“Beloved is Suffering”:
Religious Masochism in Rabbinic Thought

David B. Siff
Rabbinic Thought
December 26, 2002

In this paper, I will survey the early Rabbinic texts that value suffering, and appraise their relationship to each other.  In my view, Rabbi Akiba introduced the idea of masochism into Judaism as a religious ideal, but did not fix the ideology on which that masochism must be based.  Those who came after him elaborated theologies to serve as the structure for this inherited ideal.  In the end of the Rabbinic period, the Babylonian Talmud adopted these theological ideas, but generally rejected Akiba’s ideal of masochism.
Scholarship to date

Ephraim Urbach has argued that Jewish asceticism arose only in the wake of catastrophes: primarily the destruction of the Second Temple, and subsequently the Bar Kochba Rebellion.  Akiba’s students discussed Akiba’s theories, but subsequent generations largely did not adopt this approach, and even found it to be inconsistent with halacha.  Akiba’s ascetic approach, according to Urbach, did not reflect a larger trend of ascetic religious consciousness.  In viewing it simply as a reaction to this historical circumstance, Urbach downplayed any larger significance within Jewish theology.
Abraham Joshua Heschel, in contrast, offered an analysis which is intriguing in its ahistorical nature, and which considers asceticism to be more integral.  Asserting the existence of two “paradigms” (avot haolam) which create the space within which Rabbinic Theology exists, Heschel saw Akiba’s teachings as stemming from a basic theology of immanence. Heschel found in Akiba’s theology the notion that there are situations when only suffering can bring one close to God.  When a person joyfully accepts suffering and martyrdom, he shows his dedication and love for God.  In addition, his suffering is a taste of God’s suffering, and therefore allows him to be close to God.  Suffering, then, is an expression of man’s love for God as well as God’s love for man. 
To construct this theology, Heschel brings together the teachings of generations of different rabbis, drawn from scores of different books, and compiles a single theology which he attributes to Rabbi Akiba.  It need not be the case, however, that Rabbi Akiba held the same view as any of his students, or that the viewpoint attributed to Rabbi Akiba in Sifre must necessarily be consistent with the viewpoint attributed to him in the Babylonian Talmud, composed hundreds of years later.  In addition, Heschel conflates Akiba’s opinions with those of his students and followers.  Heschel’s approach reflects a general tendency in Jewish scholarship to reconcile opinions that may have originally been entirely distinct.  
In my opinion, Akiba’s students developed different ways of thinking about the topic of suffering than their teacher, and what Heschel describes as Akiba’s approach contains a number of independent strands of thought.  Akiba’s students did not all hold the same position as their teacher.  The literary figure of Rabbi Akiba was a religious masochist, that is, he found joy in suffering.  Akiba and those who followed in his footsteps all presumed suffering to be the embodiment of a some positive spiritual dynamic, and sought to understand that dynamic.  Different teachers brought different ideas to bear on that task, and did not necessarily inherit Akiba’s actual theology. Rabbi Akiba’s religious masochism, as expressed by his bold statement that “sufferings are beloved,” was given different ideological bases by his students.  The one theme all of these approaches have in common is that they present ideological justifications for religious masochism: that is, they present ideologies that can justify experiencing suffering in a religiously meaningful and even pleasurable way.
Akiba’s Original Position

In Pirke Avot 3:17, Rabbi Akiba presents the simile of life as a loan from a bank.  “Everything is given on pledge, and a net is cast over all the living.  The store is open, and the storekeeper gives credit, and the ledger is open, and the hand writes, and anybody who wishes to borrow may come and borrow.  The collectors circulate constantly every day, and collect from a person with their consent or without their consent.  They have that on which they can rely: the judgment is a true judgment, and all is made ready for the banquet.”  Although it is not clear whether ‘borrowing’ refers to the sins one commits, or to the act of living itself, it is clear that this text affirms God’s absolute justice:  hadin din emet—what one receives in life is the result of a true judgment, and nobody has any basis on which to question that justice.  The Akiba presented in this text affirms God’s absolute justice; any suffering one experiences is presumed to be fair.  
Akiba’s teacher, Nachum Ish Gamzu, is said to have also affirmed God’s justice in the face of suffering.  In YT Shekalim 5:6, 39b, the story is told that Nachum cursed himself that he should be blind, lame, and handless for not having fed a needy person in time, causing him to die: Rabbi Akiba visited him, and said, “Woe is to me, to see you in this condition.”  Nachum responded, “Woe is to me that I do not see you in this [same] condition.”  Akiba responded, “why do you curse me?”  Nachum responded, “Why do you resist suffering?”  According to this text, suffering is the only way to atone for terrible sins, and the person who is to be pitied is the one who does not have such a chance for atonement.  This assertion that only suffering can atone is also explicitly brought in the name of R. Akiba in early midrashic collections.  Suffering is an expression of God’s judgment, and is the way one atones for sins.
Suffering and the Jews

Other teachings attributed to Rabbi Akiba suggest an understanding of suffering less related to straightforward justice.  In Leviticus Rabbah 35:6, Rabbi Akiba says that “poverty is beautiful (na’eh) on Jewish girls, like a red whip on a white horse.”  His statement does not explicitly address the justice of the situation, but rather is an aesthetic one: Jews suffer because looks good on them.  The traditional commentary to this explains the “whip” as God’s chastisements, driving the Jew to do teshuvah.  As such, according to the traditional explanation, Rabbi Akiba is merely affirming that God causes Jews to suffer so that they will do teshuvah.  But there is also an aesthetic dimension to the statement—suffering is something beautiful.  The whip is red, the color of blood; the horse is white, the color of pure innocence.  The girls are the white horses, innocent and beautiful, and the redness of the whip is somehow beautiful on them.  Suffering has become the object of desire.  Rabbi Akiba’s description of Jewish girls also suggests a unique relationship between Jews and God, mediated by violence.  It is not the sinners of the world who God whips with poverty, but specifically Jewish girls.  Jews are the automatic recipients of God’s wrath.  
Rabbi Akiba also found in the Song of Songs a depiction of the violent side of God’s love for Israel.  In Mechilta Vayehi 6, Rabbi Akiba interprets the verse “I have likened you, my darling, to a mare (susti) in Pharoah’s chariots” (Song of Songs 1:9) in the following way:  God said, just like I rejoiced (sasti) to destroy Egypt, almost just so I rejoiced to destroy Israel. The Song of Songs, which depicts the love between God and Israel, contains (according to Akiba) a depiction of the violent side of that love.  God enjoys causing Jews to suffer.  It is not clear from this text what the human reaction should be—whether to embrace that violence, or to resist it.  It is clear that violence is an intrinsic part of God’s relation to humanity, both Jewish and non-Jewish.    
Akiba’s Deathbed scenes

The classic story of Rabbi Akiba’s embrace of suffering is in Sifre Vaetchanan 32.  When Rabbi Eliezar fell sick, according to this text, Rabbi Akiba visited him together with three other disciples.  Each of the other three disciples said to Eliezar, “Rabbi, you are beloved to Israel” (haviv atah lyisrael), but Akiba said, “Rabbi, sufferings are beloved.” (havivin yissurin).  Akiba explains his assertion that “sufferings are beloved” based on II Chronicles 33, according to which Menasseh sinned as king for 35 years, and only repented after taken into captivity by the enemy.  Suffering is a uniquely powerful stimulus for teshuvah.
Akiba’s statement is striking in its refusal to mourn Eliezar’s sickness.  Akiba’s attitude in this story not only affirms the important role of suffering in human existence, but demands that the sufferer experience his or her suffering as a positive experience.  Such a position was clearly seen as unique even by the redactors of Sifre: Rabbi Eliezar shows interest only in Akiba’s position, and asks him to explain himself. The shocking nature of Rabbi Akiba’s approach is highlighted in the Bavli, which portrays Akiba as having been jovial (mesachek) when he visited Eliezar.  In the Yerushalmi, as well, Akiba is depicted as laughing while being led to death; the executioner asks whether he is insane, and he responds that he is happy finally to have an opportunity to fill the mitzvah of loving God with one’s full self.  The common element to all of these stories is the emotional enthusiasm demonstrated by Akiba in the face of suffering.  The most distinctive aspect of the character of Akiba, which became emphasized even more over time, was his joyful embracing of suffering.
Did Akiba change his mind?

Ephraim Urbach viewed Rabbi Akiba’s attitude that suffering is “beloved”, and a form of service to God, as a shift in his theology, in reaction to seeing the undeserved suffering of his teachers.  In Urbach’s opinion, the horrific events surrounding the failed Bar Kochba rebellion caused Akiba to adopt a positive understanding of suffering, and reject his previous understanding that it came as punishment for sin.
A number of scholars have questioned Urbach’s conclusion that Akiba’s viewpoint represented a shift from his earlier position.  E. P. Sanders has argued that Akiba always held the position that suffering had a purificatory function, whether it came on the wicked or the righteous; the reason for Akiba’s embrace of suffering was precisely because of its purificatory function. Dalya Hashan, in her fascinating reconstruction of Akiba’s theology, has argued that Rabbi Akiba’s understanding of suffering stemmed from his unitary understanding of the nature of human existence, in which life and death, pain, and pleasure, are inextricably intertwined.  She argues that the bank account which starts at zero, spoken of by Akiba in Pirke Avot, records all of one’s life experiences; whatever one withdraws (through receiving life and enjoyment) one must repay (through death and suffering).  This inseparability of pain and pleasure is an expression of the unity of God.  As such, Akiba’s theology was not merely a response to historical circumstances, but a working out of his basic theology.  Both of these researchers have demonstrated that it is possible to reconstruct a consistent theology based on the teachings of Rabbi Akiba.
Such a reconstruction, despite the New Historical methodology Hashan claims to follow, seems to be based on the quest for the historical Akiba.  Hashan admits that we can speak only of the literary figure of Rabbi Akiba, to whom sayings and actions are attributed, and that we cannot know the historical Rabbi Akiba; she continues to construct a theology based on his teachings, a project which seems only to make sense if one assumes that all teachings attributed to Rabbi Akiba were composed by the same author, or by authors who held the same theology.  We do know that the literary figure of Rabbi Akiba is unique in his positive attitude toward suffering.  We do know that the phrase havivin yissurin, and the attitude it implies, were attributed to him, and became the grounds for further elaboration.  We can even see a process whereby masochistic traditions not initially attributed to him became attributed in later texts.
In other words, the figure of Rabbi Akiba is the quintessential masochistic in Rabbinic literature. Masochism is by definition the ability to experience pain as pleasure, and this is precisely what Rabbi Akiba is advocating and the ideal which he represents.  This is the fact which stands out in the Sifre, Yerushalmi, and Bavli, the reason for Rabbi Eliezar’s shock, and the reason for his executioner’s shock.  This fact has been denied by most traditional commentary, as well as by some contemporary scholarly literature, but is clearly the central theme in traditions about Rabbi Akiba.
Freud argued that masochism is the result of a pathological resolution of the Oedipus complex, in which the child becomes libidinally invested in the punitive father figure.  Rather than identifying with the father, the masochist wishes to be beaten by the father and to have sex with him.  “The wish, which so frequently occurs in phantasies, to be beaten by the father stands very close to the other wish, to have a passive (feminine) sexual relation with him.” This masochism even can go so far as to give pleasure in death:  “since... it has the significance of an erotic component, even the subject’s destruction of himself cannot take place without libidinal satisfaction.”  That is, the pleasure derived from masochism is based in the libidinally charged relationship to a punitive parent figure, which explains the often sexual nature of masochism.  Subsequent theorists have argued that masochism serves as a defense in a situation of powerlessness.  By experiencing pain as pleasure, the powerless victim transforms his experience and takes control of his situation.  People suffer, and have no power over it, but they actually have the psychological capacity to find meaning in that suffering, and thus to experience it as pleasure.  
The character of Rabbi Akiba transformed his suffering by giving it religious meaning.  Even in his death, he found pleasure.  This pleasure had a powerful enough basis that he was even able to face death with a smile.  Certain texts also suggest something of an erotic relationship to a punitive God.  Akiba’s approach might be called “religious masochism,” in that it is uses religious ideas to find meaning in, and even to be able to enjoy, a painful and powerless situation.
Akiba’s Students

In an extended discussion in Sifre Vaetchanan 32,  Rabbi Akiba’s students are reported to have sought the meaning of their teacher’s phrase, Havivin Yissurin.  Their interpretations offer a number of different ways of understanding the reason for the basic connection between righteousness and suffering.  They do not share in one common theology, but rather in the quest to find a way to think about and experience suffering in a positive way.  They provide theologies of suffering which can allow a person to find religious meaning in it, and thereby experience it as positive.  In their discussion, we can see a process whereby conceptual underpinnings for religious masochism (inherited from their teacher) were developed. The students had inherited Rabbi Akiba’s religious masochism, embodied and canonized in the statement that “sufferings are beloved,” without a specific interpretation of why sufferings were beloved, and each of them took it upon himself to create an ideology which could support such an attitude.

1. Suffering as Loveplay

The first interpretation understands suffering as creating a love relationship between God and the individual:  Rabbi Elezar b. Yaakov says, it is written “He whom God loves, He rebukes, and like a father the son whom he favors.”  What caused the son to be beloved to the father?  [The verse] is saying that it is the sufferings. The prooftext itself clearly suggests that God rebukes specifically the one who is beloved; Rabbi Elezar takes this farther, and suggests that it was the sufferings themselves which made the person beloved to God.  The person has entered into a love relationship with the divine, by accepting God’s expression of love (i.e. suffering), and has thereby become ‘beloved’.  Suffering is not merely a method of atonement, of repairing a breach between man and God, but rather is the actual mode for connection.  Suffering is God’s way of loving humanity.  
This interaction seems to be in the context of an intimate relationship.  God loves somebody who accepts the suffering sent to him, and stands in intimate relation to that person as a result of his acceptance of the suffering.  In an alternate version of the same teaching, Elezar gives the reason that “suffering draws one closer to God.” It is not clear how it draws one close, but it is clear that the ultimate goal of suffering is for the victim to stand in a closer relationship to God. 
Other texts also understand God’s violence as part of a love relationship betwen man and God.  Talmud Shabbat 88b describes God’s lovers as “insulted but don’t insult, and rejoice in suffering.”  The prooftext is  Judges 5:31:  “Let those that love thee be as the sun when it comes out in its might.”  The text seems to be endorsing a strength of character that resists the vicissitudes of life.  It is interesting that such people are described as God’s “lovers”—that is, the only way to enter into a full, intimate relationship with God is to accept every aspect of that relationship.  One enters into intimate relationship with God, at least in part, through accepting suffering.
Other places in Rabbinic literature hint that this is an erotic relationship.  In Mechilta Shirata 3, an interpretation of Song of Songs 1:3 “therefore do maidens love you” is attributed to Rabbi Akiba:  They love you to death.  This midrash presents a religious ideal of being lovesick for God to the point that one is willing to die.  Death is the final culmination of a love for God which is so strong that death itself is welcomed as a culmination of that love.  Akiba similarly interprets Song of Songs 1:4 (“I have likened you to a mare among Pharaoh’s chariots”) to refer to God’s violence toward Israel.  In Akiba’s interpretation of the Song of Songs, an erotic love poem about God’s relationship to humanity, violence is an inherent part of that love.  The Babylonian Talmud, as well, terms the sufferings which come to a guiltless person the “sufferings of love.” 
Heschel, in Torah ShBaShamayim, denies the possibility that suffering is desired as an end in itself.  He argues that in suffering we share in God’s pain, and brings one source that shows that human and divine pain are parallel.  His interpretation avoids the possibility that God is a sadist; He is also a victim, He is also powerless.  Traditional commentaries also tend to deny the possibility that these texts are referring to a sadomasochistic relationship.
Daniel Boyarin does interpret of certain Rabbinic passages as erotic and masochistic.  He argues that the masochism constitutes a self-feminization, in which certain rabbis took on the qualities which they understood to be feminine, including permeability and being the recipients of violence.  In Boyarin’s estimation, this masochism consists of “identification with the Mother, as the one who seeks and finds recognition through the Father.”  In the cultural context of the Rabbis, violence and domination (i.e. the phallus) were seen as male qualities; those rabbis who embraced pain were, in his eyes, attempting to construct a non-phallic male identity.  God, the Father, would thus be a violent male lover, and one must be willing to be feminized, to become the object of violence and penetration, in order to enter an intimate relationship with Him.  Boyarin also argues for the consistent presence of an erotic tone to the masochistic texts: “the intersection between pain and eroticism.”  “The pursuit of the shattered—dephallicized—body is a source of pleasure which much in our cultural formation… nearly prohibits us from seeing.”  Indeed, the masochism in Rabbinic texts generally goes unacknowledged, by both ancient and modern scholarship.
The depiction of God’s relation to Israel as that of a violent husband is also prominent in Biblical literature, in which He appears as a violent husband chastising his wife, Israel.   In Facing the Abusing God, David Blumenthal charges Jews with naming and standing up to this abuse:
There is also in God, as we have unwillingly seen, an ugly moment: an abuser, a perpetrator.  That, too, is part of the reason why the texts exert upon us a powerful attraction, and repulsion.  This abusiveness in God is witnessed, first, by the texts we have read and studied…  Our suffering is the result of abuse, by the Perpetrator; it is the Perpetrator Who must answer, and we, we will point the finger, we will identify the Abuser, we will tell this ugly truth.

Blumenthal’s capitalization of “Perpetrator” indicates that he is using it as a name of God.  The God of the Bible and of history is, at times, abusive.  One response, as Blumenthal suggests, is to name and stand up to that abuse.  An alternative response is to attempt to engage in a love relationship with that abuser.
In the midrash to Psalm 77, the relationship between God and man is initially depicted as a father beating his son, but then switches to talking about Knesset Yisrael and using the feminine gender, suggesting the image of a wife in relation to a husband who is beating her.  As Freud noted regarding masochism, the underlying fantasy is to have sex with the father; the text here seems to shift from God as Father, to God as Husband/Lover.  In order to enter into an erotic relationship with God, one must place oneself in a position of submissiveness, and invite the violence associated with that God (i.e. the punitive Father figure).  Rabbi Eliezar’s interpretation, which understands suffering as forming a love relationship between God and man, hints at an erotic masochism, which experiences God both as the violent father, and as the active lover.  The fantasy, expressed in religious terms, is to have a (passive) sexual relation to the father, and this is (as Freud noted) closely associated with the fantasy to be beaten by the father.  This fantasy allows the powerless suffering individual to escape his suffering by transforming it into the expression of an erotic relationship with the divine.
2. The Abandonment of Theodicy

The next statement in Sifre emphasizes the anthropomorphic qualities of the divine/human relation.  Rabbi Meir says, It is written “Bear in mind that the LORD your God disciplines you just as a man disciplines (myaser) his son.”  You and your heart know the deeds you have committed and the sufferings I brought on you, that what I brought upon you did not correspond to your deeds.  God, in this view, is not a perfectly just judge, but rather more like an imperfect parent; perhaps the unjustness of suffering is in fact a sign of God’s standing in a human relationship to mankind.  God relates to humans like a parent who can punish at whim and is not always just.  Undeserved suffering is, paradoxically, a sign of closeness to God.  The notion of God’s fairness is abandoned by this text; instead, it is the righteous who should expect to suffer, because it suffering (at least of a certain kind) is directed toward the righteous.
The normative suffering of the righteous, completely unrelated to any of their own sins, is not a new idea.  It saw light centuries earlier in Isaiah’s description of the “Suffering Servant” who took away the sins of the world.  It is a motif that was picked up by Christianity, which directed God’s anger toward His own son rather than onto mankind. It would seem that the rabbis have inherited a theology common to both early Christianity and Judaism, in which sin invokes God’s anger, and that anger is taken out not on those who caused it, but on those who are closest to Him.  
Shir HaShirim Rabbah 1:3 extends this association to all Israel.  Discussing the verse shemen torak shmecha, Rav Yudan says that just as olives must be beaten to extract oil, Jews must be made to suffer in order to do teshuvah.  This midrash certainly is within the theology of sin/punishment, but may also imply a unique connection between Jews and suffering.  The image of Jews as olives, beaten by God for their oil (i.e. their teshuvah) suggests a violent relationship between God and the Jews, which may not hold with the other nations.  God has a unique relationship with the Jews, in which He urges Jews to do teshuvah through suffering.  Rabbi Akiba’s teaching about poverty being “beautiful” on Jewish girls also suggests a normative association between Jews and suffering.  
A number of Midrashim suggest that God sends difficult situations to the righteous because, perversely, they are the ones who can endure it.  Pesikta Rabbati 53 suggests that God ‘forges’ the righteous, each to his ability:  Just as the blacksmith puts silver in a fire, and gold in a smelting pot, but does not make them stay there [too long], so God forges the righteous, each one according to his honor.  This is the meaning of “ For silver—the crucible, for gold—the furnace, and a man is tested by his praise.”  What is the meaning of “a man is tested by his praise (mhallo)?”  God forges the righteous according to his deeds (m’allav).  Rather than interpreting the verse to imply that one who has committed many bad deeds is tested more, the midrash is interpreting it to mean that one is put through hard situations according to the number of good deeds one has performed: the more righteous one is, the more suffering one goes through.  The midrash then points out that all of the matriarchs, including Hannah, who were paradigms of righteousness, were ‘forged’ with barrenness. 
Tanhuma similarly says that Abraham was chosen for the test of the Akeida because he would be able to stand it:  This is the meaning of the verse, “God tests the righteous.”  Rabbi Yona said, When one beats flax, it improves, but this is only true for good flax.  If it is poor quality, if you beat it it falls apart.  So too God only tests the righteous.  Rabbi Yehuda bar Shalom said, the potter does not tap a shaky pot or vessel, lest it break.  What does he tap? The sturdy one.  So too God tests the righeous and not the wicked, which is the meaning of the verse “God tests the righteous.”  Rabbi Elazar said, it is to be compared to a landowner who had two cows, one had good strength and one had bad strength.  Which does he yoke?  The one with good strength.  This is what is written, “God tests the righteous.”  Therefore it says, “God tested Abraham.”  In the first midrash, God’s purpose is clearly to improve the person, just as flax improves with beating.  In the second midrash, the image is of a storekeeper trying to show off his best pot to a customer: God tested Abraham because he knew he would succeed.  It was precisely the most righteous person whom God chose to undergo the hardest test; but who was the customer that God was trying to show something to?  Does God just feel the need to “tap” pots, and chooses the strongest to be the victims of this “tapping”?  Similarly, in the third midrash, it is understandable why God chose Abraham, but it is not so clear why God needed to perform the test in the first place:  God is not a farmer who needs to plough fields.  
This midrash leaves God’s ultimate motives unclear.  It explains why God chooses whom He chooses, but does not explain why God needs to perform these tests in the first place.  The midrash sets up an expectation that the righteous will be put into the hardest life situations, but does not really address why those life situations must exist in the world at all.
These texts do not affirm God’s fairness.  God is not fair to individuals, and this is obvious if one looks realistically at the world.  Such a viewpoint is not merely a response to catastrophe, but rather the result of a realistic appraisal of the nature of reality.  It is not fair that the righteous suffer.  These texts, then are not theodicies, attempts to justify God’s actions.  Rather, they attempt to understand the world realistically, and understand the very basic fact that righteous people do typically suffer at least as much as the wicked.  The theory of a direct link between sin and punishment, over time, has broken down; it is not the wicked who suffer, but rather the righteous.
3. Suffering as the Expression of God’s Immanent Presence

Rabbi Yossi b. Yehuda suggests a completely different understanding of the value of suffering:  it is the presence of an immanent relationship with the divine.  R. Yossi b. Yehuda says, Sufferings are Beloved before God, because the glory of God rests on one upon whom come sufferings, as it is written, “the LORD your God disciplines you.”  “God’s glory” generally refers to His presence, either in a specific place or generally infusing the universe.  Here, the sufferings are the vehicle by which the presence of God comes into the same space as a person’s body.  Because the sufferings themselves are specifically from God, they are God’s presence, an immanent interaction with the divine.
Shochar Tov, in a parallel text to that in Sifre, elaborates Rabbi Yosi b. Yehuda’s statement to imply a sort of divine writing on the body of the victim: Rabbi Yossi b. Yehuda said, Beloved are suffering before God, for the name of God falls (hal) on one to whom suffering comes, as it is said, “the LORD your God disciplines you.”  The physical result of suffering itself is an inscription of God’s name on the body of the sufferer, much as tephillin are a way to write divine words on one’s body.  The person becomes the parchment for God’s name, himself a sacred text, bearing as it were the presence of the divine. 
4. Suffering as the Stamp of the Covenant

The next interpretation is less personal, but also views suffering as forging a relationship between God and man (specifically, the Jews).  R. Nathan b. Yossi says, just as the covenant was cut by means of the land, so is the covenant cut with suffering, as it says “The LORD your God disciplines you,” and it says, “for the LORD your God is bringing you into a good and wide land.”  The inheritance of the Land of Israel was the completion of a covenantal relationship with Israel, part of which was the promise of the Land; when the Israelites finally arrived in the land, this completed the covenant, putting it into effect.  Similarly, suffering enacts a covenantal relationship with God.  Just as the positive terms of the covenant (i.e. receiving the land) gain importance when seen as the enactment of a relationship with God, so too the curses one experiences in life must be seen and even appreciated as part of a formalized covenantal relationship with God, and from that perspective have the same meaning.  
Perhaps in the covenantal role of suffering there is a parallel to the role of blood, which also stands at the intersection of life and death: both circumcision blood and suffering are entry-ways into the covenant.  This parallel between circumcision and suffering may also be reflected in the Rabbi Yossi b. Yehuda’s teaching, discussed above: circumcision, like suffering, is an inscription in the flesh, a feminization of the sufferer as the inscribed, who now stands in intimate relation with the inscriber.  The act of inscription, and the presence of physical pain, are the physical symbols of entry into the covenant.
5. Suffering as Asceticism

Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, who is quoted next in Sifre, also suggests a reason for the unique nexus between Jews and suffering, different than those of his colleagues.  He argues that suffering is good because Israel received Israel, Torah, and the World to Come only by means of suffering.  His position does not explicitly present the mathematical formula that suffering builds up a certain amount of merit, or reduces one’s demerits and enables one to receive these greater rewards.  Rather, the receipt of these great spiritual gifts is tied up with the receipt of suffering; the gift and the pain are acquired together.  He quotes the verse, “Happy is the man whom the Lord chastises and teaches from his Torah;”  Torah and suffering are inextricably bound, and are given to a person together.  Similarly, Deut 8:5-7 juxtaposes punishment with the gift of the land; the gift and the punishment are given in the same act.  Only in regards to the World to Come does he suggest a possible logical link:  “Mitzvah is a lamp, Torah is light, and the way to Life is ethical rebuke”  What is the pathway that brings one to the World to Come?  The verse comes to say that it is punishment.  This teaching may have become the origin for the idea that punishments allow the righteous to enter into the World to Come by clearing them of any sin, but such a link is not explicit.  Rather, suffering is seen as a pathway to spiritual rewards.
Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai’s approach may reflect an attitude of ascesis, a spiritual approach which was common in Greco-Roman culture.  In the classic Hellenistic phenomenon of ascesis, the discipline of the soul through self-imposed suffering.  According to the Hellenistic version of asceticism, the physical and spiritual worlds are understood to be at odds, and the physical body is the prison of the soul.  One can enable the spirit to escape the prison of the body by denial of physical pleasure, and even by self-imposed physical pain.
Pirke Avot endorses a moderate asceticism as part of a spiritual life. In Pirke Avot 5:23, Ben Ha Ha states “according to the tzara (pain/exertion) is the reward.”  Similarly, Pirke Avot 4:9 suggests that if one remains devoted to Torah and fulfills it even when poor, he will end up fulfilling it when rich, and vice versa.  This is not a rejection of physical pleasure, but a prioritization of Torah in one’s life, such that one is willing to endure physical poverty and hardship rather than give up on prioritizing study and fulfillment of the Torah. Attachment to the physical world is seen as a possible impediment to a dedication to Torah, and the dedicated Jew must not allow pain to throw him off course.  A few other Rabbinic sources go so far as to endorse suffering as the unique means by which to accomplish certain spiritual goals.  In Pirke Avot 3:13, Akiba recommends vows (which are a form of physical deprivation one inflicts upon oneself), as protection against lewdness, apparently because of the spiritual discipline involved.  Similarly, in Leviticus Rabbah 19:1, Rav Shmuel bar Ami is quoted as saying that if one is not merciless (ahzari) on his body, children, and household like a raven, he does not merit words of Torah.  It is only through a certain physical deprivation that one can live a spiritual life.  
This model of asceticism as “spiritual practice” was widespread in the Greco-Roman world, and Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai’s position may have been influenced by it.  It is only through suffering that Jews have been granted Torah, Israel, and the World to Come, as it is only through suffering that one achieves spiritual gain.
Rabbinic asceticism has been described as “world-affirming,” inasmuch as it “accept[s] the soul’s involvement with the world, but attempt[s] the transformation of the world by means of a transformed soul.”  If Shimon bar Yochai’s position is ascetic, however, it does not seem to be such a world-affirming asceticism.  Spiritual pleasure—the world to come, Israel, and Torah—is at odds with physical pleasure.  The two worlds are incompatible.  It is not clear at all that “Torah” here is acquired as a tool for the transformation of the world—rather, it itself is a gift, and the study of Torah is a goal in itself, intercourse with the “goddess of love.”   This interpretation is consistent with the tradition that Shimon bar Yochai spent twelve years studying Torah in a cave—the literary figure of Shimon bar Yochai (which may or may not correspond to the original historical person) separated Torah study from involvement in the mundane world, and sees Torah study as the higher pursuit; upon leaving his cave he is horrified to see Jews engaging in the work of the world, and is then forced back to his cave as punishment.  The literary figure of Shimon bar Yochai embodies a dualism between the spiritual and physical worlds; in light of this dualism, spiritual accomplishments are earned at the cost of physical suffering.
6. Suffering as Atonement

The next interpretation given in Sifre presents a much more classical understanding of suffering: it serves as atonement for sin:  Rabbi Nehemia says, Sufferings are beloved, for just as sacrifices appease, so do sufferings appease.  In regards to sacrifices, the text says “it shall be accepted for him to make atonement for him,”  and in regards to suffering the text says, “and they shall make amends for their iniquity.”  And even more, suffering appeases more than sacrifices, for sacrifices are paid for with one’s money, and suffering with one’s body.  And thus it says, “skin for skin—all that a man has he will give up for his life.”
The ‘classical’ Biblical approach understands suffering as punishment for sin.  Parts of the Bible affirm a system of collective reward and punishment directed to the Jewish people as a whole, while other sections change this teaching to a system of reward and punishment directed toward the individual, but this system of reward and punishment is never abandoned.  This is the system most people associate with the Judeo-Christian tradition.  This approach, often referred to as tzidduk hadin,  (affirming the correctness of God’s Judgement) is ubiquitous in Rabbinic Literature. Rabbi Akiba himself is cited as having affirmed this teaching.  Urbach cites this tenet, of God’s ultimate fairness, as the common assumption held by all Rabbinic sources, although the sources we have already cited seem to suggest that this unanimity was not perfect.  In any event, it is the most common approach throughout Rabbinic literature, and is well founded in Biblical thought.
According to these theories of reward and punishment, suffering in fact does serve an extrinsic purpose.  In the Bible, sin causes divine wrath, and sacrifices are necessary to appease that wrath, and keep the sinner safe.  Suffering can atone for sin, and thereby reestablish amicable relations between humans and the divine.  
The doctrine of reward and punishment was reconciled with the notion that suffering allows one entry to the world to come, in the following way: the righteous are punished in order to receive Olam HaBa, and sinners are rewarded on Earth so that God is not obligated to give them anything in the afterlife.  This is one explanation why the righteous seem to suffer on Earth, and may have been a crucial part of Akiba’s original position.  Suffering effects atonement while on Earth, and thus allows the sinner to receive his full reward in the afterlife.  
Summary of Akiba’s students

Akiba’s students, as presented in the Sifre, seem to have received their rabbi’s teaching that “Sufferings are Beloved,” but allowed themselves the freedom to explicate it as they saw fit.  To try to reduce these divergent viewpoints into one theological position would not do justice to their ideas.  In interpreting their teacher’s experience and teaching, the students brought in different approaches to the suffering of the righteous.  One might even say that they received the assertion that “Suffering is Beloved” as canonical, and created a new level of interpretation, infusing Akiba’s saying with new meanings and associations.  They did not seek to present Rabbi Akiba’s original intention (and thus do not simply quote Akiba’s original explanation); rather, they are using his saying and his experience as sacred text, and creating a new level of interpretation.
The midrashic sugiya which reports the discussion among Akiba’s students appears to be compiled in a backwards order.   Rabbi Nehemia’s position, which is possibly closest to the original meaning of Rabbi Akiba’s statement, is the last one quoted;  the most radical interpretation (suffering as loveplay) is the first one quoted.  Only at the end of the sugiya do we read the story of Akiba originally adopting his position.  This structure is similar to the way a bet din renders its verdict: the most significant comes last, so as not to prevent the student from rendering an independent decision.  The literary structure of the sugiya thus makes space for innovative understandings of the phrase Havivin Yissurin, not allowing the original meaning to overshadow the more innovative understandings.  Rabbi Akiba’s statement has become canonical, the subject for interpretation and midrash, itself an opportunity for religious exploration.  Rabbi Akiba’s students may be reacting to the historical events they have witnessed, but they are also reacting to a new and intriguing approach, the religious masochism pioneered by their teacher, an approach which they discovered to be ripe with potential meaning.
Akiba’s ethic was incorporated into the Mishnah in the form of a halacha that one should “bless for the good just like one blesses for the bad.”  This suggests an understanding of good and bad as both emanating from God, and an obligation to acknowledge and perhaps even be grateful for both.  This understanding stems from a basic appreciation of the unity of God.  The Babylonian Talmud articulates this conclusion in its suggestion that one should accept bad news with joy, but ultimately prescribes a different blessing for the bad than that for the good.  Akiba’s approach was adopted based on a belief in God’s unity, and was made into halacha by the Mishna.  His students’ ideas, as well, were incorporated into the Talmud.  However, the initial masochistic thrust was ultimately rejected:  “Are these sufferings dear to you?…  Not them, and not their reward.”  The Babylonian Talmud was willing to explore the question of theodicy, but it was not willing to adopt religious masochism as a spiritual ideal.
Conclusions

Rabbinic literature contains independent strands of thought, which cannot be reduced to two paradigms as Heschel suggests.  In this case, Akiba’s approach became canonical, in that his statement “Sufferings are Beloved” was accepted and turned into the subject of interpretation.  As sacred text, the saying became filled with potentially unlimited content, allowing for the development of different religious ideas.  Akiba’s students did not all accept Akiba’s theology, but they all accepted his saying, and the religious masochism that it implies.  They developed different theological approaches, which were independent of each other, to justify their teacher’s masochistic approach. These different ideas do not form a consistent theology, but rather demonstrate a flowering of thought through the process of canonization and exegesis.
Rabbi Akiba’s central hidush was his joyous embrace of suffering, articulated in his saying “Sufferings are Beloved.”  The theologies presented by his students are all masochistic, in that they all justify the experience of pain as pleasure. They do so through a variety of ways of understanding the divine/human relationship, but the basic phrase “sufferings are beloved” is intriguing because it starkly presents the surprising paradox of masochism, that pain can actually be experienced as pleasure.