On This Day in Jewish History : 5 Elul_ Rabbi Akiva Arrested

On this day, Rabbi Akiva was arrested by the Romans. After the collapse of the Bar Kochva revolt, Rome decreed that Jews were forbidden to study Torah, and Rabbi Akiva ignored the decree and continued to gather crowds and teach publicly. Pappos ben Yehuda found him doing it and asked whether he was not afraid of the empire. Rabbi Akiva answered with a parable. A fox walking along a riverbank saw fish darting frantically from place to place and asked what they were fleeing. The nets, they said. Come up on dry land, said the fox, and we will live together as our ancestors did. They answered that if they were afraid in the water, which was the source of their life, how much more afraid would they be on land, which was the source of their death. So it is with us, Rabbi Akiva said. If we are afraid while we sit and learn Torah, how much worse will it be when we abandon it.

Not many days passed before the Romans seized him and put him in prison, and they seized Pappos ben Yehuda and imprisoned him alongside. Rabbi Akiva asked who had brought him there. Pappos answered that Rabbi Akiva was fortunate to have been arrested over words of Torah, while woe to Pappos, who had been arrested over empty things.

They brought Rabbi Akiva out to be executed at the hour for reciting the Shema. As the Romans tore his flesh with iron combs he accepted the yoke of Heaven and said the words. His students asked him, our teacher, even now. He told them that all his life he had been troubled by the verse commanding a Jew to love God with all his soul, even if He takes your soul, and had wondered when he would ever have the chance to fulfill it, and now that it had come he would not let it pass. He drew out the word echad, one, until his soul left him on that word. A voice from heaven declared him fortunate that his soul had departed on echad.