An illustration of Rabbi Akiva from the Mantua Haggadah of 1568

Now that Lag b’Omer is behind us and the mourning customs have been lifted, it may be a good time to reflect more deeply on the whole story of Rabbi Akiva and his 24,000 students. This story is very well-known, of course, and deeply ingrained in our psyches. But for me, like for many people, multiple aspects of the story never really made sense. So many questions emerge, each more troubling than the next.

First, how it is possible that 24,000 Torah giants—talmidei chakhamim and presumably very righteous people—were slaughtered in the span of just a few weeks? The students of the great and saintly Rabbi Akiva, no less? Why did he have to suffer such a horrendous loss? And all because the students “didn’t honour each other properly”? Since when does lack of honour incur mass execution? And what does it even mean, anyway, that they didn’t “honour” each other? How so?

Another question: why specifically 24,000 disciples? How did Rabbi Akiva even get such an astronomical number of students in the first place, at a time following the Great Revolt when the Jewish community in the Holy Land was decimated? And why does the number 24 keep coming up in the story? Recall that Rabbi Akiva left his home and was away from him wife for 24 years, returning with 24,000 students. Surely this is not coincidental. I believe it might actually hold the key to answering all of the perplexing questions above, as well as another big mystery:

Why is it that the mourning period for the 24,000 students specifically requires abstaining from weddings. As explored in the past, the earliest mention of “mourning” during the Omer is from the times of the Geonim, and suggests to only avoid weddings. (The first halakhic code to officially speak about it, the Arba Turim, notes a universal custom to avoid weddings, and only a local custom among some communities to avoid haircuts.) Why is the essence of mourning for the 24,000 specifically observed by prohibiting weddings?

Reevaluating the Narrative

When we tell the story of Rabbi Akiva, the standard way of doing so is to highlight his great self-sacrifice and devotion to Torah in leaving his home for 24 years to go learn. As the story goes, he went for 12 years, having no contact at all with his beloved wife Rachel during this time. After 12 years, he finally returned but as he approached his home, he heard his wife say to a neighbour that if her husband could hear her, she would tell him to go for another 12 years. Thus, Rabbi Akiva promptly turned around and did so, not even stopping to stay hello. This story is typically told in a praiseworthy manner: look how great Rabbi Akiva was!

But, wait, was this really so great?

What is so great about a man leaving his wife for 24 years, with no contact whatsoever? Not even a brief check-in to see how she’s doing? Perhaps a short visit to have a cup of tea with her? How many mitzvot did Rabbi Akiva fail to fulfil during this time? What happened to niddah and taharat hamishpacha? What happened to she’erah, kesutah, v’onata—a man’s halakhic obligation to provide his wife’s needs, including love and intimacy? And we mustn’t forget he left Rachel in a state of dire poverty. (At one point, she is said to have even sold her hair to help finance his learning.)

What about Rabbi Akiva’s obligations as a father? Where were his kids? We know that he had two sons that died at a young age (Moed Katan 21b), and a daughter who was engaged to Ben Azzai (Ketubot 63a). If he left Rachel shortly after getting married (which is how most understand it, since she only married him on condition he would go learn), then it seems he delayed the mitzvah of pru u’rvu by 24 years and only had children afterwards. How Rachel was able to have three children at this advanced age is not clear. (Some say Rabbi Akiva must have had children from a previous marriage.) The timeline is all the more difficult to put together because Ben Azzai was a colleague of Rabbi Akiva and famously ascended to Pardes with him, dying in the process (Chagigah 14b). So if Rabbi Akiva had children before he left to learn, what of his duties as a father?

I think all of these mysteries call for a serious re-evaluation. Rabbi Akiva toiled in Torah study for 24 years straight, and built a massive following of 24,000 devoted students—and then Hashem took it all away in the span of a few days between Pesach and Shavuot. If we are going to be a little bit more honest, a little bit more critical and discerning, a little bit more compassionate, it will become quite obvious why.

Honour Starts at Home

Rachel married Rabbi Akiva on the condition he would go learn, at great personal sacrifice to herself. Did she expect him to be gone for 24 years? Did she really mean what she said after the first 12 years, or was it just a defence mechanism because of all the negativity she faced? When Rabbi Akiva returned after 24 years, Rachel’s neighbours told her to borrow some nice, fancy clothes to go greet her husband (Ketubot 63a, Nedarim 50a). Instead, she went in soiled rags, saying yode’a tzadik nefesh behemto, quoting from Proverbs 12:10 that “the righteous man knows the soul of his beast”. Rachel compared herself to a behemah, an animal, emphasizing the pain and suffering she went through, and how downtrodden she felt. She deliberately greeted him in a dirty, broken state so that he could see what life was like for her over the previous 24 years.

Our Sages taught that “a man should be very careful with his wife’s pain, because her tears come easily, and punishment will come swiftly.” (Bava Metzia 59a) Hashem is particularly sensitive to the suffering of women, and their tears stimulate His strict judgement and retribution. With this in mind, I think we can understand what subsequently happened to Rabbi Akiva. He left his wife alone and impoverished for 24 years. He generated 24,000 students during that time, and then God, very swiftly, took it all away. Torah learning is supreme, yes, but not at the expense of your soulmate. God commanded right at the beginning of the Torah that a man must cleave to his wife and become one with her (Genesis 2:24). And our Sages proclaimed that derekh eretz kadmah laTorah—where one of the classic definitions of derekh eretz is one’s intimate relationship with his wife (along with good manners, and working to earn a living). Marriage comes before Torah.

Similarly, we read in Pirkei Avot (2:2) during these Sefirat haOmer days that “Excellent is the study of Torah when combined with derekh eretz, for toil in them both keeps sin out of one’s mind; but Torah study which is not combined with labour will be nullified and leads to sin.” If a person only learns all day, with no occupation and no derekh eretz, no productive labour and no melakhah (in the words of the Mishnah), their Torah learning will ultimately be nullified. Is this not precisely what happened to Rabbi Akiva? For 24 years, he only toiled in Torah, with no “derekh eretz” nor melakhah. And what happened to the fruits of that Torah learning? All 24,000 students were ultimately nullified. Rabbi Akiva had to start all over again with a small handful of new students.

Rabbi Akiva understood the message from Hashem, and made sure his new students didn’t make the same mistake he did. He subsequently taught that “the greatest Torah principle” is to “love your fellow as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18). One of the traditional interpretations for “fellow”, re’a, is that it refers specifically to one’s spouse, as King Solomon wrote many times in Shir haShirim in referring to his beloved soulmate as ra’ayati. Amazingly, when Rabbi Akiva said that this is the greatest Torah principle, his colleague Ben Azzai responded that an even greater principle is ze sefer toldot Adam… (see Sifra on Kedoshim, Ch. 4). Greater than Leviticus 19:18 is Genesis 5:1, and what does it say? “This is the genealogy of Adam [ze sefer toldot Adam]: When God created man, it was made in the likeness of God; male and female were they created. And when they were created, He blessed them and called them adam.” Ben Azzai did not counter Rabbi Akiva, but only supported and reinforced the message: the most important principle in the Torah is husband and wife becoming one adam!

We find that Rabbi Akiva’s surviving students embraced this lesson. It was best exemplified by Rabbi Meir, arguably Rabbi Akiva’s closest and dearest disciple. We know Rabbi Meir had an excellent marriage with his beloved Beruria, and often talked Torah with her. She was a great sage in her own right, learning “three hundred halakhot in one day” (Pesachim 62b).* I believe here lies the real message of the tragic story of Rabbi Akiva, Rachel, and the 24,000 students—and it perfectly explains that original universal mourning custom of Sefirat haOmer: not to have weddings.

Of all things, why weddings? To emphasize the point loud and clear: your marriage comes first. The human story in the Torah starts with a wedding, and God commands husband and wife to unite and complete each other, to support and refine one another. The first mitzvah is procreation, and the establishment of a healthy, happy, and kosher family. This is the very foundation of Creation, the greatest Torah principle. The tragedy of Rabbi Akiva and his students was a result of failure in kavod, not among the students—which is inexplicable—but a failure in marital kavod. After all, the Talmud (Bava Metzia 59a) says “A man should always be careful to honour his wife [bikhvod ishto] because all blessings come to the home only through the wife.” And (Sanhedrin 76b) that “A man should love his wife as much as himself, and honour her more than himself [mekhabdah yoter migufo]” and only then will he know “peace in his tent” and “not transgress” (Job 5:24). I believe this is the kavod the Sages were referring to. And if Rabbi Akiva left his wife without kavod for 24 years, his students probably thought this was okay and sought to emulate him, likely resulting in a failure of this all-important kavod in their homes, too.

Further proof for this can be drawn from the Torah itself, where we last saw 24,000 dead men: those who had failed to maintain their holy marriages and engaged in sin with the Midianite women (Numbers 25:9). Is it a coincidence that it was exactly 24,000 again? In fact—and this will be a shock to some—there is a Midrash that says Rabbi Akiva didn’t even have 24,000 students, but only a much more reasonable 300 students, all of whom died before he found seven more at the end of his life (see Tanchuma, Chayei Sarah 6:7). Why, then, did the Sages insist on saying 24,000? I think they did so, as they often do, for the obvious symbolic significance, tying the number to the 24 years in which Rabbi Akiva abandoned his wife, and to the 24,000 failed marriages in the Wilderness, as well as to the 24 traditional wedding ornaments of a Jewish bride.

To conclude, this interpretation of the story might be deemed controversial by some as it appears so at-odds with the common narrative we typically hear. But the reality is that the common narrative makes no sense and if, like me, you struggle with it, perhaps this perspective will provide some clarity. It is not meant to take away from Rabbi Akiva’s Torah greatness (as described in detail previously here), and we certainly owe much to his study and leadership. We see that he learned from his mistake and made sure the next generation of Torah scholars didn’t falter the same way. We mustn’t forget that mistakes are made by everyone, even by the most saintly—and mistakes can have serious consequences. Rabbi Akiva’s messianic support of Bar Kochva also turned out to be a fatal error, and led directly to his horrendous execution by the Romans. Even Moshe had a hard time understanding why Rabbi Akiva was punished so severely (Menachot 29b). It is not our place to judge, but it is our responsibility to learn from the mistakes of the past, and not to repeat them.

Wishing everyone a chag Shavuot sameach!

*A later legend, attributed to Rashi, slanders Beruria as an adulteress, painting both her and Rabbi Meir in an extremely negative light. Thankfully, this legend is absolutely false, and many have debunked it, including Rav Elyashiv who stated it was not a genuine Rashi. See also Marc Shapiro’s Changing the Immutable, pg. 46, which explains why the story is clearly a forgery.