Q:
If Rabbi Akiva was a baal teshuvah, could it be assumed that his parents were not religious Jews?
A:
Now such a question is built only on American environment. The question is so out of place if you know a little bit of our ancient history.
Rabbi Akiva was an am ha’aretz, but he was a ma’amin with all of his heart and soul in Hakadosh Baruch Hu. He believed in Matan Torah min hashomayim more than the greatest tzaddikim today believe. The old am ha’aretz, you have to know, was a tremendous ma’amin.
Now it’s not merely what I say. I’ll give an example. In the times of the Gemara, there was a crowd of amei ha’aretz, who used to congregate on street corners, a moshev leitzim; amei ha’aretz. Now, Rabbi Zeira was a little man, he had one burnt foot, and used to pass by; he used to stop and talk with them. And the chachomim disapproved. Why should you associate with those people on the street, those bums on the street corner? They weren’t bums in the sense of American bums but for those days…
One day he stopped coming. And they asked what happened to this old man, the little old man with the burnt foot. They called him, ‘the little man with the burnt foot’. קטינא חריך שקי – the little old man with the burnt foot.
“He passed away.”
“Oh, he passed away!” So they held a meeting, what should we do now?
So they said as follows, “עד האידנא, up til now, the merit, the zechus of this old little fellow with the burnt foot protected us. But he’s gone now. Who will protect us?”
You hear that? So they were meharher b’teshuvah; they thought it over and they all became baalei teshuvah.
So Reb Simcha Zissel says, would that happen to us? Let’s say there was a chaburah of tzaddikim and one of them, a certain tzaddik passed away. Would the tzaddikim become baalei teshuvah because of that? A nechtiger tahg. It doesn’t enter their minds at all. But these ordinary people became so affected by this that they decided to do teshuvah.
So you see the old am ha’aretz was close to teshuvah because he had emunah. They believed in Gehenom. Sure they believed! They believed in Gan Eden. They believed in everything! And even more, they practiced everything. The old am ha’aretz practiced everything! They practiced everything!
Now, Rabbi Akiva’s parents, if they were amei ha’aretz, were they religious Jews? Halevei oif unz gezogt. Certainly they were religious Jews! They may have been ignorant of some halachos. They maybe didn’t know all the shevusim d’rabanon in Shabbos; they didn’t know all the hilchos of borer on Shabbos maybe; but they certainly were Jews that practiced the Torah with mesiras nefesh.
Josephus says – at the time of the Beis Hamikdosh he lived – Josephus said, if you would ask any one of us, even slaves among us, our slaves, they would tell you that our chief purpose in life is to bring up our children with the knowledge of the Torah. You hear that? You hear such a statement? Even if you ask the worst ones of us. And Josephus wasn’t just a propagandist stam azoy. And he said if you ask any one of us, even slaves, they’ll tell you that our main purpose of our lives is to bring up our children in the knowledge of the Torah.
So that answers the question. Rabbi Akiva and his parents, even if they were amei ha’aretz, they were very, very frum Jews. It says לא עם הארץ חסיד because an am ha’aretz is not able to fulfill all the details that he doesn’t know; but a tzaddik he could be. It doesn’t say לא עם הארץ צדיק. It says לא עם הארץ חסיד. Tzaddikim they were.
(October 1988)
