Akiva, You Have Consoled Us

There is a story in the Talmud, Tractate Makkot 24b, about Rabbi Akiva walking with other leaders of the Jewish people along the destroyed streets of Jerusalem. When he saw the Rabbis crying as they viewed the destroyed temple in ruins, he began to laugh. When his companions asked in astonishment why he was laughing, he asked in response why do you cry? They responded “A place [so holy] that it is said of it, ‘the stranger that approaches it shall die,’ and now foxes traverse it, and we shouldn’t weep?”

Rabbi Akiva said in short, Just as the prophetic verse of the destruction has come true, so will the verse from Zachariah who said “Old men and women will sit on the streets of Jerusalem…and the streets of the city will be filled with boys and girls playing in the streets.” (Zachariah 8:4)

The Rabbis responded “Akiva you have consoled us”

I’d heard that story many times over the course of my life and yet it wasn’t until relatively recently when I too was consoled like the Rabbis walking with Rabbi Akiva.

Throughout my life, I was constantly reminded that stories like that one from the Talmud don’t happen anymore. I was told they were fables of ancient days when the Torah and the Talmud may have served a purpose, but have long since passed their usefulness. Thoughts and ideas from these archaic volumes no longer apply in today’s enlightened, fast-moving, hyper-aggressive, progressive, instant information world that we live in.

Think about all the knowledge we have at our fingertips, which should make those of us living today the most intelligent beings to ever walk the planet. If only theory were reality. Ironically, with all that knowledge in our pockets, we are raising the most mentally weak, intolerant, ignorant generation in history. Never has such vast information been so readily available; information which not only has enlightened us, but has “proven” that the Torah itself is a collection of different documents, with five or more different authors who wrote so incongruently, it is not possible one person could write with such confounded grammatical inconsistency. Our scientists have “proven” the Big Bang theory is a historical fact and the evolution of the species is now the accepted narrative for creation, and the vast knowledge contained therein.

I have chased every theory and heard them all. The Hammurabi Code and the tales of Gilgamesh. The carbon dating of trees and the actual age of the universe. The Torah, which was once the most revered volume in the world, has now become an object of scorn, late-night comedic fodder and the enemy of all that is scientifically “proven”. I have deeply delved into each argument and subject matter and some indeed gave me pause.

I found that unlike the enemies of Torah, my need to understand their arguments instead of dismissing them out of hand became overwhelming. I looked everywhere and listened and read more than I probably should have. What I did find was most of the arguments tended to be general without addressing the uncomfortably specific and almost all of them ignore the oldest scholarship and the most peer-reviewed documents in the world, Jewish scholarship. After all, the Torah was given to the Jews and Jewish argument begins on the very first verse of the Torah and has continued on each verse thereafter until this very day. To be fair, with Christianity being the dominant voice of the “bible”, the christological flaws exposed the actual Torah to misunderstanding based mostly on mistranslations or a lack of depth the church never choose to delve into. I can dig far deeper into this last sentence, but that is not the purpose of this essay. Maybe another time.

I want to be very clear here. I do not hate anyone, though to be fair I have no use for the church or anyone who wants to destroy me or my people. I have no intention to offend with my words, either. In fact, Christians may be the only friends the Jewish people and the state of Israel have left in the world. But there is a reason I am BH not a Christian, so when I address the issue, I have to be truthful. I mean no disrespect to my Christian friends, I am only posting my perspective on the issue, though it mirrors Jewish thought in this case.

With all that being said, I want to return to Rabbi Akiva and expound on something I have mentioned in the past couple of months but please stay with me. Two weeks ago, while studying the portion of the week, I was drawn to a comment by Rabbi Herschel Schechter who mentioned in passing this verse from Leviticus 26:32

וַהֲשִׁמֹּתִ֥י אֲנִ֖י אֶת־הָאָ֑רֶץ וְשָֽׁמְמ֤וּ עָלֶ֙יהָ֙ אֹֽיְבֵיכֶ֔ם הַיֹּשְׁבִ֖ים בָּֽהּ׃ “And I, Myself, will bring the land into desolation and your enemies that settle in it will become desolate on it.”

Buried in the curses of the Jewish people should they fail to listen to G-d were these words which while I have heard them my entire life, they did not resonate with me until I was decades older. Unlike the opponents of Torah and G-d, I went to Jewish Scholarship to understand what exactly the Torah is saying here and found a most outstanding commentary from Nachmanides, the RAMBAN, whose commentary on the Torah is the most breathtaking insight I have ever studied on any subject matter. Full stop. The Ramban comments in Leviticus 26:16 when these curses begin, everything that followed had all come to pass after the destruction of the first temple in Jerusalem and he continues to differentiate between these curses in Leviticus and those in Deuteronomy. However, near the end of his comments he writes this amazing insight:

“Similarly, that which He stated here, and your enemies that shall dwell therein shall be desolate in it constitutes a good tiding, proclaiming that during all our exiles, our Land will not accept our enemies. This also is a great proof and assurance to us, for in the whole inhabited part of the world one cannot find such a good and large Land which was always lived in and yet is as ruined as it is today-[During Nachmanides’s days], for since the time that we left it, it has not accepted any nation or people, and they all try to settle it, but to no avail.”

The Ramban himself bore witness to this in a letter to his son upon his arrival in the holy land in 1267. “What can I tell you about the Land? It is much abandoned and greatly desolate. The holier the place, the more profound the destruction. Jerusalem is devastated the most, and the area of Judah more than the Galilee.”

Six hundred years later, Mark Twain endorsed the Ramban’s perception with his own from his book Innocents Abroad (page 555) “The further we went the hotter the sun got, and the more rocky and bare, repulsive and dreary the landscape became… There was hardly a tree or a shrub anywhere. Even the olive and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country. No landscape exists that is more tiresome to the eye than that which bounds the approaches to Jerusalem.

Fredrick Hasselquist, a Swedish doctor who visited in the 1750’s said this about Israel “The Holy Land is uncultivated and almost uninhabited”

Felix Bovet, a Christian, visited in 1858 and commented that the Turks “have made a desert of it where it is scarcely impossible to walk without fear.”

There are many more who have written about the desolation of Israel since G-d removed the Jews from the land. Regardless of who attempted to inhabit it, the land did not cooperate. I wrote at length about it here: https://haroldkatz1.substack.com/p/the-wasted-moments-of-life

Juxtapose all of this to modern day and consider this prophecy from Ezekiel 36:8 “And you, mountains of Israel, will give forth your branches and bear your fruit to My people Israel, for they will soon be coming”

These two verses alone should give every single reader pause. Believer and non-believer alike. To the believer I say, “Give thanks to G-d, for G-d is good, His kindness endures forever.” But to the non-believer who does NOT believe in G-d or the Torah, I ask this question:

I will grant you every argument. Hamarabi, Gilgamesh, Big Bang, Evolution, age of the universe etc. You name it, you got it. I will even grant you the Documentary Hypothesis. However, all I ask of you is to explain this verse (s) to me Leviticus 26:32, 33: “I will make the land so desolate that [even] your enemies who live there will be astonished. (Alternative translation) I will scatter you among the nations, and keep the sword drawn against you. Your land will remain desolate, and your cities in ruins.”

Who alive in the history of the world could have written such verses without any fear of contradiction? Who could have possibly known this outcome? Now, with 2,000 years of historical evidence behind us, these verses have been proven beyond any doubt, to be true. Take a look at the Land of Israel today. G-d’s people Israel did come just as the prophet said we would and the mountains and branches have in fact given fruit to the Jewish people. Make any claim you want about the land, but only one people has made it flourish. The very same people G-d attached to it. As the great Jewish thinker and Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem Rav Kook (1865-1935) wrote many years ago “G-d imprinted a special character on the Land. Due to its unique holiness, the Land is not suitable for any other nation. It is forever “an inheritance — an inheritance exclusively to Israel, His people.” One can argue in the “racism” of his words or some perceived arrogance, but one cannot argue the validity of them. The fact remains, no people other than the Jews were able to sustain themselves from the land. The Jews not only did it thousands of years ago, but have done it again today bringing the words of the Torah to life in front of our very eyes.

The story of Rabbi Akiva was not just about 2000 years ago. Rabbi Akiva’s story was put in the Talmud to teach us a much greater lesson. That in fact the words of the Torah are meaningful even today. As much as we have tried to change it, as much as we have ignored it, as much as we have made it a punchline, Torah responds the way it always has; with a hardcore truth no one can run away from.

We live in an era where the Jewish people have returned to their land; much to the chagrin of the majority of the countries of the world. With the help of the KGB, an entire “people” was invented out of thin air to subvert our existence. They deny and steal our peoplehood, our history, and our lineage while an uneducated world not only applauds their efforts, but defiantly demands we succumb to their consistent efforts or annihilate us. What they couldn’t do on the battlefield they have attempted to do in the court of public opinion. The Russians and the Arabs counted on western educated students to be useful idiots and they were correct. Sadly, those students have turned into adults and passed their ignorance on to subsequent generations. Repeat a lie often enough and the world will believe it. The Torah, however, foretold of it all and we get to witness these words come to life in front of our own eyes. “No weapon that is formed against you shall prosper…and every tongue that shall rise against you in judgment will fail (will be defeated).” (Isaiah 5:17) These are the days Rabbi Akiva was laughing about. He knew that one day we would return to the land and she will open up for us as she has done. The land which both Nachmanides and Twain witnessed her desolation with their own eyes centuries apart, has woken up and fed her children. As I have written here before in the name of Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, the land did not betray her children and now that they have returned she is not only feeding them but responding in a way that takes a sledgehammer to the claims of her enemies.

According to an annual ranking compiled by The Economist, Israel was the third-best performing economy in 2025. We are in the midst of a multiple front war. We did not start the war with Gaza, Hezbollah, the Houthis, Iran or even Syria when Assad allowed Iran proxies to take advantage of our issues on other fronts. Nevertheless, the liars of the world conveniently leave out this fact. While it may seem like we are fighting an uphill battle against an enemy that has so many weapons at its disposal, we have been assured they will not succeed. “O Israel, trust in the L-RD. He is your help and your shield!” (Psalm 115) Yeah, I’m gonna’ go with that.

With the holiday of Shavuot beginning on Thursday evening here in Israel and across the universe, I wanted to pay tribute to the two things the holiday is about. A celebration of receiving the Torah and its being intrinsically connected to the Jewish people and the Land of Israel. As all Jewish holidays do, Shavuot signifies a change of season from spring to summer and more importantly a time of the year where the opportunities to fulfill agricultural commandments (mitzvot) happen quickly and en masse. One of the great miracles of this special place is the land does not take long to sprout her gifts in season and she does so in abundance. “How manifold are Your works, O L-RD. (psalms 104:24) All three, People, Torah and the Land are linked together for all-time and though we did not have sovereignty in our land for 2000 years, neither did anyone else, just as the Torah predicted, and the evidence is overwhelming. Meanwhile the words of the Torah echoed in our pews every week reminded us that we will return one day to our home and testify in front of the entire world, to the wonders of Hashem. We are home and what Israel, the land, the people, and the Torah have given the world is astounding even if it wasn’t accomplished in a short 80 year window. When you consider where our people were 83 years ago and compare it to where we are today, the words of King David echo Rabbi Akiva’s laughter: Who raised up the poor out of the dust, and lifted up the needy out of the dunghill (psalm 113)

I am one of the lucky ones who get to see the words of Zachariah in real time. When I first learned them I never considered that I would be the old man watching the children play in the streets of Jerusalem. But I have truly been blessed to do exactly that and my heart can barely contain my joy. I will close today with the only words I have left to write and fittingly they are not my own. “You are my G-d, and I will give thanks to You; You are my G-d, I will exalt Thee. O give thanks to the L-RD, for He is good, for His mercy endures for ever.” (Psalm 118)

And Rabbi Akiva’s laughter is getting louder…