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The Rabbi Akiva exchange, part 1: The greatest Jewish sage of his time

[additional-authors]
March 9, 2016

Rabbi Dr. Reuven Hammer is a Conservative rabbi, scholar of Jewish liturgy, author and lecturer. Rabbi Hammer, who earned his ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary, is a founder of the “Masorti” (Conservative) movement in Israel and a past president of the International Rabbinical Assembly. He served many years as head of the Masorti Beth Din in Israel. Rabbi Hammer is a prolific writer, and his articles appear often in the Israeli press and elsewhere. Two of his books, Sifre, A Taanaitic Commentary on Deuteronomy and Entering the High Holy Days, were awarded the National Jewish Book Council prize as the best book of scholarship for the year. Rabbi Hammer is the 2003 recipient of the Simon Greenberg Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Rabbinate by the Zeigler Rabbinical School of the University of Judaism.

The following exchange will focus on Rabbi Hamer's book Akiva: Life, Legend Legacy, an account of the life of the great Jewish sage Rabbi Akiva.

***

Dear Rabbi Hammer,

Your new book on Rabbi Akiva, one of the most mythological figures in Jewish history, takes on the difficult task of separating between the facts and the legends concerning the great Talmudic sage. In the preface you state that after writing the book you ended up knowing “both more and less” than you had known before about its hero.

For this introductory round, I'd like to ask you to shortly introduce the subject of you book twice – once as a legend, and once as a historical character – and to let us know what kind of life and personality remain after putting the great rabbi under historical scrutiny.

Yours,

Shmuel.

***

Dear Shmuel,

For the reasons that I discussed in my book, determining the historical facts concerning any of the great Sages is an almost impossible task and one can never say with 100 percent certainty that we know the exact truth about any of them. With that caveat, I believe that the outlines of Akiva’s life are fairly clear. He came from a peasant background, grew up without learning and without any connection to religious traditions. After his marriage he decided to improve himself and to study. His intelligence and diligence prevailed, and even as a student he excelled. He was ordained and thrust into positions of leadership and became the greatest Sage of his time. When anti-religious decrees when into effect under Hadrian he refused to abide by them and was therefore imprisoned and died while under questioning. Later traditions elaborated on all of that, adding legends concerning his wife, his father-in-law, his years of study and the circumstances surrounding his death, enhancing his status as a martyr and an example for others both in life and death.

From a historical point of view the importance of his life is centered on two things that were crucial for the development of Rabbinic Judaism as we know it, two things that seem to be quite different from one another. The first is his concept of the Torah as a unique book, created by God even before the creation of the world, containing mystical meanings in every jot and tittle. This permitted him to be far reaching in his interpretations of the Torah, expanding its meaning and even its laws in ways that were much more flexible than the methods of others such as Rabbi Ishmael. The second is his determination to collect and classify all the traditions of Judaism that had been created throughout the ages and set them into a logical format, divorced from connection to the Biblical texts. The result was the creation of the Mishna. His work in that was continued after his death by his students and brought to a conclusion 70 years later by Rabbi Judah the Prince. To imagine Judaism without the Mishna is impossible which really emphasizes Akiva’s overwhelming importance in our religious and intellectual history.

His personality was fascinating. He was both fastidious in observance and flexible in changing laws when needed. He revered his teachers but often disagreed with them and challenged them. He was an original thinker who never gave stock answers, a great story-teller. He was ever an optimist and a comforter. He hated Rome, but was fastidious about treating non-Jews honestly and fairly. He was a scholar and involved with the needs of the community, caring for the poor and needy. More than any other Sage, he reminds me of modern rabbis with his care for individuals, and even of the Hasidic Rebbe but without the court-like trappings. I would hold him up as the model of what a rabbinical leader should be. 

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