleph to tav and he learnt it . His sons said
to him: People are making fun of us, let’s go home. He said: “I will not go
home. You will not go home. Your mother
is doing without a great deal so we both can learn.”
Akiva soon learned all the young children
learned, and so went from the teacher of young children to the teacher of the
middle grades, where students laughed at
him, but he was not bothered. He was
soon learning rules of grammar, verbs,
of the sacrifices and the laws of
the holidays, of history and legend. He
learned all that teacher could tell him and went on to the teacher of the
oldest children, who also laughed at
thim, but soon he was learning laws and even Mishnah. Soon he knew as much as any adult in town.
[Subsequently] his wife counselled
him, 'Go, and become a scholar.' So he left her and went to Yavneh, where the
scholars of the Sanhedrin taught and judged. He sat in the rearmost benches, but soon teachers saw he was brilliant and promoted
him up through the student ranks and classes.
First he learned under Rabbi Tarfon, and learned all Tarfon could teach
him. Tarfon soon sent him to learn with the fiery Rabbi Eliezar and the aged
but wise Rabbi Yehoshua. He was soon
ordained as a rabbi with all three levels of smicha- “Yoreh, Yoreh” for teaching ritual matters
and regular Jewish life, “Yadin, Yadin”
for judgement of civil, corporal and capital punishment, along with national
matters, and “Yatir Bechorot, Yatir” for
vetting sacrifices and all the laws of the temple. He gained fame, students, and wisdom, and would
come to debate with all sages on every topic, even the head of the sages Rabban
Gamiliel and former Kohen Gadol, the
rationalist and seer, Rabbi Yishmael.
While he was earning all this, his wife and children lived in poverty, but
never did they demand Akiva stop his studies. One account says he spent twelve years [studying] under R.
Eliezer and R. Joshua. At the end of this period, he was returning home, when
from the back of the house he heard a wicked man jeering at his wife, 'Your
husband did well to you. Firstly, because he is your [social] inferior; and
secondly, he has abandoned you to living widowhood all these years.' She
replied, 'If were he to hear my desires, he would be absent another twelve
years.' "Seeing that she has given me permission,' he said, 'I will go
back.' So he went back, and was absent for another twelve years, [at the end of
which] he returned with twenty-four thousand disciples.
Whatever the years and number of
students, when he was finally ordained and counted among the sages, he returned
to his wife with his disciples and supporters surrounding him. He had so many disciples
and students surrounding him that they would not let his wife approach him. Seeing
her pushed away, he commanded them to
make way for her, saying “Let her through, Let her through! Everything we
have, everything, all of my learning and yours- they belong to her!”
Akiba had fame and soon had an
official position with a salary as head of the charitable funds- few if any among the sages knew what poverty
was like as Akiva did. With his new
income he scrimped and saved until he could afford to have made for his wife a
Yerushalayim Shel Zahav, and at long
last he presented it to her. The wife of
Rabban Gamliel, the wealthiest of men in the land, she saw it and was jealous
of her. “Why did you never buy me such a thing?” she asked. “She sold her braids of hair and gave him the
proceeds, so that he might labor in the Light [of Torah]. If you had done what
she did to earn such a thing, I would have been glad to have one made for you.”
In time, Kalba Savuah came to face Rabbi Akiba, not
knowing who he was. Years had passed and his daughter’s hard life had caused
him to regret his vow. He came before
the sage and explained that he hoped
that maybe Akiva could release him from the vow and he would be able to support
his daughter. “When you made your vow,
did you ever thing this shepherd could ever amount to anything? Did you think he could be one of the sages
like me?” Kalba Sabua said “Like you, master?
I did not think it possible, for he was illiterate and hated the sages! If I thought he could have learned a single
chapter, even a single Halacha, I would not have sworn such a vow.” Akiva nodded
and said “Your vow is annulled, for I am he.”
In shock, the wealthy man fell to the ground, kissed Akiva’s feet, and in
time gave to akiva and his daughter a portion of his fortune.
In middle age, he joined a small group of sages. Some see their journey into the Pardes as a
journey into the deepest of mystical experiences, while others see it as an effort to harmonize
Greek philosophy and thought with Torah. Regardless of the nature of their
exploration, one companion lost his faith, a second his mind, and a third his life, but Akiva emerged from the experience b’shalom,
whole and strong. Akiva was the only
one who was married- where the others were not anchored, Akiba had a love and a
family to anchor him.
We know that love, romantic love was
ever a part of his soul. When the sages debated which books of the Hebrew Bible
had almost excluded from the cannon, other sages thought the Song of Songs was
among them. Hearing this about the bible’s
book of love, he exclaimed “Chas Veshalom!
Heaven forfend! For the whole world was not worth the day that Israel received
the song of songs. For scripture is holy, but the song of songs is the holy of
holies.” Only a man whose life had been
so shaped by the love and affection of a spouse would look upon a book of love
and find it the holiest of all those in the Hebrew bible.
In time, his son grew to be a sage, his wife passed, and dark times came. Akiva,
hoping that the oppressive Roman empire could be beaten by the charismatic Shimon
Bar Kochba, decided that despite the
warnings of his peers Bar Kochba was the messiah long fortold. Hadrian,
the Roman emperor who loved all things Greek, who despised circumcision and had
no love for the strange province of Jews that rebelled not long before he took
power, was still surprised by the new rebellion
led by Bar Kochba. It had been centuries since a conflict arose that cost Rome
an entire legion, 5,000 of the best trained
and equipped soldiers in history. Hardrian
responded without hesitation and summoned more legions, crushing the rebellion
with brutality. This emperor then sentenced
Judaism to death, making teaching torah
a capital crime, and ordaining a rabbi a crime that would lead to the destruction
of the host city.
Akiba, refusing to go into hiding, continued
to teach Torah, and would die a martyr’s death under hideous torture. He died
with the Shema on his lips, a statement of faith that the Romans could not
realize was far more powerful than any act by Bar Kochba and his army. But for all of his mention in the Mishnah and Talmud, for all the stories about him, it is the love of his wife, who saw in him
the potential for greatness, that is his most famous story.
