Rachel, wife of Rabbi Akiva רחל אשת רבי עקיבא

Seeing in her father's shepherd both modesty and greatness, she betrothed herself to him in secret; Kalba Savua disowned her, and they slept on straw. She sent her husband away to learn—a man of forty starting from the alphabet—and he returned after twelve years with twelve thousand students. At the door he heard her tell a neighbour: "would that he sat another twelve"—and without entering he left for twelve more—twenty-four years in all.

When he returned with twenty-four thousand, she came out to him through the crowd, and to the students pushing her back Rabbi Akiva said the words repeated at Jewish weddings everywhere: "let her be—mine and yours are hers". Kalba Savua, recognising his son-in-law, gave him half his fortune. The golden diadem called "Jerusalem" Rabbi Akiva gave her, saying: she has suffered enough.

The name Rachel does not rest on a guess. The Talmud, in its accounts of her, gives no name—"his wife", "the daughter of Kalba Savua"—but Avot deRabbi Natan (ch. 6) names her outright: "Rachel his wife merited it". And in Ketubot 63a, of her daughter who did for Ben Azzai what she had done, it is said: "the ewe follows the ewe"—and the ewe in Aramaic is rachel.