 |
|
|
I was watching a documentary last night on the history of Judaism and I was struck by a short section dealing with the life of Akiva, who was said to be one of the first Rabbis and the Father of the Talmud. Akiva began his life as a shepherd in the hills, and lived the simplest and crudest of existences, not even able to read. But one day he was struck with a vision of the beauty of the Torah and filled with such a longing to read the text for himself that he taught himself how to read. Unfortunately, he was able to grasp only the most rudimentary of words on his own, so he enrolled himself in school, and though a man in his middle years, studied alongside five year old children. In time, however, his diligent study paid off, and he became one of the greatest sages of his era. He accomplished many remarkable things in his life, chief among them being his laying the groundwork for the development of the Talmud, that huge body of commentary on the Torah and the religious and philosophical laws which developed from it. At the time, all of this material existed only in oral form, a mass of interwoven and contradictory traditions, which few outside of the great centers of learning had access to. For in the years following the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple and the disasterous failure of the Bar Kockhba revolts, the Jews as a body had been dispersed to the far corners of the globe, and they were in danger of losing their identity through disintigration and assimilation into the broader foreign cultures that they found themselves in. What they needed was a tangible, organized, and systemitized form of these guiding principles and traditions, that the Jew might have the resources to maintain his identity and his contact with his broader culture and Nation, wherever he might find himself. So, Rabbi Akiva set to work and produced the first codification of Jewish tradition which was to become the greate flowering of their culture, the Talmud. Years later, Rabbi Akiva's preaching brought him into conflict with the Roman authorities who tried him for sedition and sentenced him with perhaps the most gruesome and terrible of punishments, being flayed alive, in order to make an example of him to his students. Before he was to be executed one of his pupils spoke with him, saying, "How can you be so calm? How can you maintain your faith in the midst of your own painful and humiliating demise?" To which Rabbi Akiva replied, "My whole life has led up to this moment. Up until now I have only been able to serve God according to my means and might. But now I can serve him with my whole life." And it so happened that when the Romans began to execute him it was the start of the evening prayers, and though Rabbi Akiva was in excruciating pain, he managed to recite the prayer in full, and expired in the best of all possible ways, performing an act of devotion to his God. What impressed me so much about this story is that Rabbi Akiva seems to be a perfect example of the true Thelemite, someone who dedicates their whole existence to discovering and fulfilling their True Will, allowing nothing to stand in their path. When Akiva got the first intimation of his destiny, he did everything in his power to fulfil it, even though it must have seemed frighteningly impossible for the illiterate shepherd to begin to learn how to read. And indeed, when he proved incapable of of teaching himself more than the basics of Hebrew, he was willing to humble himself and learn beside five year olds. I don't imagine that that was a very easy thing for him to do, nor do I imagine that those children were very kind to the rugged, barely civilized country-dweller that they suddenly found in their midst. Yet, through it all he persevered, becoming one of the greatest sages of his generation, and the man who was, in no small part, responsible for the survival and thriving of his people in the centuries to come. And when he met his end, he did so sereny absorbed in his calling, making his life the ultimate sacrifice to his God. His life and work offers much for reflection. Nowhere are
we told that it will be easy to follow our True Wills, or
that to do so will come without sacrifice. Indeed, our
callings often demand much from us, and the price can
sometimes seem daunting. But when we have truly discovered
our calling, we burn and ache to accomplish it, like a bee
wdriven uncontrollably to pollenate flowers, and when we're
truly, fully tapped into that, we don't even stop to
calculate the risks, to consider the hardships, to wonder at
the seeming impossibility of it all - we just do it, because
that's what we were created to do. All of the excuses we can
muster amount to nothing in the face of Destiny - and if an
ignorant shepherd can become one of the world's greatest
sages, what wonders are you capable of manifesting in your
life? |
