Rabbi Akiva: Sage of the Talmud

Given the paucity of the historical record about Rabbi Akiva—his name only rarely and briefly appears outside of the Talmud—it’s hard to see how his life’s story can be told, but National Jewish Book Award–winner Holtz (Back to the Sources) resolves this challenge by appropriately labeling this work “a kind of imagined biography rooted in the best that contemporary scholarship can teach us—about rabbinic tales, about Akiva himself, and about the historical context of the world of the rabbis in the first century and a half of the Common Era.” Holtz begins his lively and thought-provoking account with a survey of the world of the Jews during Akiva’s lifetime, making good use of recent research that has debunked many popular impressions; for example, he explains that the rabbis of the period were “a small and insulated group... not interested in spreading their teachings to the masses.” The bulk of the book consists of close readings of the Talmud’s sparse accounts of moments in Akiva’s life; Holtz makes the convincing argument that “what ends up being truly important is the shared memory of people down the ages, no matter what the historical facts may have been.” Those shared memories yield a moving portrait of a humble intellectual giant who turned to study of the texts later in life. As with other volumes in the Jewish Lives series, this biography works for experts and neophytes alike. [em](Mar.) [/em]