The sages are the reason Judaism survived the destruction of its cult, and the tradition treats them as colleagues rather than saints. They are quoted by name, argued with, corrected, and occasionally shown behaving badly — the Talmud records rabbis losing their tempers, misjudging, and being overruled by their own students. Hillel and Shammai's schools disagree for generations until a heavenly voice announces that both are the words of the living God and the law follows Hillel, on the stated grounds that his students were gracious and taught the opposing view first. Akiva's biography carries the tradition's ambivalence in one life: an illiterate shepherd who began at forty, built the interpretive method the whole system runs on, backed a failed messiah in a revolt that cost hundreds of thousands of lives, and died under Roman torture reciting the Shema. Nobody prays to any of them. Their graves are visited, especially in the Galilee, especially by Sephardi and Hasidic Jews, and the more rationalist end of the tradition is uneasy about that.