Every year at the Passover Seder, we read a brief story that most people recite without a second thought. Five rabbis — Rabbi Eliezer, Rabbi Yehoshua, Rabbi Elazar ben Azarya, Rabbi Akiva, and Rabbi Tarfon — reclined together in B’nei Brak and spent the entire night telling the story of the Exodus. They were so engrossed in their discussion that their students had to interrupt them for the morning prayers: “Rabbis, the time for the morning Shema has arrived.”
It sounds like a charming vignette. Great scholars so passionate about the Exodus that they forgot to sleep. An inspiration for us to linger over the Haggadah a little longer.
But look more carefully, and a problem appears.
B’nei Brak was the city of Rabbi Akiva. He lived there, he taught there. And Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua were his teachers — the men from whom he had learned Torah. Generally, students visit their teachers, not the other way around. So why, on this Passover night, did the teachers come to B’nei Brak?
In order to answer the question, we need to understand the historical moment. The Temple had been destroyed. Jerusalem lay in ruins. Rome ruled the land with an iron fist, and the Jewish people were living through one of the darkest periods in their long history. So why did they visit Rabbi Akiva?
There is a story in the Talmud (Makkot 24b) that captures what kind of man Rabbi Akiva was. A group of rabbis were walking toward Jerusalem when they reached the Mount of Olives. In the distance, they could see the Temple Mount — and a fox darting out of the ruins of the Holy of Holies. The rabbis broke into tears. But Rabbi Akiva laughed.
“Why are you laughing?” they demanded.
“Why are you crying?” he replied.
He explained: The prophet Uriah had warned that Zion would be plowed like a field (Micah 3:12). The prophet Zechariah had promised:
These two prophecies were linked — if Uriah’s terrible prophecy came true, then Zechariah’s hopeful one would follow.
“Now that I have seen Uriah’s prophecy fulfilled with my own eyes,” said Rabbi Akiva, “I know with certainty that Zechariah’s will be fulfilled as well.”
The rabbis looked at him and said: “Akiva, you have comforted us. Akiva, you have comforted us.”
This was Rabbi Akiva’s gift. Not naive optimism, but something rarer — the ability to look at devastation and see within it the very confirmation of future redemption. He read destruction as a signpost pointing toward hope.
And so when his teachers, Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua, were weighed down by grief and the darkness that had settled over the Jewish people, they did not gather in Jerusalem. Jerusalem was gone. They went to B’nei Brak — to the one man who could remind them what it meant to believe.
They sat together that night, talking about the Exodus, and my grandfather — who shared this interpretation every year at his Seder table — understood that the Haggadah is telling us something about what kind of night it was. Not just literally dark, but spiritually dark. The night of exile. The long night of a people waiting for morning, unsure whether it would ever come.
And then the students arrived.
“Rabbis,” the young men said, “the time for the morning Shema has arrived.”
The teachers looked up. Before them stood the next generation — learning, asking, carrying the tradition forward. Engaged in the same story. Continuing the same chain.
In that moment, the rabbis understood: morning had come. Not to Jerusalem, not yet. But when you see your students still awake, still searching, still committed to the covenant — you know that the night will not last forever. The exile is finite. The promise of redemption is intact.
We live in a moment when the Jewish people have returned to their land, when Jerusalem has been rebuilt, when foxes no longer run through the ruins of the Temple Mount. Rabbi Akiva’s prophecy — his laughing faith in a future he could not yet see — has been proven right in ways his generation could only dream of.
But redemption is not yet complete. We still face dark stretches of night. And the question Rabbi Akiva asked of his teachers, the question every generation must ask, remains: do we have students? Are there young men and women who will interrupt us at dawn, still engaged, still learning, still carrying the flame?
When we look around our Seder tables this Passover and see the next generation asking questions, searching for answers, inheriting the story — we can say what those rabbis said in B’nei Brak two thousand years ago.
It is morning. And we have reason to believe.
