Rav Avigdor Miller on the Death of Rabbi Akiva

Question:  Why did such a great tzaddik like Rabi Akiva deserve such a tragic ending?

But you must realize that Rabbi Akiva was 120 years old at that time.  He didn’t expect to live much longer.  You have to realize also that Rabbi Akiva had fulfilled all of his dreams.  He had become the greatest man in the Jewish nation. And if people dream of money – probably he didn’t, but he got it anyhow.  He was extremely wealthy.  Rabbi Akiva was one of the wealthiest people.  He began in poverty – you know a poor boy who becomes a millionaire later, he enjoys it more.  And Rabbi Akiva was rolling in money later in life.  Rabbi Akiva, his first wife didn’t live 120 years.  Then he married a woman who was famed for her beauty, a giyoress.  And so he had everything.

Now, Rabbi Akiva knew that his days were numbered. So he could die in an old age home where they would diaper him five times a day.  It would be a dismal kind of an ending.  If you want to die of old age, you have to choose that.  You have to make up your mind, that’s it.

So Hakodosh Boruch Hu gave him a gift and he died like a hero.  He died with kiddush Hashem.  Rabbi Akiva’s death is one of the most beautiful pictures in the history of our nation.

When the Romans said, after the war of Beitar, that it’s forbidden for Jews to teach Torah in public and he went out and taught Torah in public, he knew what it meant.  He was arrested.  He was kept in prison and finally they put him to the torture and they began combing his flesh off of his bones with ferry combs, like you comb hair of horses.  And as they were stripping the flesh off of his bones and he became a bloody mass, Rabbi Akiva was holding himself in and saying kriyas shema.  He knew his moments were counted so he was saying kriyas shema.  And Rabbi Akiva passed away in the midst of kriyas shema.

Now isn’t that a picture of martyrdom, of kiddush Hashem?

And the Gemara says that at that time, a bas kol came forth and said, “Rabbi Akiva enters Olam Haba immediately.”  Other tzaddikim have to go through a little waiting period.  Rabbi Akiva immediately entered Olam Haba.  And we understand it without the bas kol.

Rabbi Akiva therefore was the most successful man that we would picture, more successful than almost anybody else except Moshe Rabbeinu.  Maybe we’ll except also Raban Yochanan ben Zakkai. But Rabbi Akiva in his 120 years achieved the biggest achievements for Torah and his disciples are the ones who handed over everything to us; Rabbi Yehudah and Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai and Rabbi Elazar ben Shamu’a and Rabbi Yosi and Rabbi Meir.  They’re the ones from whom we have kol haTorah kulah.  And Rabbi Akiva lives forever in the memory of his people as a picture of the man who sacrificed for Torah all his days.

Of course he also exemplifies the greatness of his wife Rochel because she is the author of all his greatness.

And so Rabbi Akiva is the picture of a man who gave his life for kiddush Hashem.  So what could be more fortunate than that instead of dying miserably of disease and old age?

(February 4, 1982)