Rabbi Akiva Quotes

Probably no statement attributed to Akiva is more well-known and more associated with him than this one: of the verse “love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18),

There is a moment in the tractate Menahot when the Rabbis imagine what takes place when Moses ascends Mount Sinai to receive the Torah. In this account (there are several) Moses ascends to heaven, where he finds God busily adding crownlike ornaments to the letters of the Torah. Moses asks God what He is doing and God explains that in the future there will be a man named Akiva, son of Joseph, who will base a huge mountain of Jewish law on these very orthographic ornaments. Intrigued, Moses asks God to show this man to him. Moses is told to 'go back eighteen rows,' and suddenly, as in a dream, Moses is in a classroom, class is in session and the teacher is none other than Rabbi Akiva. Moses has been told to go to the back of the study house because that is where the youngest and least educated students sit. Akiva, the great first-century sage, is explaining Torah to his disciples, but Moses is completely unable to follow the lesson. It is far too complicated for him. He is filled with sadness when, suddenly, one of the disciples asks Akiva how he knows something is true and Akiva answers: 'It is derived from a law given to Moses on Mount Sinai.' Upon hearing this answer, Moses is satisfied - though he can't resist asking why, if such brilliant men as Akiva exist, Moses needs to be the one to deliver the Torah. At this point God loses patience and tells Moses, 'Silence, it's my will.

Whose acts are greater, man’s or God’s?” Rabbi Akiva answered that man’s acts are greater. Turnus Rufus responded that the heavens and earth are God’s creations which man cannot equal. Rabbi Akiva then brings sheaves of wheat and cakes and says to Turnus Rufus, “The sheaves of wheat were made by God while these cakes were made by man.” He explains that man is not meant to eat wheat as it grows from the ground but rather to process and develop it into a complete product. Rabbi Akiva then says, “Why does a child come out with an umbilical cord until the mother cuts it?” Rabbi Akiva is trying to communicate to Turnus Rufus that natural, God-created states are not necessarily perfect. Judaism does not believe in taking the natural world as it is; humans are meant to take the materials God provided and improve on them. There are imperfections in the world, and we need to perfect them. Successful

Wasn't forgetfulness a gift of the gods to the ancient world? Without it. Life would be intolerable, wouldn't it? Yes, but the Jews live by other rules. For a Jew, nothing is more important than memory. He is bound to his origins by memory. It is memory that connects him to Abraham, Moses and Rabbi Akiva.

I believed that only constant surrender would ensure our survival, but Rabbi Akiva and Bar Kokhba proved to me with a string of brilliant victories that if the nation of Israel believes in itself and unifies in a common goal, no power in the world can stand against it, just as it was in the days of the Maccabees.

He freely chose instead to see even the worst acts of his enemies as a form of service to the Creator. They had provided him with an opportunity to comport himself with courage and certainty, and thereby to reveal more Light in the world. By no means was Rabbi Akiva blind or oblivious to evil. On the contrary, he had the strength to see it for what it truly was and still is. There

Mo nodded toward the back room just as Rabbi Kessler shuffled out, waving an open book at Mo and grinning from ear to ear. ‘So listen to this, Mo! Here’s how Rabbi Halberstam answers your question. And what’s more, he quotes Rashi, Rabbi Akiva, and Ramban, all of whom he completely disagrees with. And you know what? I completely disagree with all of them—and him too!’ Rabbi Kessler chuckled in gleeful anticipation. ‘So roll up your sleeves, Mo. We’ve got our work cut out for us!

Silence is the fence around wisdom

When Rabbi Akiva died, Moses was watching from heaven. Moses saw the torture and martyrdom, and complained to God about it. Why did God let the Romans flay an eighty-five-year-old Torah scholar? Moses’ question—the tough one about God’s allowing human, moral evil—is reasonable only if we believe that a good God causes, or at any rate allows, everything that happens, and that it’s all for the best. God told Moses, “Shtok, keep quiet. Kakh ala bemakhshava lefanai, this is how I see things.” In another version of the same story, God replied to Moses, “Silence! This is how it is in the highest thought.

Visitors to Mason’s Yard in St. James’s will search in vain for Isherwood Fine Arts. They will, however, find the extraordinary Old Master gallery owned by my dear friend Patrick Matthiesen. A brilliant art historian blessed with an infallible eye, Patrick never would have allowed a misattributed work by Artemisia Gentileschi to languish in his storerooms for nearly a half century. The painting depicted in The Cellist does not exist. If it did, it would look a great deal like the one produced by Artemisia’s father, Orazio, that hangs in the National Gallery of Art in Washington. Like Julian Isherwood and his new managing partner, Sarah Bancroft, the inhabitants of my version of London’s art world are wholly fictitious, as are their sometimes-questionable antics. Their midsummer drinking session at Wiltons Restaurant would have been entirely permissible, as the landmark London eatery briefly reopened its doors before a rise in coronavirus infection rates compelled Prime Minister Boris Johnson to shut down all non-essential businesses. Wherever possible, I tried to adhere to prevailing conditions and government-mandated restrictions. But when necessary, I granted myself the license to tell my story without the crushing weight of the pandemic. I chose Switzerland as the primary setting for The Cellist because life there proceeded largely as normal until November 2020. That said, a private concert and reception at the Kunsthaus Zürich, even for a cause as worthy as democracy, likely could not have taken place in mid-October. I offer my profound apologies to the renowned Janine Jansen for the unflattering comparison to Anna Rolfe. Ms. Jansen is rightly regarded as one of her generation’s finest violinists, and Anna, of course, exists only in my imagination. She was introduced in the second Gabriel Allon novel, The English Assassin, along with Christopher Keller. Martin Landesmann, my committed if deeply flawed Swiss financier, made his debut in The Rembrandt Affair. The story of Gabriel’s blood-soaked duel with the Russian arms dealer Ivan Kharkov is told in Moscow Rules and its sequel, The Defector. Devotees of F. Scott Fitzgerald undoubtedly spotted the luminous line from The Great Gatsby that appears in chapter 32 of The Cellist. For the record, I am well aware that the headquarters of Israel’s secret intelligence service is no longer located on King Saul Boulevard in Tel Aviv. There is no safe house in the historic moshav of Nahalal—at least not one that I am aware of—and Gabriel and his family do not live on Narkiss Street in West Jerusalem. Occasionally, however, they can be spotted at Focaccia on Rabbi Akiva Street, one of my favorite restaurants in Jerusalem.

About a century after Jesus’ time, Rabbi Akiva declared, “ ‘And you shall love

revolt. At the beginning of the second revolt, Rabbi Akiva declared Simon bar Kakhba the Messiah. Because of this action, believers in Jesus felt that if they fought, they would be endorsing Simon as Messiah and would be denying Jesus.[112] This drift away from our Hebraic heritage

He made the hearts of Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Akiva stubborn, so they could traverse the highway from ignorance to enlightenment in adulthood.

According to Josephus, Gessius Florus never omitted “any sort of violence, nor any unjust sort of punishment; . . . it was this Florus who necessitated us [the Jews] to take up arms against the Romans, while we thought it better to be destroyed at once, than by little and little” (Antiquities 20:254–57).

And he said, “It is not that Eleazar knows more Torah than I do but that he is descended from greater men than I am. Happy is the person whose ancestors have gained merit for him. Happy is the person who has a ‘peg’ on which to hang.

The clause “whose inside is not like his outside” is used elsewhere in the Talmud (b. Yoma “The Day” 72b) to indicate a person who puts on a nice show for others that does not conform to his inner, true self—a morally deceptive person in other words.

Rabbi Eliezer said to them, “If the law is as I say, let it be proved from heaven.” A heavenly voice went forth and said: “What is it for you with Rabbi Eliezer since the law is according to him in every place?” Rabbi Joshua stood on his feet and quoted scripture, “It is not in heaven” (Deuteronomy 30:12). What did he mean? Rabbi Jeremiah said, “The Torah was already given on Mount Sinai, so we do not listen to a heavenly voice. It is written in the Torah, ‘After the majority one must incline’” (Exodus 23:2). [Later] Rabbi Nathan came upon Elijah and asked him, “What was the Holy One doing at that time?” Elijah said to him, “He laughed and smiled and said ‘My sons have defeated me, My sons have defeated me.’” b. Bava Metzia “The Middle Gate” 59b8 Writers interested in the theological or legal

I will tell you a parable. To what can this situation be compared: A fox was once walking alongside of a river and saw swarms of fish going from place to place. He said to them: ‘From what are you fleeing?’ “The fish replied: ‘From the nets that people throw to catch us.

There, God gave a different answer: Akiva is invited into the “world to come.” He is promised an afterlife as compensation. But here, there is no recompense. It is a stark “Quiet!” from God—a response that feels particularly resonant for us today: there is no answer to the suffering of the righteous, and the promise of the world to come offers small comfort. This text seems to be saying that even for the greatest of rabbinic heroes the mystery of death and suffering is somehow beyond human comprehension, locked in the mind of God and inaccessible to any of us.

You shall not hate your brother in your heart. You shall surely rebuke your neighbor but bear no sin because of him. You

Third, Akiva adds a different perspective. The real problem, he suggests, is that no one understands the best way to rebuke another person. If the person doing the rebuking understood how to rebuke, rebuke would be more easily accepted by the other.

Rabbi Akiva taught a curious solution to the ever-galling problem that while many good people and their children suffer enormously, many louses and their children prosper and thrive in the pink of health. God punishes the good, he proposed, in this short life, for their few sins, and rewards them eternally in the world to come. Similarly, God rewards the evil-doers in this short life for their few good deeds, and punishes them eternally in the world to come. I do not know how that sat with people. It is, like every ingenious, Godfearing explanation of natural calamity, harsh all around.

These shmystal-crystals, Akiva. What do people do with them? Do they talk to them and wait for an answer? Do they hold them up to the sun and tan their faces? What?” “I’m not a crystal expert, Rav Schulman, but I think they’re used to communicate with the dead.” The old man shook his head with disapproval. “I will never understand the fascination with the dead.” “We all die.” “Yes, we do, but we all live as well. People should concentrate on bettering their lives, not trying to second-guess the other side. If they live righteously, they’ll have nothing to worry about. Boruch Hashem, I’ve made it this far. Now one might even say I have one foot in the grave—” “Rabbi—” “Not that I’m ready to die.” The old man stood and took out two shot glasses. “But if it happens, it happens. People who fear death do not fear God. Besides, Akiva, what do the sages teach us about Torah?” “It was meant for the living not the dead.” “Correct!” Schulman filled the glasses with whiskey and handed one to Decker. “So, my friend, let us live and learn and do mitzvot as Hashem commanded us.” He held his drinking glass aloft. “To life—l’chaim.” “L’chaim,” Decker said.

What, in the end, can we say about Rabbi Akiva? Throughout this book I have tried to keep in mind the words of the novelist Margaret Atwood in the epigraph: “There’s the story, then there’s the real story, then there’s the story of how the story came to be told. Then there’s what you leave out of the story. Which is part of the story too.

Rabbi Eliezer knows that a man like Akiva, who was born and grew up outside the world of Torah, is precisely the kind of man who can understand that which is walled off from others. It is human nature: people forced to uproot themselves painfully at a young age are able to retain flexible attitudes later in life, while those who remain in the same surroundings all their lives develop ossified attitudes and icy souls, and they hold the same opinions all their lives. Sometimes, they appear to have changed, but these are not real changes that stem from the depths of their hearts; they are merely old ideas in new dress.