When he (Rabban Yoḥanan ben Zakai] reached
the Romans he said to Vespasian: Peace to you, O king, peace to you, O king.
Vespasian responded: Your life is forfeit on two counts, one because I am not a
king and you call me king, and again, if I am a king, why did you not come to
me before now? He replied: As for your saying that you are not a king, in truth
you are a king, since if you were not a king Jerusalem would not be delivered
into your hand, as it is written [Isaiah 10:34], “And Lebanon shall fall by a
mighty one.” ‘Mighty one’ (is an epithet) applied only to a king, as it is
written [Jeremiah 30:21], “And their mighty one shall be of themselves etc.”;
and ‘Lebanon’ refers to the Sanctuary, as it says [Deuteronomy 3:25], “This
goodly mountain and Lebanon.” Babylonian Talmud, Gittin
56 a-b
Rabbi Shlomo Wolbe notes the greatness of
Rabban Yoḥanan: he was so certain of the truth of the scripture that he did not
hesitate to risk his life in appearing before Vespasian. Rabban Yoḥanan’s faith
was so strong that he did not take “objective reality” into account. In
essence, faith in God’s words created the only true reality for Rabban
Yochanan.
Rabban Yoḥanan’s students’ student, Rabbi
Akiva, too, reached the lofty level of faith which was achieved by his teachers' teacher,
as the Talmud relates:
It happened again that they (Rabban Gamaliel,
Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah, Rabbi Yehoshua, and Rabbi Akiva) were going to
Jerusalem, when they arrived at Mount Scopus, they tore their garments; and
when they approached the Temple Mount and saw a fox running from the place
where the Holy of Holies had been located, they began to weep; but Rabbi Akiva
smiled. To their question why he smiled, he answered: It reads [Isaiah, 8:2]:
“I will take for Me faithful witnesses, Uriyah the priest, and Zecharyahu, son
of Yeverechyahu,” why is Uriyah conjoined with Zecharyahu? Was not the former
at the first Temple and the latter at the second? It is because the passage
bases the prophecy of Zecharyahu upon the prophecy of Uriyah. Uriyah said
[Micha 3:12]: “Therefore for your sake Zion shall be ploughed up as a field,
and Jerusalem shall become heaps..” Zechariah said [8:4]: “Again shall there
sit old men and old women in the streets of Jerusalem…” Until the prophecy of
Uriyah was not fulfilled I feared the prophecy of Zechariah will not come to be
realized but now since I see that Uriyah’s prophecy is fulfilled I am sure that
Zechariah’s prophecy will also be fulfilled in the near future. They said to
him: Akiva, you have consoled us, you have consoled us! Makot 24b
Rabbi Akiva did not ignore the destruction,
as evidenced by the fact that he, along with his colleagues, tore their
garments as a sign of mourning when they saw the Temple Mount from Mount Scopus.
The greatness of Rabbi Akiva lies in the fact that the rebuilding of Jerusalem
was as vivid and real for him as the destruction which he saw before his eyes.
It is fair to say that for such spiritual
giants as Rabban Yoḥanan and Rabbi Akiva, it was faith which determined
reality, and not the opposite.
While I do not have pretensions of reaching
anywhere near the spiritual level of our Sages, to the extent that we have
faith in the prophecies of comfort, we will hasten their fulfillment.
May we truly be comforted with the rebuilding
of Jerusalem.
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