
“The Courage to Keep Moving.”
The Talmud tells us that the entirety of Rabbi Akiva’s students – all 24,000 –
died during the period between Pesach and Shavuot, the period of the Omer.
This Sunday will be the 33rd day of the Omer, known as Lag B’Omer.
It was the day his beloved students stopped dying.
This is one of the reasons why this day has become one of
celebration and joy.
The world was spiritually desolate after such a large decimation of the Torah world.
Subsequently, Rabbi Akiva travelled down to the South and
found five more students to whom he
started teaching Torah.
These five formed the foundation of the rebuilding of the Oral Torah.
Perhaps one thing we can recognize on Lag B’Omer
is the remarkable tenacity of Rabbi Akiva who
refused to give up, refused to give in to tragedy,
and continued his work of transmitting the Torah to the next generation.
His resiliency and his faithfulness to his mission is what we celebrate.
John C. Maxwell teaches that,
“The difference between average people and great people
is in their attitude toward and response to failure.”
Rabbi Akiva didn’t give up or sink into despondency-
he found a small group of students with whom to start over again.
He succeeded in rebuilding the Torah world.
In the book of Proverbs it says,
“Seven times a tzaddik (righteous person) falls.
What makes the person a tzaddik is the ability to rise from failure.”
We often fall and fail again,
however, our greatness lies in our ability to pick ourselves up
and keep going, keep having faith in and
hope for a better future.
May we take this lesson to heart and
know that however much we may feel that we have failed,
the measure of our greatness and our courage
is our ability to pick ourselves up,
put one step in front of the other and
somehow keep moving forward.
Rabbi Akiva went from the depths of despair and the darkness of death
to the light of hope, of resilience, with the belief in the intrinsic good in life and
the hope for a better and brighter future.
So may we.
Much love
Shabbat shalom
Elissa
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