From what I understand, the tickets sold out in four hours. Every available seat for the fifth Maamad Adirei HaTorah were gone within four hours of going on sale. The event is scheduled for May 31st at the Xfinity Mobile Arena in Philadelphia, but I heard that the demand was so overwhelming that organizers weighed a move to a venue that holds many more.

I’m not sure if that is true, but they don’t say that stuff about me and you.

But maybe they do. At least in a way. I find myself reflecting on a Gemara that we all know, yet is so cryptic in so many ways. Every year, in the weeks between Pesach and Shavuos, we review it, and now, on the cusp of one of the largest gatherings celebrating limud with rabbeim, chavrusos and yeshiva, I find it more pertinent than ever.

Yevamos 62b. Twenty-four thousand talmidim of Rabi Akiva. Ascara. The worst. Why? The Gemara tells us, with unsettling brevity, that they died because lo nohagu kavod zeh bozeh — translated in the American vernacular, they did not treat one another with proper respect. What I cannot stop wondering, despite the countless conjectures through all of my rabbeim’s shmuessen and postulations, is: What, precisely, did they do or fail to do?

Indeed, throughout my schooling, every one of my rabbeim and teachers seized the opportunity for lessons in betterment of bein adam lachaveiro. The twenty-four thousand have served as the cautionary tale of choice for every conceivable interpersonal failing. In kindergarten, they apparently did not share their snacks. In yeshiva, they allegedly held less than charitable opinions of certain chavrusos. In bais medrash, maybe they were mevatel the chaburos that their friends gave. It seems that the nebulous vacuum invited every “baal mussar” to fill it with whatever we happen to be guilty of in any given season.

But there is a source in Koheles Rabbah (perek yud alef) that seems to cut through the ambiguity with remarkable clarity. Rabi Akiva himself, in an almost autobiographical soliloquy, relates how he had 12,000 talmidim (the Medrash does not say pairs) who were niftar between Pesach and Atzeres. In his opening statement, he offers no reason. Only when he goes on to describe how he then taught seven (not five) new talmidim does he give us a window into what the aveirah may have been. Addressing his surviving talmidim in the aftermath of the catastrophe, he tells them directly: “Harishonim lo meisu ela mipnei shehoysah eineihem tzarah baTorah zeh lazeh. Atem lo tihiyu kein. The earlier ones died only because their eyes were tzarah toward one another in Torah. You should not be this way.”

The Medrash goes on to tell us how those seven talmidim, among them Rabi Shimon bar Yochai, reacted: “Miyad amdu umilu kol Eretz Yisroel Torah. Immediately they stood up and filled all of Eretz Yisroel with Torah.”

Just seven talmidim. Not twelve thousand. Sheva yechidim who heard the mussar, internalized it, and miyad, without delay, without a vaad, without a five-year plan, went out and filled an entire land with Torah.

Not in sharing snacks. Not even in accepting someone as a chavrusa or smiling at a shtickel Torah, but something totally different. It was not a lack of kavod in the usual social sense. Somehow it seems that there was a tzimtzum in their harbotzas Torah.

I thought about this while thinking about the Adirei HaTorah and the unimaginable amount of harbotzas and hafotzas Torah that has emanated from the bais medrash of Rav Aharon Kotler since the founding of Bais Medrash Govoah in America.

But even added to the actual proliferation of Torah itself, Rabi Akiva, who once boasted as a shepherd of his animosity toward talmidei chachomim, became the symbol of “V’ahavta lereiacha kamocha.” And where does it manifest most? Zeh klal gadol baTorah! The love. The sharing. The proliferation must be in Torah.

An event that fills an arena with tens of thousands declaring their love for Torah and those who learn it is indeed extraordinary. The chashivus haTorah on display is real, and it matters.

And it transcends more than just the internal pilpul in the halls of the yeshiva. “Miyad amdu umilu kol Eretz Yisroel Torah. Immediately they stood up and filled all of Eretz Yisroel with Torah.”

Fill the land with Torah. Establish kollelim. Build yeshivos. Grow talmidim. That is the celebration.

I was reminded of this a while back when I was at a Shabbaton in Kisvarda, Hungary, where I watched Rav Dovid Cohen, the Chevroner rosh yeshiva, interact with a group of Hungarian baalei teshuvah. Over the Shabbos, perhaps six or seven young men, newcomers to learning, offered divrei Torah — brief, tentative, the kind a seasoned talmid chochom might receive with patient tolerance and move on.

That is not what happened. Every time one of these young men finished speaking, Rav Cohen rose from his seat, walked over, took the fellow’s hand in both of his, and told him — warmly and specifically — why what he had said was beautiful.

The opposite of tzoras ayin. In the hands of a gadol, it looked effortless. It was not.

A while back, a former talmid met me and shared a story from his sophomore year in high school. He had been given hagbah based entirely on the assumption that a young man of his size must know what he is doing. He did not. The Torah began to wobble. The boys began to shout. He got it back to the shulchan, but the experience was, in his words, mortifying.

What he remembered, twenty-five years later, was that a relatively small rebbi walked over quietly afterward and taught him exactly how to do it. How to lift the Torah. He demonstrated. That Shabbos in shul, the boy did it perfectly. He told me that he has performed hagbah many dozens of times since.

I have an extremely vague memory of this. At the time, it did not occur to me to think of it as anything. But teaching someone how to show the Torah to the world may indeed be the greatest achievement in one’s life. Indeed, it is the voice from Sinai that penetrates an entire world.

As tens of thousands prepare to gather on May 31st to fill an arena with Torah, Torah, Torah, let us carry one additional kinyan into the room.

Eineihem tzarah b’Torah zeh l’zeh. Rabi Akiva told his surviving students: You should not be this way.

That many people in an arena is a maamad. Thousands of men who will then go home and fill the world with Torah is only paving a pathway to geulah.

Just saying.