Rabbi Akiva
Akiva ben Joseph (Mishnaic Hebrew: עֲקִיבָא בֶּן יוֹסֵף, ʿĂqīḇāʾ ben Yōsēp̄; c. 50 – 28 September 135 CE),[1] also known as Rabbi Akiva (רַבִּי עֲקִיבָא), was a leading Jewish scholar and sage, a tanna of the latter part of the first century and the beginning of the second. Rabbi Akiva was a leading contributor to the Mishnah and to Midrash halakha. He is referred to in Tosafot as Rosh la-Hakhamim -"Chief of the Sages".[2] He was executed by the Romans in the aftermath of the Bar Kokhba revolt.
"Akiva" redirects here. For other uses, see Akiva (disambiguation).Biography[edit]
Early years[edit]
Akiva ben Joseph (written עֲקִיבָא in the Babylonian Talmud and עֲקִיבָה in the Jerusalem Talmud),[3] born c. 50 CE, was of humble parentage.[4][5] According to some sources, he was descended from converts to Judaism.[6]
When Akiva married the daughter of Ben Kalba Sabuaʿ (בֶּן כַּלְבָּא שָׂבוּעַ),[a] a wealthy citizen of Jerusalem, Akiva was an uneducated shepherd employed by him. The first name of Akiva's wife is not provided in earlier sources, but a later version of the tradition gives it as Rachel.[4][8] She stood loyally by her husband during the period of his late initiation into rabbinic studies after he was 40 years of age,[4] and in which Akiva dedicated himself to the study of Torah.
A different tradition[8] narrates that, at the age of 40, Akiva attended the academy of his native town, Lod, presided over by Eliezer ben Hurcanus. Hurcanus was a neighbour of Joseph, the father of Akiva. The fact that Eliezer was his first teacher, and the only one whom Akiva later designates as "rabbi", is of importance in settling the date of Akiva's birth. These legends set the beginning of his years of study at about 75–80CE.
Besides Eliezer, Akiva studied under Joshua ben Hananiah[8] and Nachum Ish Gamzu.[9] According to the Jerusalem Talmud, R. Joshua ordained Akiva as his fellow-student, presumably with semikhah.[10] Akiva was on equal footing with Gamaliel II, whom he later met. Rabbi Tarfon was considered as one of Akiva's masters,[11] but the pupil outranked his teacher and he became one of Akiva's greatest admirers.[4][12] Akiva remained in Lod[4][13] as long as Eliezer dwelt there, and then moved his own school to Beneberak.[4][14] Akiva also lived for some time at Ziphron,[15] modern Zafran[16] near Hamath.[17]
Marriage[edit]
According to the Talmud, Akiva was a shepherd for Ben Kalba Sabuaʿ when the latter's daughter noticed his modesty and fine character traits. She offered to marry him if he would agree to begin studying Torah, as at the time he was 40 years old and illiterate. When her father found out she was secretly betrothed[18] to an unlearned man, he was furious. He drove his daughter out of his house, swearing that he would never help her while Akiva remained her husband. Akiva and his wife lived in such poverty that they used straw for their bed. The Talmud relates that once Elijah the prophet assumed the guise of a poor man and came to their door to beg for some straw for a bed for his wife[4] after she had given birth. When Akiva and his wife saw that there were people even poorer than they, Rachel said to him, "Go, and become a scholar".[19]
By agreement with his wife, Akiva spent twelve years away from home, pursuing his studies. He would make a living by cutting wood from the forest, selling half for his wife's and children's wellbeing, and using the other half for keeping a fire burning at night to keep himself warm and to provide light thereby for his own studies.[20] Returning at the end of twelve years accompanied by 12,000 disciples, at the point of entering his home he overheard his wife say to a neighbour who was critical of his long absence: "If I had my wish, he should stay another twelve years at the academy." Without crossing the threshold, Akiva went back to the academy. He returned twelve years later escorted by 24,000 disciples. When his wife went out to greet him, some of his students, not knowing who she was, sought to restrain her.[4] But Akiva exclaimed, "Let her alone; for what is mine and yours, is hers" (she deserves the credit for our Torah study). Not knowing who he was, Ben Kalba Sabuaʿ also approached Akiva and asked him for help annulling his vow to disown his daughter and her husband. Akiva asked him, "Would you have made your vow if you had known that he would become a great scholar?" Ben Kalba Sabuaʿ replied, "Had I known that he would learn even one chapter or one single Halakha, [I would not have made the vow]". Akiva said to him, "I am that man". Ben Kalba Sabuaʿ fell at Akiva's feet and gave him half his wealth.[19][21]
According to another source,[22] Akiva saw that at some future time he would take in marriage the wife of Turnus Rufus (his executioner, also known as Quintus Tineius Rufus) after she converted to Judaism, for which reason he spat on the ground (for having come from a fetid drop), smiled (at her conversion) and wept (at such beauty eventually rotting in the dust after death). The motive behind this marriage is not given.
Selected legends[edit]
When Moses ascended into heaven, he saw God preoccupied with making ornamental "crowns" for the letters of the Torah. When Moses inquired what the purpose of these embellishments were, God explained that a man named Akiva would be born in several generations, and that he would be able to deduce halakha from every little curve and crown of the letters of the Law. Moses requested that he be allowed to see this man, and God assented: Moses found himself sitting in Akiva's study hall. As Moses listened to Akiva's lesson, he grew weary, because he could not understand it. However, when one of the students asked Akiva for the source of his teaching, Akiva replied that it was "A law to Moses at Sinai", and Moses was put at ease. When Moses returns to God and asks what the pious Akiva's ultimate reward will be, he is shown the grisly aftermath of Akiva's execution. Horrified, Moses demands God explain His actions, at which point God commands Moses to be silent and respect His judgement.[87] This story gives a picture of Akiva's activity as the father of Talmudic interpretation.[4]
Tinnius Rufus asked: "Which is the more beautiful—God's work or man's?" Akiva replied: "Undoubtedly man's work is the better, for while nature at God's command supplies us only with the raw material, human skill enables us to elaborate the same according to the requirements of art and good taste." Rufus had hoped to drive Akiva into a corner by his strange question; for he expected quite a different answer and intended to compel Akiva to admit the wickedness of circumcision. He then put the question, "Why has God not made man just as He wanted him to be?" Akiva had an answer ready: "For the very reason, man must perfect himself."[4][88]
The aggadah explains how Akiva, in the prime of life, commenced his rabbinical studies. Legendary allusion to this change in Akiva's life is made in two slightly varying forms. Likely the older of the two goes as follows:[4] "Akiva, noticing a stone at a well that had been hollowed out by drippings from the buckets, said: If these drippings can, by continuous action, penetrate this solid stone, how much more can the persistent word of God penetrate the pliant, fleshly human heart, if that word but be presented with patient insistency."[89]
Akiva taught thousands of students: on one occasion, twenty-four thousand students of his died in a plague. His five main students were Judah bar Ilai, Rabbi Meir, Rabbi Eleazar ben Shammua, Jose ben Halafta and Shimon bar Yochai.[24]
Once he was called upon to decide between a dark-skinned king and the king's wife; the wife having been accused of infidelity after bearing a white child. Akiva ascertained that the royal chamber was adorned with white marble statuary, and, based on the theory that a child is similar in nature to whatever its parents gazed upon while conceiving the child, he exonerated the queen from suspicion.[90] It is related that, during his stay in Rome, Akiva became intimately acquainted with the Jewish proselyte Ketia bar Shalom, a very influential Roman (according to some scholars identical with Flavius Clemens, Domitian's nephew[91]), who, before his execution for pleading the cause of the Jews, bequeathed to Akiva all his possessions.[4][92]
The Talmud enumerates six occasions in which Akiva gained wealth.[93] In one case, his success as a teacher led his wealthy father-in-law Kalba Savua to acknowledge such a distinguished son-in-law and to support him. Another source of his wealth was said to be a large sum of money borrowed from a heathen woman, a matrona. As bondsmen for the loan, Akiva named God and the sea, on the shore of which the matrona's house stood. Akiva, being sick, could not return the money at the time appointed; but his bondsmen did not leave him in the lurch. An imperial princess suddenly became insane, in which condition she threw a chest containing imperial treasures into the sea. It was cast upon the shore close to the house of Akiva's creditor, so that when the matrona went to the shore to demand of the sea the amount she had lent Akiva, the ebbing tide left boundless riches at her feet. Later, when Akiva arrived to discharge his indebtedness, the matrona not only refused to accept the money, but insisted upon Akiva's receiving a large share of what the sea had brought to her.[4][94]
This was not the only occasion on which Akiva was made to feel the truth of his favourite maxim ("Whatever God does, He does for the best"). Once, being unable to find any sleeping accommodation in a certain city, he was compelled to pass the night outside its walls. Without a murmur he resigned himself to this hardship; and even when a lion devoured his donkey, and a cat killed the rooster whose crowing was to herald the dawn to him, and the wind extinguished his candle, the only remark he made was, "All that God does is for the good." When morning dawned he learned how true his words were. A band of robbers had fallen upon the city and carried its inhabitants into captivity, but he had escaped because his abiding place had not been noticed in the darkness, and neither beast nor fowl had betrayed him.[4][95]
Another legend according to which the gates of the infernal regions opened for Akiva is analogous to the more familiar tale that he entered paradise and was allowed to leave it unscathed.[4][96] There exists the following tradition: Akiva once met a coal-black man carrying a heavy load of wood and running with the speed of a horse. Akiva stopped him and inquired: "My son, why do you work so hard? If you are a slave and have a harsh master, I will buy you from him. If it be out of poverty that you do this, I will take care of your needs." "It is for neither of these," the man replied; "I am dead and am compelled because of my great sins to build my funeral pyre every day. In life, I was a tax-gatherer and oppressed the poor. Let me go at once, lest the demon tortures me for my delay." "Is there no help for you?" asked Akiva. "Almost none," replied the deceased; "for I understand that my sufferings will end only when I have a pious son. When I died, my wife was pregnant; but I have little hope that she will give my child proper training." Akiva inquired about the man's name and that of his wife and her dwelling place. When, in the course of his travels, he reached the place, Akiva sought information concerning the man's family. The neighbours very freely expressed their opinion that the deceased and his wife deserved to inhabit the infernal regions for all time—the latter because she had not even performed brit milah for the child. Akiva, however, was not to be turned from his purpose; he sought the son of the tax-gatherer and laboured long and assiduously in teaching him the word of God. After fasting for 40 days and praying to God to bless his efforts, he heard a heavenly voice (bat kol) asking, "Why do you go to so much trouble on behalf of this person?" "Because he is just the kind to work for," was the prompt answer. Akiva persevered until his pupil was able to officiate as a reader in the synagogue; and when there for the first time he recited the prayer, "Bless the Lord!" the father suddenly appeared to Akiva and overwhelmed him with thanks for his deliverance from the pains of hell through the merit of his son.[4][97] This legend has been somewhat elaborately treated in Yiddish.[98] Another version of this story exists in which Johanan ben Zakkai's name is given in place of Akiva.[99]