Talmud Class: Moderation and Extremism in Love and Life

From the Bimah: Jewish Lessons for Life

Kohelet famously teaches us that there is a time for everything under the sun. Does that extend to both moderation and extremism? Is there a time for moderation? Is there a time for extremism? What do our sources have to say about how we might think about the different appeals of moderation and extremism? We will consider two sources. The first is a famous love story between Rabbi Akiva and his wife Rachel. It feels like an extreme story. They fall in love, get married, and then spend two periods of 12 years apart from each other so that he can learn Torah and be a great scholar. She wants this, encourages it. The second is a teaching from Maimonides about how we should eschew extremism. Shoot for the mean. The greatest rabbi in the Talmud, Rabbi Akiva, seems to live a life that is at variance with the wisdom of our greatest medieval sage, Maimonides. How do we understand this creative tension, and what does it mean to us today?