The Shulchan Aruch (493:1) reports on the practice of not getting married between Passover and Shavuot – until Lag B’Omer, because during this time the students of Rabbi Akiva perished. Their deaths came to an end (or at least a break) on Lag B’Omer. Why did the students of Rabbi Akiva die? And why would we mourn their death by refraining from getting married?

We can start to answer these questions by looking at the Gemara in Yevamot. There  we learn:

Rabbi Akiva had 12,000 pairs of disciples from Gabbata to Antipatris; and all of them died at the same time because they did not treat each other with respect. The world remained desolate until Rabbi Akiva came to our Masters in the South and taught the Torah to them. These were Rabbi Meir,  Rabbi Yehuda, Rabbi Yose, Rabbi Shimon and Rabbi Elazar ben Shammua; and it was they who revived the Torah at that time. A Tanna taught: “All of them died between Passover and Shavuot”.  (Yevamot 62b)

Rabbi Akiba’s students died because they did not treat each other with respect. It would be surprising to learn that one student of this great tanna of the middle of the 2nd century did not learn such a basic lesson. What is the additional significance of these 24,000 students not learning this leason?

Despite his humble beginnings as a shepherd Rabbi Akiba became a tremendous scholar. But what was his origin story? In one of my favorite stories we learn:

What were the origins of Rabbi Akiva? They say that he was forty years old and had still not learned anything. Once, he was standing at the mouth of a well and he said: Who carved a hole in this stone? They said to him: It is from the water, which constantly [falls] on it, day after day. And they said: Akiva, don’t you know this from the verse (Job 14:19), “Water erodes stones”? Rabbi Akiva immediately applied this, all the more so, to himself. He said: If something soft can carve something hard, then all the more so, the words of Torah, which are like steel, can engrave themselves on my heart, which is but flesh and blood. He immediately went to start studying Torah. (Avot DeRabbi Natan 6:2)

Akiva was asking a question about how natural world works and their response was to ask him if he had ever read the book of Job. On one level it seems like they were not being responsive to him. On another level it seems that they were not being sensitive to his being an outsider to Torah writ large. One could just imagine the embarrassment at that moment. And despite or even because of this dishonor Akiva was all in. If water could cut through a rock surely Torah could cut through his soul. My son Yishama shared a blessing today that for Shavuot we should not just be blessed with a superficial literacy, but a deep connection to a Torah that cuts deep.

One might have thought that this transformational Torah would have preempted the other students from shaming him or helped his 24,000 students showing each other respect. It is clear that while Rabi Akiva had a tremendous effect on Jewish life, he was not without flaws. We learn in the Gemara that during the 24 years in which he accumulated these 24,000 students he did not see his wife once (Ketubot 62b-63a). Rabbi Akiva gave his wife credit for all of the Torah they learned in this time. So while he told his students explicitly that they were all indebted to his wife, living apart from his wife for all of those years Rabbi Akiva did not model for his student the daily habits of respect. How were his students to learn how to treat each other with respect if they did not see it regularly between Rabbi Akiba and his wife? There is a big difference between theory and practice.

For Shavuot we should all be blessed with great role models who teach us Torah that cuts deep and transforms our souls.