Reader Response:
Beruriah's Final Lesson
Joel B. Wolowelsky
[Brenda Socachevsky Bacon responds]
In the last issue of Nashim (no. 5, 2002), Brenda Socachevsky Bacon raised the question: "How Shall We Tell the Story of Beruriah's End?"She writes:
The learning of Beruriah, the wife of Rabbi Meir, has turned her into a role model for those who view the relatively new phenomenon of women's Torah study as an important value. However, a report of Beruriah's tragic and shameful end prevents complete identification with her. (p. 231)
The story to which Bacon refers is quoted by Rashi:
One time [Beruriahl mocked the Sages [over their] saying, "Women are light-headed" (Kiddushin 80b, Shabbat 33b). [Rabbi Meir] said to her: "By your life, you will ultimately affirm their words." He instructed one of his disciples to seduce her. [The student] urged her for many days, until she consented. When the matter became known to her she strangled herself, and Rabbi Meir fled out of disgrace. (Rashi to Avodah zarah 18b)
For Bacon, Rashi's anecdote undercuts the positive image of Beruriah that had been developed by the talmudic sources depicting her learning and sensitivity. She therefore explores ways of "getting around" this uncomfortable challenge. However, I feel that we should not hesitate to tell the story of Beruriah's end to our students.
Of course, this anecdote does show Beruriah to be imperfect, but that is the approach taken in the Bible and Talmud toward our national heroes. Commenting on what on the surface seems to be Abraham's questionable behavior, Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsch remarks: "The Torah never [End Page 205] presents our great men as being perfect. . . . The Torah [and, we may add, the Talmud] is no collection of examples of saints" (Commentary to Gen. 12:10). Unfortunately, mocking others was part of Beruriah's modus operandi (Berakhot 10a, Eruvin 53b-54a), and that type of behavior is often counterproductive.
Likewise, it does not undermine Beruriah's greatness to suggest that a trusting soul like hers could be undermined by a mean-spirited campaign to do her in. Ein apotropus le'arayot, said the Sages: Everyone—not only the light-headed, and certainly not only women—is vulnerable to sexual temptation, even someone who, like Beruriah, "learned three hundred traditions a day from three hundred masters" (Pesahim 62b). I see no reason not to want to make that point to our students.
The real purpose of Rashi's anecdote, I believe, was not to undermine Beruriah but rather to reprimand Rabbi Meir for his outrageous behavior. In so doing, Rashi presents a message that is quite relevant to our present-day society.
Rabbi Meir was indebted to his wife for many important insights. She had taught him to hate sin rather than sinners, gently admonishing his misplaced anger at the local brigands who were troubling him (Berakhot 10a). When their sons died, she had the presence of mind to prepare him for the bitter news and helped him come to terms with the tragedy (Midrash mishlei to Prov. 31:10). When her father was sentenced by the Romans to be burned and her mother to be killed, and she herself was sentenced to hard labor, she recited the verse: "Great in counsel and mighty in deed; whose eyes are open to all the ways of men, rewarding every man according to his ways and according to the fruit of his doings" (Jer. 32:19). How great is this righteous woman, exclaimed Rabbi Judah Hanasi upon hearing this; in her time of distress she summoned a verse vindicating God's judgment, something unprecedented in all of Scripture! (Midrash sifre, Deuteronomy, 307, ed. Finkelstein, p. 346).
Rabbi Meir certainly knew that Beruriah was not light-headed and that she had every justification to be offended by such a slur. How should he have responded to her hurt? Surely not by violating the biblical command not to put a stumbling block before her. What could his student have thought of his master when he was instructed to behave so reprehensibly? His loyalty to his teacher seems to have blinded him to the ethics of the Torah.
Indeed, Rashi quotes this story in connection with a talmudic discussion that illustrates Rabbi Meir's insensitivity. Beruriah's sister had been captured [End Page 206] and forced to work as a prostitute. Rabbi Meir set out to rescue her, but only after his wife complained, "It is a disgrace to me that my sister dwells in a house of prostitution." He succeeded in saving her—after she passed his test of her righteousness—and then fled to Babylonia. "Some say he fled because of this matter," says the Talmud (Avodah zarah 18b), "while others say [it was] because of the affair of Beruriah."
What happens when an illustrious rabbi cannot acknowledge the debt he owes a learned women like Beruriah, when he cannot appreciate her righteousness, feel the hurt unjustly inflicted on her, and come to her defense? What happens when he is driven to undermine her and prove her unworthy despite her obvious trustworthiness? The answer is that he succeeds and, in the process, corrupts his student, destroys her, and disgraces himself.
That certainly seems to be a lesson worth teaching.
Joel B. Wolowelsky is Dean of the Faculty at the Yeshivah of Flatbush and the author of Women, Jewish Law, and Modernity: New Possibiities in a Post-feminist Age (New York: Ktav, 1997).
