A Bride for One Night: Talmud Tales

The Beruria Incident

133 The Beruria Incident Once she [Beruria] ridiculed what the sages used to say: “Women are light-headed.”1 He said to her: “By your life, in the end you will acknowledge that it is true.” And he ordered one of his students to test her fidelity. And he [the student] entreated her for many days until she succumbed. And when she realized what had happened, she hanged herself. And Rabbi Meir fled because of the enormity of his shame. —From Rashi’s commentary on the words “And some say it is because of the Beruria incident,” B. Avodah Zara 18b I came to Rabbi Meir’s study house as a tanna, a “walking book,” valued for what I knew by heart. From an early age I was blessed with an extraordinary memory. The Torah was engraved in my mouth, and I was a vessel for its words. I had memorized many ancient teachings, particularly those relevant to the tractates of the Talmud known as Women. Over the course of the learning in Rabbi Meir’s study house, I was never asked to comment on the Mishnah; I was asked merely to recite from it. And I was not the only such walking book; others like me made the rounds of the various study houses and were granted lodgings , food, and drink in exchange for the teachings they knew by heart. Everyone occasionally wakes up to find that “a verse has fallen into his lips.” Rabbi Yohanan calls it a form of prophecy. I used to wake up to find my tongue reciting words from Mishnah Sotah, which deals with a woman suspected of adultery.2 I lived my whole life alone, spending 134 The Beruria Incident my days with the men in the study house, but even so, I had a way with women. They were kindly disposed toward me, motherly. I was comfortable in their company, even though I did not have a wife or daughter of my own. From the first time I saw her, Beruria seemed different from other women. Her hair was unruly even when it was covered. In her home, the study house of Rabbi Meir, she used to mingle with the students, correcting their imprecise quotations and offering new explanations of her own. Her voice could be heard from room to room. They say that she once kicked a student who was learning Torah in a whisper: “Is it not said that Torah is ‘Arranged in all and safeguarded?’”3 She rebuked him for not allowing the words of Torah to live in his throat as well as his lips. “This means that if Torah is arranged in all your 248 limbs, it is safeguarded; and if not, it is not safeguarded.” From conversations among the students I learned that Beruria herself was as learned as an elder. She could recite by heart hundreds of laws from an obscure commentary on the Book of Chronicles.4 I watched her when she gusted through the room like a stormy wind. There was an element of girlish simplicity about her, but she was also stubborn and strong-willed. As if she were refusing with all her might to give in to the pain and injustice she had experienced—the death of her parents; the death of her two sons; the loss of her sister, who was shut up in a whorehouse. One time, when everyone in the study house was learning Kiddushin, the talmudic tractate dealing with marriage, one of the students seated before Rabbi Meir recited: “A man may not be alone with two women, but a woman may be alone with two men.” I remembered a story they tell about how Beruria refused to travel alone with Rabbi Yossi Ha-Glili. I was pleased to see that the Mishnah acknowledged the wisdom of women. Yet the scholars in the study house explained this Mishnah differently . They said, “Because women are lightheaded and easily seduced .” Beruria, who heard this explanation, was insulted, as if they were speaking about her personally. The color disappeared from her cheeks, and her mouth turned to a derisive frown. “Women are lightheaded ,” she chanted after them, imitating the cadences of their learning . A silence fell upon the study house, broken finally by the harsh voice of her husband: “By your life, in the end you will acknowledge that it is The Beruria Incident 135 true.” This exchange...