Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback’s invocation at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion 2021 Rabbinical Ordination held at Stephen Wise Temple on Sunday, May 23, 2021:

The great Jewish American poet, Muriel Rukeyser, was told by her mother that she was a descendant of Rabbi Akiva. This, Rukeyser later explained, was why she wrote seven poems dedicated to the second century sage. One, published in 1960, was commissioned by what was then known as the Union of American Hebrew Congregations. It was called “The Way Out” and it explores themes of Exodus.
It includes a verse that is particularly appropriate to this moment:
Akiba rescued, secretly, in the clothes of death
by his disciples carried from Jerusalem
in blackness journeying to find his journey
to whatever he was loving with his life.
Rukeyser later acknowledged that she knew that the sage smuggled out of Jerusalem in the “clothes of death” was actually Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai but as someone who was told she was a direct descendent of Rabbi Akiva, she chose to make him the star of that particular story.
But no matter—it’s not the point for today.
Five years after you began your path to the Rabbinate in Jerusalem, here you are, “journeying to find [your] journey to whatever [you will] love with your life.”
Of course this part of that verse really is about Rabbi Akiva, this bit about discovering his journey “to whatever he was loving with his life.”
It’s a reference to Akiva’s death as a martyr whose last words were those of the Sh’ma:

כׇּל יָמַי הָיִיתִי מִצְטַעֵר עַל פָּסוּק זֶה ״בְּכָל נַפְשְׁךָ״‪.‬.. אָמַרְתִּי: מָתַי יָבֹא לְיָדִי וַאֲקַיְּימֶנּוּ?
His whole life he was troubled with the meaning of the command to love God with all of your soul, all of your nefesh. Akiva wondered: “when will I ever have the chance to love God with all of my soul?” Now the chance had finally come and he embraced it.
I’m twenty-four years in the Rabbinate. There are days—and there have been quite a few during these months of pandemic—when it can feel like you are journeying in “blackness.”
Sometimes because it weighs on your very soul, when you hold someone’s hand who has lost a parent, or a spouse, or a child. Or—as of late—when you can’t hold someone’s hand whom you long to comfort.
Sometimes it weighs on your brain, dealing with matters they never taught you (or at least they never taught me) in Rabbinical school: how worker’s comp claims will affect next year’s budget, by-laws amendments, the challenges of managing programs and people.
Sometimes it weighs on your heart…
But here’s what—overwhelmingly—it has been for me and what I pray it will be for you: a journey to what I have loved with my life, b’chol nafshi:
  • Texts that bring meaning
  • People who inspire and nourish
  • Moments of exultation and even sorrow that I feel privileged to share with those I serve
May you serve b’chol naf’sh’chem—with all of your souls, with all of your being—and may you find the way, even in the blackness, to love this sacred service with your life.