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Rabbi
Akiva-Hero and Martyr
One
of Israel's greatest sages, Rabbi Akiva ben Yosef, was a scholar,
a teacher, a shepherd and a revolutionary.
A
revolutionary? In the year 70 of the Common Era, the Romans destroyed
the Second Temple and the Jews were exiled from Jerusalem. The
emperor promised to rebuild the city, but his plan was to rebuild
it and rename it Aeila Capitalina, dedicating it to the Roman
god, Jupiter. This outrageous act, along with the harsh laws forbidding
the study of Torah and the observance of many of the mitzvot,
led to the Bar Kochba revolt over 60 years after the destruction
of the Temple, in the year 132 CE.
While
Shimon Bar Kochba was the military commander of the revolt, the
spiritual leader was Rabbi Akiva. He had such faith in Bar Kochba
that he believed him to be the Messiah, which, unfortunately,
he was not. It was during the Bar Kochba revolt that the 24,000
of Rabbi Akiva's students died in a plague. The rabbis understood
this plague to be a result of the students lack of respect for
each other, and, despite their high level of intellectual development,
their lack of proper moral comportment was fatal. Devastated by
the death of his pupils, and the failure of the Bar Kochba revolt,
Rabbi Akiva nevertheless persevered and continued teaching his
surviving students.
Living
in such turbulent times, however, Rabbi Akiva's life was not to
end peacefully. Ignoring the Roman prohibitions against the Jewish
people and their practices, he was declared a criminal for teaching
Torah wherever he could, and was eventually captured by the Romans.
Tortured, he called out joyfully: "All my life I've been waiting
to fulfill the concept 'You shall love Hashem, your G-d, with
all your heart, with all your soul and with all your resources...'[the
first paragraph of the Shema] and now I finally have the chance."
Rabbi Akiva died a martyr's death.
Rabbi
Akiva – The Simple Shepherd
Where
did Rabbi Akiva get the strength to persevere while watching all
but 5 of his students die, his country in revolution, and while
being tortured himself?
Akiva ben Yosef ben Avraham was not always a great sage. In fact,
he was the son of a convert who was once a thoroughly ignorant
and illiterate shepherd. So poor and downtrodden a figure was
Akiva ben Yosef that his father-in-law, one of the wealthiest
men in Israel, disinherited his daughter, Rachel, for marrying
him
At the age of forty, Akiva's life changed suddenly. One day, while
out tending his flocks, he noticed a rock with a strange hole
going straight through it. This hole was created by constantly
dripping water. Akiva ben Yosef decided then and there to go and
learn Torah, for if dripping water could bore a hole into solid
rock, then even he, a forty year old man could learn Torah through
constant effort. He had to start from scratch, for Akiva ben Yosef
did not even know the aleph-bet!
Fully supported by Rachel, his wife, he went to study Torah for
12 years. When he returned he overheard his wife tell a friend
that she would gladly let him learn for another 12 years. And
he did. When he finally returned, he had become the great sage
and acquired his 24,000 students.
Like Moses, Rabbi Akiva started as a shepherd. He became one of
the greatest sages of the Jewish people with enough wisdom to
unravel the intricacies of the law, guide the populace, and inspire
an army.
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