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The litigation continued for some time, and was finally decided in favor of the Vilna firm. The publishers of Slavuta, however, having the Polish rabbis and zaddikim on their side, continued to publish the Talmud, regardless of the protests of Rabbi Akiba Eger and the "great ones" of Lithuania. But a terrible misfortune befell the Slavuta publishers.
God had revealed to him the treasures of the Torah, of wisdom, and of knowledge, and the whole world's future. Now he beheld in the inner chamber of God rows of scholars and judges interpreting the Torah in forty- nine different ways as they sat in the court of hewn stones; and he saw, besides, Rabbi Akiba explaining the meaning of the crowns upon the letters.
We know that he returned to Asia, and wrote the quintessence of his gospel in his epistle to the Romans. We know that many passages in his epistles were written, after the destruction of Jerusalem, when Paul was about forty years old, and his principal activity commenced still later, in opposition to Rabbi Akiba and his colleagues. We know from the Talmud that he married and left daughters.
Thus Akiba, who wrote an elaborate allegorical work upon the Song of Songs, held that the book was the most profound in the Bible, and Rabbi Judah similarly regarded the book of Job. Hence, their allegorism was more natural, more real, and truer to the spirit of that which they interpreted.
If Elijah was not able to lighten the poverty of the pious, he at least sought to inspire them with hope and confidence. Rabbi Akiba, the great scholar, lived in dire poverty before he became the famous Rabbi. His rich father-in-law would have nothing to do with him or his wife, because the daughter had married Akiba against her father's will.
To put it shortly: You are Jews when the Lord is most gracious to you, or threatens to try you most severely but you are heathen whenever your way does not lead you over the high hills or through the dark abysses of life. I cannot change your hearts but the wife of my brother's son, the daughter of Ben Akiba, must be a daughter of our people, morning, noon, and night.
Are none but the sons of Rechab to drink the sweet waters of Edom?" Methinks the marks in the pass of Gharendel were the marks of the camels of the children of Tora. 'There is a feud between the Beni-Tora and the Beni-Hamar, replied the other Arab, shaking his head. 'The Beni-Tora are in the wilderness of Akiba, and the Beni-Hamar have burnt their tents and captured their camels and their women.
But in reality Akiba meant what he said what indeed had been said throughout the Bible from Deuteronomy downwards. In the words of Hosea: When Israel was a child, then I loved him, And out of Egypt I called My son. No evidence of the universalism of Israel's mission can away with the fact that it was still his mission, the mission of a Chosen People.
Hail to you, ye God-fearing men, for your places are set aside, and kept, and guarded, in Paradise, for the time to come. Hail to thee, Rabbi Akiba, that thy lifeless body found lodgment for a night in a lovely spot." Helpfulness and compassion do not paint the whole of the character of Elijah. He remained the stern and inexorable censor whom Ahab feared.
Crescas, in the fourteenth century, declared like an earlier Buckle that the excellence of the Jew sprang merely from the excellence of Palestine. Mr. Abelson, in his recent valuable book on Jewish mysticism, alleges that when Rabbi Akiba called the Jews "Sons of God" he meant only that all other nations were idolaters.
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