One of Rabbi Akiva's most famous sayings is, “Ve’ahavta lereiacha kamocha. Love your neighbor as you do yourself. This is a fundamental principle of the Torah.”
This mitzvah is one of the pillars of the entire Torah. We find a similar thought expressed by Hillel. The Talmud relates (Shabbos 31a) that a prospective gentile convert to Judaism asked Hillel to teach him the entire Torah “while standing on one foot.” Hillel replied, “Do not do to others that which is hateful to you. This is the essence of Torah. All the rest is explanation.”
It seems to me that Rabbi Akiva was most suited to speak about the importance and centrality of this mitzvah. Rabbi Akiva was a great rosh yeshivah with many thousands of students, and he experienced a shattering tragedy. All of his twenty-four thousand students died during the Omer period between Pesach and Shavuos. It is an incredible number, a number that fails to penetrate the consciousness even in our day of huge yeshivos.
How would one of us have dealt with such a blow? What would we have done if all twenty-four thousand ¾ twenty-four thousand! ¾ of our students had died in one fell swoop due to some character flaw, a catastrophe that inevitably must have reflected somewhat negatively on their rosh yeshivah? First, we would, of course, have to deal with a serious bout of depression and despondency. And if we managed to get over that, we would probably retire with a broken heart.
What did Rabbi Akiva do? The Talmud tells us (Yevamos 62b), “When Rabbi Akiva’s students died and the world was desolate, he went to the south of Eretz Yisrael and started over again!”
Rabbi Akiva clearly had unbelievable resilience. No matter how great a disaster he suffered, he would find a silver lining in the darkest cloud. He would discover something positive, something to give him new hope, and this would give him the strength and the confidence to start all over again. “All is not lost!” he would exult when he had lost just about everything.
Rabbi Akiva lived through the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash. The Talmud relates (Makkos 24a) that several Sages were walking past the ruined Beis Hamikdash and saw a fox emerging from the site of the Holy of Holies. They all burst into tears, except for Rabbi Akiva, who began to laugh. “Why do you laugh?” they asked him. He replied, “Because if the prophecy of destruction has come true so literally, then the prophecy of redemption will also come true literally.”
This ability to find the glimmer of light in the deepest darkness, to find the positive, the spark of hope, in the worst of times, made Rabbi Akiva singularly
