marlowe1 | Aug. 27th, 2006

Ok. So I was at a lunch for Shabbos and they had a copy of Artscroll's Second Nedarim gemara and I looked through it and found the ugly rabbi stories that I love so much (on page 50) and before then was the sources of Akiva's wealth. Now the last one was some man that defended the Jews in Rome adn was executed for his troubles and gave his money to Akiva. He circumcised himself on the way to his execution, which I don't think counts as a valid conversion, but it's impressive. Anyhow my friend Gavriel told me to stop reading it so literally. And I know I shouldn't, but there were a lot of the standard Emporer vs. AKiva stories in there.

And I don't know. Why have these stories. YOu probably know them. An emporer or an emporer's daughter comes up to a rabbi (Akiva in this case) and asks something weird but which is interpreted as meaning something very challenging. Should you wear a pig on your head when you got a bad leg? said the emporer which was a direct challenge to Shabbos and Akiva responds with "I know a guy who knows a guy and I can get it for you at below wholesale" and Shabbos was successfully defended. Or something like that.

It's just odd. I know they are symbolic, but why do these emporers in these stories have nothing better to do than bug rabbis with idiotic questions? What's the convention telling us? Why are they using kings so readily?

See, I knew I could make this into a half-way serious discussion question.

(and I loathe those chasidic tales that use kings as metaphors. I'm living in America here. We get to lose our celebrities in three years. We don't have to get stuck reading about them until they get chased by French photographers into nasty car accidents.)