There’s a legend told about Rabbi Akiva - a legend specifically about Lag BaOmer, which comes next week - about the tragic death of his students. One of the reasons we are told to celebrate Lag BaOmer is because it marks the conclusion of a plague that killed thousands of Rabbi Akiva’s students. The Talmudic story goes like this:
They said that R. Akiva had 12,000 pairs of students, from Gevat to Antipras (two locations). They all died in one period of time because they did not treat each other with respect. And the world was desolate, until R. Akiva came to our Rabbis in the south and taught Torah to R. Meir, R. Yehuda, R. Yosei, R. Shimon, and R. Elazar ben Shamua. These five kept the Torah standing at that time. (Talmud Bavli Yevamot 62b)
When I’ve read this in the past, I always focused on the fact that his students died. There is such tragedy in the loss of so many lives. There is such pain in the loss of learning and Torah that the death of these students represent. What I’ve never focused on before is that Rabbi Akiva went on to go teach more students. The world was in deep pain because of the death of these students, the Talmud suggests, until Rabbi Akiva was able to rise up, go somewhere else, and teach to others.
I can barely imagine the strength that it took for Rabbi Akiva to pivot in this way. He had every reason to feel complete despair, to give up on his learning and his teaching, to throw it all away. He could have felt that there is no point - he just lost all his students to whom he had devoted his career! But instead, he changed course. He decided that there was something worthwhile in the project of Torah that he believed in, and that he was going to continue to pass it on. And it was because of that, the Talmud says, that the Torah endured.
So Lag BaOmer is, in part, about the end of the plague that took away Rabbi Akiva’s students. But it is also a holiday about fortitude and resilience. It is a holiday that reminds us that when things feel bleak or difficult, when it feels like there’s no point, that we can still move forward with what we believe in. Like Rabbi Akiva, we don’t have to pretend it’s not hard - not at all. But we can change course, and know that there is always something we can do, something possible, even if it’s 5 students and not 24,000. Perhaps, like Rabbi Akiva, it is precisely when we do the hardest thing at the hardest time, that Truth endures.
