The Daily Strengthening from The Rav, Rabbi Eliezer Berland shlit"a — “Aside from the Torah, there is nothing”

“Please send by the hand of the one You will send” (Shemos 4:13)

Tuesday, 3 Teves 5783 — Rachel saw that Rabbi Akiva was angry at the sages because they humiliated him when he was an am ha’aretz.

These are his holy words:

A person who doesn’t learn is poor and disgraced. You must know that aside from the Torah, there is nothing—either you bring in a livelihood, or you learn Torah. There is no middle.

Don’t lie in bed. Don’t fall into despair. Every person can become a Torah scholar like Rabbi Akiva—he began at age forty.

It is written in Shemos Rabbah on the verse, “Please send by the hand of the one You will send” (Shemos 4:13): Moshe had already ascended to Heaven; in another moment he would receive the Torah. He saw all the generations and said: Master of the World, I resign. I saw the greatness of Rabbi Akiva—and I resigned.

And who was Rabbi Akiva? An am ha’aretz! A complete goy—he was a goy.

His father-in-law (Kalba Savua) didn’t recognize him. He said: I had a daughter who ran off with a shepherd—such shame. They suggested matches to Rachel: Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai, Rabbi Eliezer HaGadol, Rabbi Yehoshua, Rabbi Tarfon… all the Tannaim were there then. The greatest of the Tannaim—all of them wanted to marry the daughter of Kalba Savua.

She was the most successful daughter, the most outstanding, and everyone wanted her—and she kept saying no, no… “Just tell us what you want!” And she says no. Then suddenly she disappeared with a shepherd.

It was a shame the world had never seen. Fine—if he had been a shepherd who knew how to read. But he was a shepherd who said, “If only I had a Torah scholar, I would bite him like a donkey” (Pesachim 49b). Why a donkey and not a dog? Because a dog doesn’t break bones. I want to be like a donkey that breaks bones—to break all the bones of Torah scholars.

Rachel said: What is he guilty of? He didn’t say it because he truly hated Torah scholars, but because he had been persecuted. As an am ha’aretz they chased him, disgraced him, humiliated him. Rachel understood that it all came from that humiliation—from the fact that they broke him.

When they break a person—who knows what he can become? “I would bite him like a donkey…”

But Rachel meant for good. She meant to take a person and rebuild him. She saw that he would become the greatest Torah scholar of the generation: I will make him into a Torah scholar.

They tell a story that Clinton traveled with his wife and they arrived at a gas station. They had to stop to fill up. Clinton’s wife got out, and suddenly she saw the station manager. She said to her husband: They once suggested him to me as a match. He said to her: What a miracle for you that you didn’t marry him—obviously, because I’m prime minister.

She said to him: No! If I had married him, I would have made him prime minister!

A woman does everything—she makes the prime minister; she makes everything. Rachel said: I will marry Rabbi Akiva and make him the greatest of the generation.

A woman has more strength than a man. A man has no strength—he can’t cope. If a man had even one labor contraction, he would die on the spot—at the first contraction.

Amram (Moshe’s father) divorced—once he divorced, it was over. A person must stand up to the test and not divorce his wife… Miriam said to him: You are worse than Pharaoh. Pharaoh decreed against the males; you are decreeing against the females. If you divorce, there will be nothing. He can still pray; he can still annul any decree.

Through prayer, every decree can be annulled. There is no decree that cannot be annulled through prayer.

Even Rabbi Nachman of Horodenka (one of the most important close disciples and a friend of the Baal Shem Tov, to the point that the Baal Shem Tov called him “his trusted household member.” A famous family connection among their descendants is the grandson, Rebbe Nachman of Breslov) asked the Baal Shem Tov whether it is possible to do something so that she would continue living.

The Baal Shem Tov answered: Certainly it’s possible—only you don’t know. I won’t reveal it to you. It is always possible to heal every illness. There is nothing that cannot be healed—there is no such thing.