At S’firah, Rabbi Akiva
Is brought to mind:
Illuminator of the Mishnah,
Inspiration to mankind.
His beginning was lowly.
A hired shepherd,
Who couldn’t read
Or write a word.
Down on the Sages,
Whom he’d mock.
Till at a well, one day, he asked,
Who carved this rock?
It was the water
Dripping slowly, but constantly –
This was Akiva’s epiphany.
If the soft water
Could wear away stone,
Perhaps this am ha’aretz
Could be shown
The Torah; perhaps it could enter
His hardened heart.
At 40 years old,
He made a start.
In the back of class
At cheder, learning alef-beis.
With perseverance,
His knowledge began
To explicate.
His boss’ daughter, Rachel,
Had seen something in
This simple shepherd.
There was greatness in him,
But her love for Akiva
Made her wealthy father wroth.
When they married,
He cut her off
In poverty; Rachel even
Had to sell her hair.
But in Akiva, her vision realized
She was happy with her share.
When Moshe Rabbeinu
Ascended on high,
He saw writing
He couldn’t identify:
Symbols HaKadosh Baruch Hu
In the process of writing
Not yet seen, were the Tagin.
Moshe asked,
“Master of the Universe,
What mean those signs
Atop the letters?”
Hashem told him, “Generations down,
My servant, Akiva, will use these crowns,
Mystic revelations he will find in these,
To expound halachic profundities.”
Hashem transported Moshe
To the future B’nei Brak,
To Akiva’s Academy
Where it came as a shock,
Sitting in the back
Of Akiva’s class,
Moshe found himself at an impasse.
He felt agitated and dismayed,
Couldn’t comprehend
The concepts conveyed,
Inadequate, his knowledge remiss.
Then a student asked:
Master, where did you learn this?
To his talmid, Akiva gave his reply:
“This comes from Moshe
At Sinai.”
At S’firah time,
Were lost to him
24,000 talmidim;
The world had been left desolate,
But Akiva was not near done yet!
Bolstering determination and drive,
He began again, to build
With five.
Two shepherds
Wrought great influence,
Love for people and Torah
Defined their existence.
Moshe, the greatest prophet
The world ever saw;
Akiva, absolute proponent
Of the Oral Law:
One began as royalty
The other, as a nobody;
But, they still give us strength,
Their tenacity
Changed the face of history.
By Sharon Marcus
