He seized his temples, his eyes expanded wildly, and he burst forth into a heart-breaking, soul-rending wail: “Beruriah!”
THE TEMPTATIONS OF RABBI AKIBA
THE TEMPTATIONS OF RABBI AKIBA
Heavens, how stern and pious a Jew this Rabbi Akiba was! Scarcely his peer to be found in all Judea.
He devoted all his days and all his nights to the Holy Law, studying it himself and expounding it to others. The number of his disciples was a veritable army, and whoever heard the Torah from his lips felt that he drank from the very source of life.
Not only did he teach the Torah’s word, but also how to live its very spirit, how to purge oneself of gaiety; for laughter, play and mirth all led to sin.
He, too, dwelt in all simplicity, renouncing every earthly pleasure. He was deeply in love with his wife, the beautiful Rachel, the wise and learned daughter of Kalba-Sabua. But in order to belong entirely to the Torah he even parted from his sweet beloved and became an ascetic.
This was a sore burden to him. He longed deeply for his wife, and he was still a man in the very prime of life. In order not to weaken, and to make sure of maintaining this separation and his pious seclusion, he made a vow to himself that he should not return to his wife until he acquired twelve thousand disciples. This he did because he held that an oath was as a wall around holy retirement. He would have to keep his word and his absence from his wife would thus be ensured.
This fortitude, however, caused him to be unrelenting toward every one else. What he could do, all must be able to do. And he demanded of all the strictest abstention from the sins of the flesh, excoriating with barbed words the desire for women in the hearts of men.
Whereupon the weaklings—those who could not withstand the woman-lust in their hearts and were wracked by the sins of the flesh—spoke thus of Akiba: