Considered by many Jews to be the ideal Torah scholar, Rabbi Akiva lived during the first third of the 2nd Cent AD. He is one of the most quoted sages in the Talmud, as are a great majority of the authorities cited in it his disciples and successors.
Most narrative portraits of Rabbi Akiva are coloured by reverential exaggerations so that it is difficult to establish a clear picture of his life. What is certain is that he was born into a poor family, and he remained illiterate until he was about forty years old. The poor shepherd one day asked Rachel, daugher of a wealthy man, to marry him; she would consent, she said, on condition that he devoted himself to study. When the secret marriage was found out, his father-in-law drove them out of the house. At her expense, he remained at the rabbinic seminary for twelve years. Coming home but before he got into the house, he heard a neighbour chastized his wife for allowing her husband to be away from home for so many years. Whereupon his wife replied that if she had her wish, he should stay another twelve years. He turned around and when he returned at the end of the twelve years he came home a famous teacher surrounded by his disciples. He could go on to become the greatest teacher of the Torah in his time.
Akiva is credited with the development of an interpretational method that claims to find hidden meanings in every letter and diacritical mark of Scriptures that became the model for all later Jewish scholars to emulate.
In addition to his scholarship, Rabbi Akiva was also closely involved in the politics of his days. He was supposed to have endorsed Bar Kokhba's claim to be the messiah and he supported the latter's revolt against the Roman authority in the unsuccessful Second Jewish Revolt from 132-135 AD. In the aftermath of the revolt's failure, public reading of the Torah, among other things, was banned. His refusal to abandon the practice earned him a martyr's death in 135.
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