Rabbi Akiva Ben Yosef ‘The Convert’ Had 24,00 Students – OpEd
Rabbi Akiva is one of the most charismatic, imaginative, and prolific sages of the Talmud. Yet, we are told that a terrible plague killed 24,000 of his students between Passover and Shavuot. (Yevamot 63b).
Why did 24,000 students of Rabbi Akiba die? Because they did not behave respectfully toward one another. The number itself is curious because it appears in another story, the Talmud’s most romantic rabbinic tale about Rabbi Akiva and his wife, Rahel.
Rabbi Akiva ben Yosef the convert was a shepherd of a wealthy aristocrat, Kalba Savua. Kalba’s daughter, Rahel, had agreed to marry him, despite her father’s objections, if he would study Torah.
Disinherited by her father, Rahel followed her heart. There are accounts of Akiva picking the straw from Rahel’s hair after they slept on a mattress of straw due to their poverty.
Following these depictions of intimacy and love, we learn that Akiva left her for 12 years to study Torah. When he came back to his wife Rahel, accompanied now by 12,000 students, he overhears her saying that if it were up to her, he would continue learning for another 12 years.
Without a moment’s hesitation, he returns to the yeshiva without a word between them. The indirectness of this communication is intentionally jarring. When Akiva finally returns a second time to Rahel, he arrives with 24,000 students. We are told that his students, not knowing who she was, did not treat her with respect, at which point he kisses her feet and shares with them that all the knowledge that he and they possess is due to her.
It is just these 24,000 students, the ones shaped by Akiva’s abandonment of his wife for 24 years, that die in a plague. We are told that they died as punishment for their lack of respect and deference to one another. But how could Rabbi Akiva produce such a huge crop of arrogant, narrow minded, self-righteous students.
Was Rabbi Akiba ben Joseph the convert’s detachment from his “beloved” wife for 24 years responsible for the plague? Was Rabbi Akiva their teacher too narrowly focused on Jewish Law, and not enough focused on respect for wives and daughters, so that his erudition appeared to have served his students poorly, making them arrogant, opinionated, and unable to listen respectfully to each other, or to hear the words of their own wives.
Intense Torah study can lead to contempt for less educated Jews and disrespect for contending learned opinions. These dangers have surely not now abated, either broadly in the academy or more narrowly in the yeshiva. The rabbis openly admit that learning is no guarantee of a good character.
Or was it that he played down his, or his father’s, conversion to Judaism. For the Talmud does not mention it at all. Rambam’s Introduction to the Mishneh Torah; Seder HaDorot mentions that Rabbi Akiva ben Yosef received Torah from Rabbi Eleazar the great. and then adds that Yosef, his (Akiba’s) father, was a righteous convert.
Although most of the Talmudic sages are referred to as X ben Y, Rabbi Akiba is not called by his full name; Akiba ben Yosef HaGer.
These 24,000 students, unlike the students who, inspired by Rabbi Akiba’s support for Bar Kochba, had joined Bar Kochba’s army, were not dying in battle with the Romans.
These 24,000 students of Rabbi Akiba were dying of a strange mysterious disease. And, even stranger, no one other than Rabbi Akiba’s students were dying of this disease.
The epidemic started when Rabbi Yohanan ben Tortha, a Roman who had converted to Judaism, openly opposed Rabbi Akiba’s support for Bar Kochbah’s revolt, saying: ‘Akiba, grass will grow in your cheeks (above your grave, and the Messiah) will still not have come!’ (Lamentations Rabbah II:4).
At first only a few of Akiba’s students died each day, and no one noticed it among all the deaths caused by the revolt. Then the numbers increased to dozens a day, and after Passover to hundreds a day.
Some soldiers said the disease was some kind of Roman secret weapon. A form of black magic. Most people felt it was just bad luck.
But Rabbi Akiba ben Yosef knew better. He knew that it is always easy to blame bad luck on other people when things do not go the way you want them to go.
And while that is sometimes the case, those who are wise also know that they have to look within their own conscience and within their own soul to see if they themselves did not play a role in what was happening.
Rabbi Akiba appointed his sharpest disciple, Rabbi Meir to investigate the situation.
Rabbi Meir discovered that many of Rabbi Akiba’s students did not respect each other.
Those students who did not leave their Yeshivahs to wage war against the Romans disrespected those who did.
Those who refused to withdraw from their battle positions when their leaders said to abandon one village in order to protect another village, disrespected those who did withdraw.
Those who were more pious disrespected those who were less pious.
And Rabbi Meir found that all of those who had died in the mysterious epidemic, had expressed negative opinions about Jewish converts to Judaism. or the descendants of converts to Judaism, especially Greeks and Romans, like Rabbi Yohanan ben Tortha, who felt the disease was Rabbi Akiba’s fault for supporting Bar Kochbah’s revolt.
Rabbi Meir was shocked to learn that so many of Rabbi Akiba’s students disrespected each other. Rabbi Akiba had always taught his disciples that one of the most important principles in the Torah was, “Love your neighbor as much as you love yourself.”
Indeed, many of Akiba’s students used to sing a song when they sat around a campfire in the spring and summer, proclaiming: “Rabbi Akiba said, ‘Love your neighbor as you love yourself’ is a major principle in the Torah.”
This principle applies not just to all of your neighbors, but also to your fellow students, the people you work with, and everyone else you know, whether Jew or Non-Jew.
Plus, there is another specific Mitsvah that says, “Love the stranger as much as you love yourself.” and this applies to all non-Jews who become Jewish because they decided to convert to Judaism.
How sad it was then for Rabbi Meir, who himself was a descendant of converts to Judaism, to learn that the 24,000 students of Rabbi Akiba ben Yosef the convert, were those students who had transgressed Rabbi Akiba’s own teachings.
Did they not know that the full name of their great teacher was Rabbi Akiba ben Yosef HaGer: Rabbi Akiba son of Yosef the convert.
Rambam’s Introduction to the Mishneh Torah, Seder HaDorot; mentions that “Rabbi Akiva ben Yosef received Torah from Rabbi Eleazar the great. Yosef, his father, was a righteous convert.”
Perhaps they did not know because there was a tradition that one should not bring up a convert’s non-Jewish past.
This did not mean that you should not be proud of the many people who became Jewish and whose descendants enriched the Jewish people for generations to come.
It meant you were not to refer to a convert’s past in a negative way, or to think that a person born to Jewish parents was a better Jew than a Jew who had no Jewish genes.
Rabbi Meir told Rabbi Akiba why the epidemic was killing his students, and suggested that they both pray that God would forgive the disrespectful students.
They did so but the epidemic did not end. They prayed again and again, but to no avail.
Then Rabbi Akiba went to his wife Rachel, who had walked away from her wealthy home to marry a poor, illiterate sheepherder. Rabbi Akiba asked Rachel to pray on behalf of the disrespectful students.
Rachel said she would pray on the 33 day of the counting of the Omer, because that was the day that Akiba promised her he would learn to read and study Torah, and she had agreed to marry him. Rachel then prayed and new cases of the epidemic stopped, although those who were already stricken died until Shavuot.
Rachel was a descendant of Mother Eve of whom it was said: “It is better to live outside the garden with Eve, than inside it without her. Blessed be the One who brought us close together and taught me to know the goodness of her heart and the sweetness of her soul! Wherever she was, there was Eden.”
