Rabbi Akiva had a habit, whenever he taught, of binding the body to the soul. "If we who study Torah suffer," he would say, "how much more would we suffer if we neglected it?" He had Deuteronomy at the tip of his tongue: ki hu chayecha (Deuteronomy 30:20) — He is thy life, and the length of thy days. For Akiva, this verse was not metaphor. It was a literal address.
Not many days after he spoke those words, the Romans arrested him and threw him into prison. When the hour of his execution came, it fell precisely at the time of day when Jews recite the Shema — Shema Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad. The executioners raked his flesh with iron combs. And while iron tore skin, Akiva's lips shaped the words he had said every morning of his life.
When he reached the final word — Echad, One — he drew the syllable out, holding it, extending the breath beyond what anyone thought a dying man could hold. And then, mid-syllable, his soul left him. One long breath of oneness, and he was gone.
A voice came forth from heaven, the Talmud records (Berakhot 61b), and it said: "Blessed art thou, Rabbi Akiva, for thy soul and the word One departed from thy body together."
Some deaths are endings. Akiva's was a final syllable of the only sentence that mattered.