Riding a Roller Coaster with Rabbi Akiva

This Thursday evening we will celebrate Lag BaOmer, a holiday known for two principal events:

1. The hilula / memorial celebration of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai’s death

2. The day the students of Rabbi Akiva stopped dying from a plague

Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai already gets a lot of attention here in Israel where I live, so I’m going to be contrarian and focus on Rabbi Akiva.

This guy. Seriously, this guy. If there were prizes for living an absolute roller coaster of a life, this guy would get first place. Let’s set the scene. Rabbi Akiva lived from approx. 40-135 CE in Israel, during the time of the Tannaim, great scholars that included Rabban Gamliel and (notably for this occasion) Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai. As a young adult around age 30, he sees the destruction of the temple, the unraveling of Jewish sovereignty, and its replacement by increasingly restrictive Roman rule. He begins life as an illiterate shepherd who has the good luck of being noticed by the daughter of his boss, a wealthy man called Ben Kalba Savua. [Side note, the meaning of this name is “Son of a Full Dog”, because when you go to his house hungry as a dog, you leave full. Apparently the name was meant to highlight his generosity. Thank you, humor department of the Talmud.]1

She makes a sort of bargain with this modest man called Akiva. If he got to marry her, he would go and study. But he wasn’t offering a glamorous life. The Talmud is very illustrative about their circumstances, mentioning how they slept in a barn, and were removing hay from each other’s hair. Not exactly Buckingham palace.2 Ever the optimist, he notes that some people don’t even have hay to sleep on, and “lucky us”, we do.

Akiva started small. This man did not know the alphabet at age 40 - a genuine crisis of literacy. (In case you think this is a phenomenon limited to the past, look here.) He notes the impression that dripping water makes on a stone over time, and decides that if water can carve stone, then the words of the Torah are capable of penetrating his mind. From a place of utter ignorance, he is able to imagine a future about which he had no understanding, but rather a mix between hope and fantasy.3

He sits with his son in the equivalent of first grade, and learns the letters on the same writing tablet as his child. Can you picture it? A grown man, crouching down near the floor, his 40-year-old knees cracking (if you are over 40 you know what I’m talking about), while he scratches out each letter on the board, sitting next to his little son. Bit by bit, he studies all of the Torah.

הלך וישב לפני רבי אליעזר ולפני ר׳ יהושע אמר להם רבותי פתחו לי טעם משנה כיון שאמר לו הלכה אחת הלך וישב לו בינו לבין עצמו אמר (אלף זו למה נכתבה בית זו למה נכתבה) דבר זה למה נאמר חזר ושאלן והעמידן בדברים. 4

He graduates to studying with adults, with other scholars. He asks them in a very general way to “explain the reason behind the Mishna”. They teach him one halacha, and he goes to study by himself, asking “why is A written this way? Why is B written this way?” Meaning, he is able to take the raw material, and through his own critical thinking process, to ask questions independently, and come to conclusions. Little by little he comes back and learns more from the scholars until eventually he surpasses them.

I love this about Rabbi Akiva. He is decidedly NOT the guy who glues himself to his teachers and humbles himself before them, deferring to every single thing they do. There are many examples of this self-effacing behavior in the Talmud, but Rabbi Akiva goes a different way. Maybe part of his magic was being an outsider who came to the structure of study and the beit midrash later in life.

He goes away to study for 12 years initially, and then for another period of 12 years.5 While he is away, he becomes a kind of Torah-celebrity, the male genius version of Kim Kardashian. When he returns, he has no less than 24,000 students who crowd the streets upon his arrival. In one of the most touching moments, his wife comes out to meet him, and his students shoo her away, not knowing who she is, and assuming she is a poor person. He recognizes her and sets the record straight, saying decisively, “Leave her alone: what is mine and yours is actually hers” (emphasis mine). Meaning, all of the knowledge and fame trace their way back to Rachel, his wife. As a dyed-in-the-wool feminist, I get a little twinge of good vibes when I read these words. He knows where his bread is buttered. He knows that without his wife, he would still be an ignorant shepherd working for his father-in-law. And when the time is right, he was more than happy to shout it from the rooftops. Rabbi Akiva is a man who can credit his less famous, less glamorous wife for his colossal achievements.6

I will not go into his full life story here, but look up the rest of the high points of his career if you are interested. The story is fantastic, and waiting for a Hollywood director to make use of this priceless plot (and it’s in the public domain). His rich father-in-law gives him half his wealth, he gets rich from a shipwreck7, he travels to Rome89. Let’s just say his life isn’t boring.

He reaches the zenith of wealth, fame, and scholarly achievements. In keeping with the theme of his life, the roller coaster is headed down, and fast. The Talmud tells us that between Pesach and Shavuot, his 24,000 students died in a plague because they did not treat each other with respect. This tremendous loss is the source of the mourning customs during this time of year, such as not cutting one’s hair and not listening to music. There is some debate about the nature of the plague (it is considered to be diphtheria) but regardless of the definition, we don’t need a reminder of how disruptive a plague can be to daily life.

Rabbi Akiva is left high and dry. This critical mass of students around whom he built his name, reputation and career are utterly gone. I imagine him mourning for them on the personal level, but also for the fate of this enormous intellectual project.10

One would certainly understand if he preferred to shrug his shoulders and wander back off the barn he came from. But he has a little gleam in his eye. In his humbled state, he chooses to start from square one. He gets a group together that is a kind of “all-star team” of 5 Torah scholars (one of whom is Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai), and starts over in the South of Israel.11

This shepherd, he isn’t proud, he has known hardship in his life. He builds himself back up, piece by piece, as a leader, a scholar, and an educator. Because of Rabbi Akiva’s decision, there is still a world with Torah study in it. Because of Rabbi Akiva’s nearly delusional optimism, all is not lost.

When he didn’t know how to read, he started writing the alphabet in his child’s class. When he didn’t know how to learn, he asked teachers to explain, and then slowly built his understanding on exploration. When his entire life’s work evaporated, he started again. Life is a roller coaster. One day you’re up, the next day you’re down.

I’ll leave you with one last anecdote:

Akiva is walking through the ruins of the second temple on Mount Scopus, and sees a fox walking through the rubble of the Holy of Holies (of the temple), a formerly sacred place only entered by the high priest once a year. His colleagues wept seeing this image of complete destruction, and the desecration of the holiest spot on earth by a wild animal. (Remember that most of his colleagues were alive during the destruction of the second temple and would remember it, and therefore the bitterness of the contrast would be felt more keenly.) At that very moment, Rabbi Akiva laughs. His fellow travelers are shocked: how could he be laughing at a disastrous moment like this? He explains that there were two prophecies in the Bible: one referred to the destruction of Jerusalem, the other to its eventual redemption. The first verse talks about how Jerusalem will be fully destroyed like a plowed field. And the second verse describes the eventual comeback of the people of the land, with old people sitting calmly in the streets. Rabbi Akiva’s logic stated that if one side of the equation came true (the horrific ruins of the temple), then the other side of the equation was surely on the way too. His colleagues were initially baffled but ultimately soothed by his interpretation, saying “Akiva, you have comforted us, Akiva you have comforted us.”12

Even in the darkest circumstance, he was able to imagine a future that no one else could see. He could visualize a reality that was far from what was actually in front of him. If there is something to learn from Rabbi Akiva, it is how to ride the wild roller coaster of life and still stay smiling, knowing that good things are coming around the corner. We can’t see those things yet, but we can imagine them in our mind’s eye.

Lag Sameach :)

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