When Akiva Visited a Sick Student

Midrash Aggadah Gaster, Exempla of the Rabbis, No. 197; Talmud, Nedarim 40a

Curated by The Jewish Mythology Team · Published January 14, 2025

One of Rabbi Akiva's students fell gravely ill, and no one in the household thought to care for him. He lay in a corner, forgotten, while the illness ran its course.

Akiva heard about it. He dropped what he was doing and went to visit.

The landlady of the house, seeing the great Rabbi — the most famous sage of his generation — come through her door to sit beside a student she had been ignoring, was struck with a sudden sense of what she had failed to do. If Akiva himself thought this young man worth attending, she had clearly misjudged.

She began to take care of him. She brought water. She brought broth. She moved him into a better room. Under her new attention, the student recovered.

The tradition (Nedarim 40a, echoed in Gaster's Exempla #197) draws the moral sharply. Akiva did not heal him with a prayer. He did not heal him with a miracle. He healed him by noticing him — and the noticing rippled out to the people around him until they noticed too.

Visiting the sick, the Rabbis say, removes one-sixtieth of the illness. Sometimes more. Sometimes it is the only medicine.

Themes

Rabbis Healing Community Ethics

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