Rabbi Akiba was the leading Torah teacher in the second half of the first century and the first half of the second century of the common era. It has been difficult for historians to put together a clear version of his life, due to the large number of legends that exist about him. Some sources say that he was ignorant, that he was very poor, that his wife Rachel encouraged him to go to study and that he returned after many years with a large number of students and in a comfortable financial position. But other sources tell us other contradictory stories. What is historically clear is his connection with Bar Kochba whom he considered to be the Messiah, the one who was going to free the Jewish people from the Roman yoke. His death as a martyr at the hands of the Romans is attributed to this relationship.

Akiba made important contributions to Judaism. First of all, Akiba was the one who established the definitive canon of the Jewish Bible. His participation was decisive in deciding which books would form the Tanach. But his greatest contribution was his work on the subject of Halachah, both in the systematization of the traditional rules and in their subsequent development. He saw that the lack of a systematized collection of the entire body of halachot that already existed, did not allow for its practical application or an orderly theoretical study, which varied according to the scholar who taught it. The code that Akiba systematized was used by his student Rabbi Jehuda Hanasi as a basis for compiling the Mishnah.

Akiba realized that the intellectual bond that united the Jews had to be strengthened now more than ever, after the destruction of the Jewish State in Eretz Israel. The Bible could not fill that space, because Christians also considered it to be a divine revelation. Nor could dogmas have that function, since they were rejected by rabbinical Judaism, which had as its true essence to be in constant development and evolution. Akiba taught: “Take your place a few steps below your proper place until you are invited to go higher, for it is better to be told “go higher” than “go lower.”

Akiba was convinced that the way the Bible was written was different from any other book. For him, everything in the Torah had a meaning, every word, every syllable, every letter, every sign. Not only did he give the Jewish mind a new field to develop, but he also gave the Holy Scriptures the character of immutability. Although this did not stop him from modifying some precept that he considered did not respect the true spirit of Judaism, as in the case of underage Jewish slaves. (Exodus 21:7)

In opposition to the Christian doctrine that insisted that God is only love, Akiba taught that God combined kindness with mercy within a strict system of justice. He said: “Whatever God does, He does because it is the best.” Rabbi Akiba ben Yosef was the man who paved the way for Judaism for the past two thousand years. That is why he deserves to be considered the father of Rabbinic Judaism.

By Marcos Gojman:

Bibliography: “The unedited full-text of the 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia”.