Who is Rabbi akiva? — Rabbi Akiva ben Yosef

רַבִּי עֲקִיבָא

c. 50 – 135 CE · Land of Israel

The illiterate shepherd who started at forty, learned from a stone, and became the teacher of the Jewish people.

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The facts

Started: At forty, unable to read (Avot d'Rabbi Natan 6)
Father: Yosef, a righteous convert (Rambam's introduction)
Wife: Rachel, daughter of Ben Kalba Savua (Ketubot 62b–63a)
Students: 24,000; then five who carried the Torah forward (Yevamot 62b)
Died: A martyr under Rome, saying the Shema (Berakhot 61b)

Overview

Rabbi Akiva ben Yosef was an illiterate shepherd who couldn't read a word at forty, hated Torah scholars, and became the greatest teacher of his generation and one of the pillars of the entire Oral Torah. He lived in the Land of Israel from about 50 to 135 of the common era, through the destruction of the Second Temple and the Roman persecutions that followed, and he died a martyr with the words of the Shema on his lips.

The Rambam records that his father, Yosef, was a righteous convert. The man whose name appears on page after page of the Mishnah, whose students wrote down the Oral Torah, came from a convert's family and started learning the alef-bet as a grown man.

Every story on this page comes from the Talmud and the classic sources, with links so you can read the original for yourself on Sefaria. He is one of the Jewish OGz, and maybe the most hopeful of them all. Whatever age you are, whatever you didn't learn as a kid, Rabbi Akiva started later and from further back. Meet the other OGs on the OGz page.

The shepherd who hated scholars

Akiva began life as a poor shepherd, working the flocks of Ben Kalba Savua, one of the richest men in Jerusalem (Ketubot 62b). He had no learning at all.

Worse, he resented the people who did. Years later he told his students: "When I was an ignoramus I said: Who will give me a Torah scholar, so that I can bite him like a donkey?" His students asked why he said "like a donkey" and not "like a dog". He answered: a dog bites but doesn't break bones; a donkey bites and breaks bones (Pesachim 49b).

That's how far outside he was. Not just ignorant, but angry at the people who had what he didn't. Anyone who grew up feeling looked down on by educated, put-together people knows that anger. Rabbi Akiva felt it too, and he wasn't ashamed to tell his own students about it later. The greatest teacher of the generation wanted them to know he had once wanted to break their bones.

Rachel

Ben Kalba Savua had a daughter. The Talmud says she saw that the poor shepherd was humble and refined, and she made him an offer: "If I marry you, will you go to the study hall and learn Torah?" He said yes. She married him secretly and sent him off to learn (Ketubot 62b). Later tradition calls her Rachel.

Her father was furious and disowned her, vowing she would get nothing from his estate. She lived in poverty for years while her husband studied.

Notice what happened here. The first person to see Rabbi Akiva's greatness wasn't a rabbi. It was a woman who looked at a poor, angry, unlearned shepherd and saw his character underneath. She bet her inheritance on who he could become.

The water and the stone

How does a forty-year-old who can't read decide to start? Avot d'Rabbi Natan tells the story. Akiva was standing by a well and noticed a stone with a hole worn through it. He asked who had carved it. They told him: the water, dripping on it, day after day. And they quoted the verse "the waters wear away stones" (Job 14:19) (Avot d'Rabbi Natan 6).

Akiva reasoned: if something as soft as water can carve something as hard as stone, then the words of Torah, which are hard like iron, can surely carve their way into my heart, which is only flesh and blood. And he went to learn.

This is the most important lesson Rabbi Akiva ever taught, and he taught it before he knew a single letter: change doesn't come from one big blow. It comes from drops, every day, for years. One page a day. One prayer a day. One class a week. It looks like nothing until the day there's a hole through the stone.

Starting with the alef-bet

The tradition says Akiva went to a children's teacher together with his own young son. They sat side by side and learned the letters: alef, bet. Then the first words of the Torah. A grown man sitting with the kids, learning to read.

There's no shortcut in that picture, and no shame either. For anyone coming to Torah late, whether from the streets, from prison, from a secular home or from another faith, Rabbi Akiva is the proof that it's never too late to sit down with the alef-bet. The only thing that would have been a waste was not starting.

Twelve years, and twelve more

Akiva went away to study for twelve years. When he finally came home, bringing twelve thousand students with him, he overheard an old man taunting his wife: how long will you live like a widow while your husband is gone? And she answered: if he would listen to me, he would stay another twelve years.

Rabbi Akiva heard her and said: "I have permission." He turned around without going in and went back for another twelve years. When he came home the second time, he had twenty-four thousand students (Ketubot 63a).

His wife went out to greet him. Her neighbors told her to borrow decent clothes, because hers weren't fit to meet an important man. When she reached him, she fell at his feet, and his attendants, who didn't know who she was, pushed her away. Rabbi Akiva stopped them: "Leave her alone. My Torah and yours is hers" (Ketubot 63a).

Everything he had, he credited to her. The greatest scholar in the land, in front of twenty-four thousand students, told the world that the woman in the borrowed clothes was the real owner of all that Torah.

The father-in-law comes back

The story of Rachel has an ending. When Rabbi Akiva came home a great man, his wealthy father-in-law, Ben Kalba Savua, heard that a famous scholar had come to town. Not knowing who it was, he went to him to ask him to annul the vow he had made against his daughter, so that he could support her again.

Rabbi Akiva asked him: "Did you make your vow thinking that this Akiva would become a great man?" He answered: "If I had thought he would learn even one chapter, even one law, I would never have been so harsh." Rabbi Akiva told him: "I am he." Ben Kalba Savua fell on his face, kissed his feet, and gave him half his fortune (Ketubot 63a).

The Talmud adds that Rabbi Akiva's own daughter later did the same thing for Ben Azzai, another simple man, marrying him and sending him to learn, and he too became a great sage. The people said: "The ewe follows the ewe; a daughter's deeds are like her mother's."

Every family that ever wrote someone off should read this story. The shepherd they were ashamed of became the teacher of the generation. And the door back was open even for the father-in-law who had been harsh: he was welcomed, not humiliated.

Twenty-four thousand students

The Talmud records that Rabbi Akiva had twelve thousand pairs of students, from Gevat to Antipatris, and that they all died in one period of time, because they did not treat each other with respect (Yevamot 62b). Jewish tradition places this between Pesach and Shavuot, which is why that period, the Omer, is kept with signs of mourning.

Imagine it: everything he had built over twenty-four years, gone. And then, the Talmud says, "the world was desolate of Torah until Rabbi Akiva came to our rabbis in the South and taught them". He started again, now an old man, with five students: Rabbi Meir, Rabbi Yehuda, Rabbi Yosei, Rabbi Shimon and Rabbi Elazar ben Shamua. Those five carried the Torah forward. The Mishnah we learn today comes through them.

Two lessons. First: the students didn't die from lack of learning. They died from lack of respect for each other. Brilliance without decency is a dead end. Second: Rabbi Akiva lost everything and started over again, with five. That's the man who learned from the water and the stone. He knew you can always begin dripping again.

Moshe in the eighth row

The Talmud tells one of its most astonishing stories about Rabbi Akiva. When Moshe went up to receive the Torah, he found Hashem tying little crowns onto the letters. Moshe asked why. Hashem told him: a man will be born many generations from now, Akiva ben Yosef, who will derive mounds and mounds of laws from every thorn of these crowns (Menachot 29b).

Moshe asked to see him. He was transported to Rabbi Akiva's study hall and sat down in the eighth row, at the back with the beginners, and he couldn't follow what they were saying. He felt weak, as if his own Torah were lacking. Then a student asked Rabbi Akiva for the source of a law, and Rabbi Akiva answered: "It is a law given to Moshe at Sinai." And Moshe's mind was put at ease.

Think about that picture: the greatest prophet who ever lived, sitting in the back row of a class taught by a former shepherd who couldn't read at forty, and the shepherd crediting everything back to him. The Torah grows in every generation, and it all comes from Sinai. And the late starter can end up teaching Moshe's Torah in ways Moshe himself marveled at.

"Love your neighbor" and "beloved is man"

Maybe because of what happened to his students, Rabbi Akiva taught that the verse "Love your neighbor as yourself" (Leviticus 19:18) is "a great principle of the Torah" (Sifra, Kedoshim 4:12).

And in Pirkei Avot he taught: "Beloved is man, for he was created in the image of G-d. Especially beloved is he, for it was made known to him that he was created in the image of G-d" (Pirkei Avot 3:14).

Every human being, Rabbi Akiva taught, carries the image of G-d. Not only scholars. Not only Jews. Not only the respectable. The shepherd who wanted to bite scholars like a donkey came to teach that every person is beloved, because he had once been the person nobody respected, and someone had loved him anyway.

"Everything Hashem does is for the best"

Rabbi Akiva taught: "A person should always accustom himself to say: everything that G-d does, He does for the best" (Berakhot 60b).

The Talmud tells how he lived it. Once he was traveling, came to a town, and asked for a place to sleep. Nobody would take him in. He said: everything Hashem does is for the best, and went to sleep in a field. He had a rooster, a donkey and a candle with him. The wind blew out the candle. A cat ate the rooster. A lion ate the donkey. Each time he said: everything Hashem does is for the best.

That night an army came and took the whole town captive. Rabbi Akiva, alone in the field, with no light, no crowing rooster and no braying donkey to give him away, was the only one saved.

Most of us only see the reason afterwards, if ever. The rejection, the loss, the door that closed. Rabbi Akiva's practice was to say it before he knew the ending. That isn't pretending the bad thing is good. It's trusting that the story isn't over yet.

Laughing at the fox

After the destruction of the Temple, Rabbi Akiva walked up to Jerusalem with three of the great sages of his generation. When they reached the Temple Mount, they saw a fox come out of the place where the Holy of Holies had stood. The others began to weep. Rabbi Akiva laughed (Makkot 24b).

"Why are you laughing?" they asked. "Why are you weeping?" he answered. They said: this is the place about which it is written that an outsider who comes near shall die, and now foxes walk through it, and we shouldn't weep?

Rabbi Akiva explained: the prophets made two prophecies. One said Jerusalem would be plowed like a field and the Temple Mount would become a wild forest. The other said old men and women would once again sit in the streets of Jerusalem and children would play there. "Until now I was afraid the second prophecy might not come true. Now that I've seen the first one fulfilled, I know the second will be fulfilled too." The sages answered him: "Akiva, you have comforted us."

That's the eye of a man who learned from the water and the stone. Where others saw only ruin, he saw proof that the promise was real. If the bad prophecy came true word for word, the good one will too.

"With all your soul"

Under the emperor Hadrian, the Romans outlawed the teaching of Torah. Rabbi Akiva kept teaching in public. He was arrested, imprisoned, and executed with terrible cruelty: the Romans tore his flesh with iron combs.

It was the time of the morning Shema, and he recited it. His students said: "Our teacher, even now?" He answered: "All my days I was troubled by the verse 'with all your soul', meaning even if He takes your soul. I said: when will I have the chance to fulfill it? Now that I have the chance, shall I not fulfill it?" He drew out the last word, Echad, "One", until his soul left him (Berakhot 61b).

He is remembered among the Ten Martyrs whose deaths we read about on Yom Kippur and Tisha b'Av. The shepherd who began at forty ended his life with the word "One" on his lips.

A convert's son

In the introduction to his great code of law, the Rambam traces the chain of Torah tradition from Moshe to the end of the Talmud, generation by generation. When he reaches Rabbi Akiva he adds one line: "Yosef, his father, was a righteous convert." And of Rabbi Akiva's student, Rabbi Meir, he writes that he was "a son of righteous converts" (Rambam, Introduction to the Mishneh Torah).

Stop on that for a moment. Two of the most important links in the chain of the Oral Torah came from convert families. The Mishnah that every Jewish child learns runs straight through them. The Talmud we read on our Onkelos page said that the descendants of Israel's enemies ended up teaching Torah; the Rambam shows us that the children of converts ended up holding up the whole structure.

For anyone who has walked the road to conversion, Rabbi Akiva is family.

How to start like Rabbi Akiva

If you're reading this and thinking "I'm too old" or "I'm too far behind", here is the Rabbi Akiva plan, straight from his own life:

1. Start with the letters. Don't be embarrassed to learn the alef-bet as an adult. Sit with the kids if you have to. He did.

2. Drip, don't flood. Ten minutes a day beats ten hours once. Pick one thing, a verse, a page, a short class, and do it every single day. Water wears through stone.

3. Find your Rachel. Surround yourself with at least one person who believes in who you could become, and who will send you back to learn when you want to quit.

4. Respect everyone. His first students fell because they didn't honor each other. Learning without decency goes nowhere.

5. Say "for the best" before you know the ending. Train yourself to trust that the story isn't over.

6. If you fall, start over with five. Even after losing everything, he rebuilt. So can you.

Why Rabbi Akiva is an OG

He was forty, illiterate, poor and angry. His father was a convert. He hated the people who had the education he didn't. And he became the teacher of the whole Jewish people, because one woman saw his character, because one stone taught him that drops wear through rock, and because he was willing to sit with the children and learn alef-bet.

He lost twenty-four thousand students and started again with five. He laughed at a fox on the ruins of the Temple because he believed the good prophecy would come true. And he died saying "One".

Every person who thinks it's too late, every person who thinks they started too far back, should know his story. Read how one man from the streets started late too, in G2G: From Gangster to Ger, and meet the rest of the Jewish OGz: Rashi, Onkelos, Avraham Avinu and Resh Lakish.

Questions to think about

What's your drop of water? What is one small thing you could do every single day that, in ten years, would wear through stone?

Who is your Rachel? Who saw something in you before you saw it in yourself? What did they give up?

What would you do with five? If you lost almost everything you built, who are the five people you'd start again with?

What do you see when you look at ruins? The fox, or the promise?

חָבִיב אָדָם שֶׁנִּבְרָא בְצֶלֶם
“Beloved is man, for he was created in the image of G-d.”

— Rabbi Akiva, Pirkei Avot 3:14

Books about Rabbi Akiva

Rabbi Akiva: Sage of the Talmud — Barry W. Holtz. Yale University Press, Jewish Lives series, 2017. A modern biography that separates what the sources say from what later legend added.
Akiba: Scholar, Saint and Martyr — Louis Finkelstein. Covici, Friede, 1936 (many later editions). The classic twentieth-century biography of Rabbi Akiva and his world.