Excerpting: “Rabbi Akiva” by Abie Rotenberg. Mesorah Publications Ltd. 2024. Hardcover. 516 pages. ISBN-13: 978-1422641507.
(Courtesy of Artscroll) In one of the most famous parables in the Gemara (Berachos 61b), Rabbi Akiva articulated for all time the indispensable relationship between Klal Yisrael and the study of its Torah.
The Rabbis taught in a Baraisa: Once, the evil regime decreed that the Jewish people should not study the Torah. Papus ben Yehuda came and found Rabbi Akiva convening public assemblies and engaging in Torah study. [Papus] said to him, “Akiva, are you not afraid of the regime?” [Rabbi Akiva] replied, “I will offer you a parable.To what can this be compared? To a fox walking alongside a river, who saw fish gathering from place to place. [The fox] said to them, ‘What are you running from?’ They said to him, ‘From the nets people are bringing to [catch] us.’ He said to them, ‘Is it your wish to come up to dry land, and we shall dwell together as did my ancestors with your ancestors?’ They said to him, ‘Are you the one they describe as the cleverest of animals? You are not clever but a fool! If in the place that gives us life we are afraid, the place that will lead to our deaths (should we not be afraid) all the more so?’ So too with us. Now, as we sit and engage in [the study of] Torah, of which it is written (Devarim 30:20), ‘For it is your life and the length of your days,’ we are endangered, if we were to disengage from Torah, all the more so!”
The fish rightly mocked the fox’s recommendation. How would it benefit them to go to a place where they could not breathe and would surely perish? But we are left wondering why the alleged wisest of animals presented so spurious an argument in the first place?
An observation by Rabbi Eliyahu Lopian (“Lev Eliyahu,” first edition, page 40) may provide an approach.The Mishnah in Keilim (17:13) teaches us: The Torah states that utensils and garments are susceptible to tumah. But because the word beged, garment (of cloth), which the Torah uses to refer to materials that grow on land, such as flax, cotton or wool, is juxtaposed to the word ohr, leather, we derive that only a utensil or garment made from the hide or skin of a land animal can contract tumah, but an item made from the skin of a fish will not. Rabbi Akiva, however, notes that there is an exception:A leather utensil made from the skin of the creature known as the sea dog, which flees to the land to escape danger, is susceptible to tumah.
Rabbi Lopian questions the reasoning. Is it not true, he asks, that even the sea dog can survive on land only briefly? It may flee there to escape danger, but if it wishes to survive, it must return to its true, natural habitat! Should it not then be classified as a water creature?
His answer is an enlightening mussar thought. The fact that the sea dog turns to the land for deliverance — even a temporary one — is enough for us to determine that it is not a true denizen of the sea. The lesson is that the Jewish people are no different. Torah is the air we breathe. If, during hard times, we abandon it, even if we intend to do so for a short while or to some limited degree, we are detaching ourselves from our source of life and are doomed.
Perhaps, then, the fox said to the fish, “Come to me on the land where I will provide you with a temporary haven from the fishermen’s nets. I’ll place you in a pond or an aquarium where you can survive in the interim. I will return you to the water once the danger has passed.”
The fox’s assurances did not fool the fish. They realized that his true intentions were to devour them immediately. The lesson Rabbi Akiva wished to impart is that any suggestion that we deviate even slightly or temporarily from Torah, our truelife source, must be seen for what it is: national suicide.
Reprinted from “Rabbi Akiva” by Abie Rotenberg with permission from the copyright holder, ArtScroll Mesorah Publications.
