With One on His Lips

The emperor Hadrian issued terrible decrees against Jewish life, and teaching Torah carried the penalty of death. Rav Akiva went out into a public square and taught openly regardless. The Romans seized him and locked him in a cell. Sharing the jail was his friend Papus, arrested for black-market dealing. “Fortunate are you, Rav Akiva,” Papus said, “who were seized for the sake of Torah. Woe to Papus, who was seized over a bit of profit.”

Caesarea was the place of his execution by the Romans, where the ruins of the Hippodrome, the arena of public executions, can still be seen today. As they tortured him to death, flaying his flesh with iron combs, he recited the declaration of faith in Hashem and His oneness: “Hear, O Yisroel, Hashem is our G-d, Hashem is One.”

His talmidim, standing nearby, asked, “Even now?” Were his thoughts still on his obligations to Hashem in this horrific moment?

“All my life,” he told them, “I waited for the chance to show how much I love Hashem. Now that the chance has come, should I let it pass?”

And he died with the word One on his lips, as the Gemara relates (Berochos 61b).