Rabbi Akiva Reading Guide by Jewish Lives

READING GUIDE By Author Barry W. Holtz

CONTENTS

Timeline: The World of Rabbi Akiva

Discussion Questions

Additional Reading

Extra: Rabbi Akiva in Pictorial Renderings

About Jewish Lives

TIMELINE As discussed in the book we have no fixed dates about the life of Rabbi Akiva. Scholars assume—with some good justification—that Akiva died soon after the defeat of Bar Kokhba’s revolt and figuring that he lived into old age, they count backward to get an estimated date of his birth. The timeline below locates Akiva’s life in the context of events in his world. The designations “BCE” (before the common era) and “CE”(common era) have replaced BC and AD in most contemporary scholarship.

63 BCE

The Roman general Pompey captures Jerusalem.

40 BCE

Herod is named “king of the Jews” by the Roman senate. He begins a series of massive building projects, including the renovation and expansion of the Temple in Jerusalem.

4 BCE

Death of Herod.

26–36 CE

Pontius Pilate serves as Roman governor of Judea.

50 CE

Estimated birth date of Akiva.

64–66 CE

Gessius Florus serves as Roman governor of Judea. According to Josephus his rule sparks the Great Revolt.

66–70 CE

The Great Revolt by the Jews against Rome.

70 CE

The Great Revolt ends in defeat. The Temple is destroyed. Jerusalem is in ruins.

70 CE – forward

Jewish tradition marks the beginning of “rabbinic Judaism” with the story of Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai’s escape from the siege of Jerusalem and his founding of a center for Jewish learning in the ancient city of Yavneh.

132–135 CE

Bar Kokhba War. Scholars assume that Akiva died soon after the defeat of the Bar Kokhba revolt.

220 CE

Rabbi Judah the Patriarch (often translated as Judah the Prince) compiles the Mishnah. Rabbi Judah attributes the organization of early rabbinic teachings to Rabbi Akiva. 3

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS INTRODUCTION 1. Current-day scholarship views the stories about the ancient rabbis found in sources, such as the Babylonian Talmud, not as historically reliable information about individual rabbis. One prominent scholar refers to these accounts as “didactic tales,” stories meant to teach a lesson. Another views the tales as cultural artifacts from the ancient rabbinic world—means by which we can get a glimpse of the values, concerns, and conflicts inherent in their society. Yet a third scholar sees these tales as literary works, often seeming to be very carefully constructed short stories, not terribly different from the “parables” written by Kafka in the 20th Century. Which approach do you find most compelling? 2. The Talmud scholar Jeffrey Rubenstein writes, “Ancient biographers did not intend to present the ‘true’ life of their subject—the life as actually lived . . . They sought ‘truth’ in a different sense, the eternal truths that the meaning of the life of their subject held for others.” If we are to take seriously the approach of contemporary scholars such as Rubenstein and reject the older approach that views these stories as historically factual, does such a perspective enhance or detract from our connection to these tales? 3. The book argues that in reading these tales the more important question is not “did this event really happen?” but rather “why was it preserved and passed down? What is it meant to communicate?” There are other documents from the ancient world that have come down to us, such as The Iliad, The Odyssey, and Plutarch’s Lives. Does the fact that the stories about the rabbis come from the Jewish tradition—a culture that has endured down to today—change our perspective on how we view these tales? CHAPTER 1: AKIVA’S WORLD 1. If we take the conventional dating of Akiva’s birth to be more or less around the year 50 CE, it would mean that Akiva was a young man at the time of the Great Revolt against Rome and the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE. That means he lived during a time in which Jerusalem was both in its full glory as a cosmopolitan city and at a time when Jerusalem was in ruins and there was death and destruction around him. How do you think the experience of living during those times may have shaped his consciousness and world view? 2. The book describes the centrality of the Temple for ancient Jewish life. Before 70 CE “Judaism” was still very much the religion of the Bible at least as far as the practice of animal sacrifices was concerned. In one of the ironies of history, the terrible tragedy of the Temple’s destruction—and Rome’s refusal to allow it to be rebuilt—led to the evolution of Judaism over time. The text Avot de Rabbi Natan describes Akiva’s teacher Rabbi Joshua walking with Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai looking out on the ruins of the Temple and exclaiming “how shall the people Israel atone for their sins without the Temple service?” Rabban Yohanan comforts him by saying, “My son, do not grieve. There is another way of gaining atonement, equal to it: Performing deeds of kindness and love.” Although the practice of animal sacrifice may seem very foreign to us today, in what ways might we imagine its power for those who participated in it? In what ways might “deeds of kindness and love” provide the same effect as bringing one’s animal to be sacrificed?

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 3. The chapter discusses the evolution of the group that came to be known as “the rabbis” or “the sages.” How might you imagine the ways in which the early rabbis evolved over time from—in the words of scholar Beth Berkowitz— “a small, informally organized group struggling for authority” to “an institutionalized religious hegemony who rallied the Jewish community around their interpretive authority?” CHAPTER 2: A SELF-CREATED SAGE 1. We have no stories about Akiva’s childhood or parentage, except for references to the fact that he did not come from either wealth or a distinguished lineage. We are left to speculate about who he was in his early years and how he came to be standing by a well pondering the meaning of water’s power to wear away stone. How might you imagine the circumstances of his upbringing and the progress of his life leading up to what appears to be a personal and psychological crisis reported in the story told in this chapter? 2. The theme of Akiva’s intellectual brilliance runs throughout Rabbi Akiva: Sage of the Talmud. In this chapter we see the way that he quickly masters the core “curriculum” of rabbinic literature. But in the tale of Akiva at the well and in the “autobiographical” fragment of his conversation with his students about wanting to bite the sages like the way a donkey bites and breaks bones (p. 43), we see that Akiva is looking for something beyond intellectual engagement in his desire to study Torah. How would you describe what Akiva is looking for and in what way might study lead to the outcomes that he is seeking? 3. In this chapter we see one origin story of Rabbi Akiva and one of Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus, the man who will become one of Akiva’s main teachers. How might the differences in their backgrounds play some role in the lifelong tension between the two men? How might the comment of Rabbi Shimon ben Eleazar about what Rabbi Akiva “did to Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Joshua” (p. 48) add to our understanding of the complications of Akiva’s relationship to Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus? CHAPTER 3: A LOVE STORY 1. In this chapter we see a very different origin story of Rabbi Akiva—the “romantic” (or Hollywood!) version. How might the contrasting stories told in Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 give us different understandings of Akiva’s personality? How might each lead us to different expectations about Akiva’s later life? 2. In the romantic version, Akiva’s father-in-law Kalba Savua (sometimes called Ben Kalba Savua) might appear to be the villain of the story. Consider a different reading of these tales: are there aspects of his behavior that you might find justifiable? Are there ways that he could be viewed in sympathetic light? Following the entire arc of the stories in this chapter, can we discern how the ancient editors of these rabbinic sources viewed him? 3. To our eyes today the stories about Akiva’s relationship with his wife can be disturbing. He abandons her for twelve years to study and then leaves for yet another twelve years (with her approval)! Scholars of ancient texts have often suggested that it is important to view materials from long ago without the bias of “presentism”—seeing the past entirely through the eyes of our own views and values today. At the same

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS time, we recognize the progress that culture has made since those times. Sometimes we can even see the seeds of later progress in some of these very sources. Some philosophers and literary theorists have called this reading with “the principle (or hermeneutics) of charity” when looking at ancient literature, looking to read a text, as one writer has put it, “in the best possible light in order to redeem it.” How might you read the stories of Akiva and his wife applying the principle of charity? Or in what ways might the principle of charity be difficult to use in this case? CHAPTER 4: THE GROWTH OF A SCHOLAR 1. In this chapter we see stories about Rabbi Akiva’s development as a scholar, as best as we can discern it from the texts that have come down to us. The story of the “abandoned body” (the technical term in Hebrew is met mitzvah) raises the question of the way that common sense morality (bringing a dead body to a proper cemetery) bumps up against rabbinic law (to bury the body immediately, where one found it). Why do you think that Akiva chooses to tell this particular story about his early life to his students? What are your own reactions to the lessons embodied in this tale? How might the morality of Akiva’s time and culture compare and contrast with our own? 2. This chapter brings together a number of incidents involving Akiva and his own main teachers, Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Joshua. How would you describe the differences in the ways that these two teachers treat Akiva? Can you speculate about why each rabbi may have taken a different path in his relationship to Akiva? What might you imagine to be Akiva’s own thoughts about these two teachers? 3. The interesting statements about “rebuke” (beginning on p. 99) may resonate with examples from your own life about rebuking someone or receiving rebuke. In what way might you see connections to our own world in these very human interactions reported in the ancient texts quoted in this chapter? CHAPTER 5: AMONG THE RABBIS One of the main themes of this chapter is the exploration of Akiva’s character aside from his obvious intellectual brilliance and spiritual depth. Here we see him fully formed, interacting with his peers, no longer a student. The chapter retells two of the most famous stories in rabbinic literature—the revolt against the leadership of Rabban Gamaliel II and the story of the “oven of Akhnai.” In each case we see an extended set of tales, a kind of small novella in which Akiva plays a significant role. 1. Turning to the stories that make up the “novella” of the revolt against Gamaliel, can you speculate about Gamaliel’s motivations for humiliating Rabbi Joshua? And to what degree might Rabbi Joshua himself be partially to blame for the public embarrassment that he undergoes? 2. Rabbi Joshua is one of Akiva’s key teachers and he is the one with whom Akiva seems most connected. How do the rabbinic texts represent the various means that Akiva uses to comfort his teacher? In what way might Akiva’s old relationship with Joshua play a part in his success at helping Joshua deal with the public humiliation he has experienced?

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 3. Akiva is a man with a significant reputation but he has his disappointments as well. In the story of the revolt we see Akiva’s great disappointment at not being chosen as Rabban Gamaliel’s successor (pp. 117-119). How might Akiva’s personal family background have influenced his relationship with the other sages? 4. In the other “novella,” the story of the Akhnai oven, how does Akiva comfort Rabbi Eliezer? Might Eliezer’s old antagonism to his student Akiva have influenced the way Akiva approached him (pp. 124-125)? And in what way might this interaction play a role in the shocking comment that Eliezer makes about Akiva at the end of Eliezer’s life (p.128)? CHAPTER 6: IN THE ORCHARD 1. The famous story of “the four who entered the orchard (Pardes)” is the focus of this chapter. The short tale as presented (in one of its versions) on p. 130 is often discussed as an intact and complete literary unit but in fact it is part of a larger narrative. Looking at the introductory story leading up to the Pardes tale, as recounted on p. 135, how might knowing the tale of Rabbi Eleazar ben Arakh and Rabban Yohanan influence the way we view the Pardes story? 2. Three of Akiva’s compatriots are profoundly damaged by “looking” after entering the “orchard”—one dies, one goes mad, one becomes an apostate. How might the experience of entering the Pardes and gazing have affected them in this way? Why is Akiva able to go up in peace and come down in peace? 3. How does the picture of Akiva shown throughout this chapter amplify or change your view of him from what you’ve seen up to this point in the book? CHAPTER 7: THE LAST YEARS 1. Scholars have long speculated about the possible relationship between Rabbi Akiva and the person known to us as Bar Kokhba (as explained in the chapter we now know that his actual name was Shimon bar Kosibah). Bar Kokhba was the leader of the revolt against Rome (132-135 CE) that ended in disastrous defeat. The only text that actually connects Akiva and Bar Kokhba is the enigmatic incident reported in the Jerusalem Talmud in which Akiva sees Bar Kokhba and says “This one is King Messiah!” (see p. 150). What arguments might you raise to claim that Akiva either was or was not a supporter of the Bar Kokhba revolt? 2. The text in the Mishnah that undergirds the story of Akiva’s death (quoted on p. 160) says that a person must “bless God for evil just as one blesses God for good.” The death of Akiva is told as an example of this principle. How might you understand the Mishnah’s statement if you were to disconnect it from the death of Akiva? Are there ways that this might make sense to you in a less dramatic circumstance?

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 3. Akiva’s death ensues from his decision to teach Torah in public. There were certainly other options—he might, as suggested in the text given on p. 164, have taught Torah in “an enclosed space,” that is, in secret. Why do you think Akiva chooses to teach in public? And how do you understand Akiva’s enigmatic explanation of his actions through the parable of the fox and the fish (p. 162)? EPILOGUE: THE AFTERLIFE OF AKIVA 1. The debate between Rabbi Akiva and Ben Azzai (pp. 174-175) about “the great principle of the Torah” represents their attempt to boil down all of God’s teachings to a single idea. What are the different implications between choosing Akiva’s approach or choosing Ben Azzai’s approach? Are these mutually exclusive? Which of these speaks most powerfully to you? 2. The remarkable story told in the Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Menahot (pp. 184-188) encompasses many aspects both of Akiva’s life and of the core values of rabbinic Judaism. It takes two of the most important figures in Jewish history—Moses and Akiva—and through an inventive narrative framework puts them (literally) in the same room together. Why does the Talmud choose to put these two heroes into the same story? What is this story trying to teach about the nature of interpretation across time? In what ways might this story connect to our own time and our own readings of Torah? 3. On pp.190-191, the question of the relationship between the “historical Akiva” and the Akiva that has come down to us through the texts of the Jewish tradition is connected to a quotation from Ahad Ha’am’s essay about Moses. Do you find Ahad Ha’am’s words helpful as a way to think about Rabbi Akiva’s story and its connection, as Margaret Atwood might call it, to “the real story?” 4. Rabbi Akiva: Sage of the Talmud ends with a reflection about the “personal Akiva” by the writer of this book. The theme of friendship and community is where the book ends. Having read this book, what aspect or aspects of Akiva’s life do you find most powerful and memorable? What might be your own Akiva?

ADDITIONAL READING The classic biography of Rabbi Akiva, Akiba: Scholar, Saint and Martyr by Louis Finkelstein published in the early 1930s, still can be found online through booksellers such as Amazon. com. Even though it is dated in its approach to rabbinic stories and, of course, historical research has advanced over the last 80 years it is still a lovely and readable book. It tells the life of Akiva as a continuous narrative melding together different rabbinic traditions to form a whole portrait. Finkelstein takes the stories at face value as historical fact and does not dive into their literary features, but he writes in a clear and accessible fashion almost novelistically. For a fictional treatment of the world of Rabbi Akiva, first published in 1939 and still in print, see Milton Steinberg, As a Driven Leaf (Springfield, NJ: Behrman House Publishing, 2015). For the historical background of the rabbinic period two books are highly recommended and aimed at general readers: Shaye J. D. Cohen, From the Maccabees to the Mishnah (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press; 3rd edition, 2014) and Seth Schwartz, The Ancient Jews from Alexander to Muhammad (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). A more comprehensive academic work is Schwartz’s Imperialism and Jewish Society: 200 B.C.E. to 640 C.E. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004). There are many stories about Rabbi Akiva scattered throughout rabbinic literature and not every tale or teaching could be included in Rabbi Akiva: Sage of the Talmud. Two useful anthologies of stories about Akiva (along with other sages of the Talmudic world) can be found in the following works. First there is the monumental compendium of rabbinic materials produced by the great Hebrew poet of the early 20th Century, Hayim Nahman Bialik (1873-1934) and his colleague, author and editor Yehoshua Hana Ravnitzky (18591944), called Sefer Haggadah, The Book of Legends. Bialik and Ravnitzky’s mission was to make the resources of the classical Jewish religious tradition available to all Jews especially those who came from secular backgrounds. This has long been a popular book in Israel and in Jewish schools in the Diaspora. The Book of Legends includes a wide range of rabbinic sources including a section of tales about the sages, which includes a number of stories about Akiva. Fortunately, in 1992, an English translation by Rabbi William Braude was published by Schocken Books. Judah Nadich published a collection of stories from rabbinic sources mostly focused on Akiva. Published by Jason Aronson Books in 1998, this volume is entitled Rabbi Akiba and His Contemporaries. The book by Nadich presents the stories with helpful explanatory notes, but neither his book nor The Book of Legends offers interpretations of the tales. A number of writers have published books in recent years focused on tales about the sages. These books look at the stories from a variety of points of view—historical, literary, theological. Some aim at an academic audience; others are geared for a general reader. Rabbi Akiva stories with interpretations appear, of course, in a number of these works. The most well-known scholar working in the field of rabbinic stories today is Jeffrey L. Rubenstein. Readers can turn to his Talmudic Stories: Narrative Art, Composition, and Culture (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999); The Culture of the Babylonian

ADDITIONAL READING Talmud (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003); Stories of the Babylonian Talmud (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010); and a collection of the stories, with short commentaries, aimed at general readers, Rabbinic Stories (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2002). Other books that focus on tales of the rabbis include: Burton Visotzky, Sage Tales: Wisdom and Wonder from the Rabbis of the Talmud (Nashville, Tennessee: Turner Books/ Jewish Lights, 2014); Ruth Calderon, A Bride for One Night: Talmud Tales (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 2014); Shulamit Valler, Sorrow and Distress in the Talmud (Brighton, MA: Academic Studies Press, 2011) and Binyamin Lau in a three-volume set called The Sages, (Jerusalem: Koren Publishers, 2010-2013). â&#x20AC;&#x192;

EXTRA: RABBI AKIVA IN PICTORIAL RENDORINGS Representations of Rabbi Akiva appear in a number of illuminated Passover Haggadot generally from the Middle Ages or early modern times. These volumes were commissioned by wealthy patrons and many today reside in various library collections. The black and white frontispiece facing the title page of Rabbi Akiva: Sage of the Talmud reproduces an image from The Rylands Haggadah, a mid-fourteenth century work now in the John Rylands Library at the University of Manchester in England. One can see the frontispiece in color on the website of the Library in its Hebraica collection with by clicking HERE. A beautiful full-size facsimile edition of The Rylands Haggadah, edited by Raphael Loewe, was published by Harry N. Abrams press in 1988. The cover of Rabbi Akiva: Sage of the Talmud uses a reproduction of a page from The Brother Haggadah which is in The British Library in England. Its name derives from its close connection in style and origin, to The Rylands Haggadah. The Brother Haggadah was also published in a full-color facsimile edition, edited by Marc Michael Epstein and Raphael Loewe, by Thames & Hudson in 2016. Another color facsimile Haggadah with an illustration of Rabbi Akiva is The Monkâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Haggadah, a work from 15th century southern Germany. Interestingly it was intended for a Christian monastery. This edition was edited with essays by David Stern, Christoph Markschies and Sarit Shalev-Eyni and published by Penn State University Press in 2015. Though the illustration of Rabbi Akiva is far less compelling than those in the Haggadot mentioned above, the introductory essays in this volume tell the fascinating story of this Haggadahâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s origins and the mysteries that still remain about this work.

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