From the Well to the Beis Medrash

How did Rebbi Akiva begin? They say that he was forty years old and had not yet learned a thing. Once he was standing at the mouth of a well, and he asked, "Who carved a hole in this stone?" They told him, "It is the water, which drips onto it constantly, day after day." And they said, "Akiva, do you not know the verse (Iyov 14:19), 'Water erodes stones'?"

Rebbi Akiva immediately applied the lesson to himself. He reasoned that if something soft can carve something hard, then how much more so can the words of Torah, which are like iron, engrave themselves on his heart, which is only flesh and blood. At once he went to begin learning Torah.

He went with his son, and they sat down among the schoolteachers. He said to one of them, "Rebbe, teach me Torah." Rebbi Akiva took hold of one end of the tablet, and his son took hold of the other. The teacher wrote the aleph and bais for him, and he learned them. He learned from aleph to tav, and he learned the book of Vayikra. He went on learning until he had learned the whole Torah.

Then he went and sat before Rebbi Eliezer and Rebbi Yehoshua and said, "My masters, open the sense of the Mishnah to me." When they told him one halachah, he went off by himself and worked it through: why was this aleph written, and why was that bais written? Why was this thing said? He kept coming back and asking them, until he reduced his teachers to silence.

Rebbi Shimon ben Elazar said, "I will give you a parable to show what this was like. A stonecutter was hacking at the mountains. One time he took his pickaxe, sat down on top of a mountain, and began chipping small stones away from it. People came by and asked, 'What are you doing?' He said, 'I am going to uproot the mountain and throw it into the Jordan.' They said, 'You cannot uproot the entire mountain.' But he kept hacking away until he came to a large boulder. He wedged himself underneath it, pried it loose, and threw it into the Jordan. And he said to it, 'Your place is not here, but there.' This is what Rebbi Akiva did to Rebbi Eliezer and Rebbi Tarfon." Rebbi Tarfon said to him, "Akiva, of you the verse says (Iyov 28:11), 'He stops up the streams so that hidden things may be brought to light.' Rebbi Akiva has brought to light things that were hidden from human beings."

Every day he would bring a bundle of sticks, half of which he sold to support himself and half of which he kept for kindling. His neighbors came and said, "Akiva, you are choking us with all this smoke. Sell it all to us instead, buy oil with the money, and learn by the light of a candle." He said to them, "I meet many needs with it. I learn by its light, I warm myself by its fire, and I can make it into a bed and sleep on it."

It is said that in the future all the poor will be judged against Rebbi Akiva. If they are asked why they never learned and answer that they were poor, they will be told, "Was not Rebbi Akiva even poorer, completely impoverished?" If they say it was because of their children, they will be told, "Did Rebbi Akiva not have sons and daughters as well?" And if they say it was because he merited to have his wife Rochel to help him, there is nothing more to say.

He was forty when he went to learn Torah, and after thirteen years he was teaching Torah to the masses. It was said that he did not leave the world until he had tables of silver and gold, and could climb up to his bed on golden ladders. His wife would go out in a fine gown and golden jewelry engraved with an image of Yerushalayim (see Shabbos 59a). His talmidim said, "Rebbi, you embarrass us with what you have done for her." He said to them, "She suffered greatly with me for the sake of Torah."