The wife of the famous Rabbi Meir and daughter of Rabbi Chananiah ben Tradyon, one of the ten Torah scholars martyred by the Romans for spreading the Torah among the Jewish people, Beruriah was a woman of great learning, wisdom, and piety. She has the distinction of being one of the few women mentioned in the Babylonian Talmud and the only one of these women who is considered a Tanna (Torah sage) in her own right.
Beruriah lived during the first and second centuries CE, just at the time when Rabbi Judah the Prince was codifying the Mishnah, or corpus of rabbinical law. The Mishnah consists of six orders, or sederim, and the commentary on the Mishnah is known as the Gemara. The Mishnah and the Gemara together, including the Talmud. Actually, there are two Talmuds: the Bavli Talmud or Babylonian Talmud, which is the most authoritative, and the Yerushalmi Talmud or Jerusalem Talmud.
Beruriah was unique for the women of her time in that she not only studied with the rabbis but also taught them. The Babylonian Talmud, in Tractate Pesachim 62b, records that she studied three hundred Halakhot or Jewish laws from three hundred teachers in a single day. Her apprenticeship was so respected that her male colleagues often asked her opinion on Jewish legal issues, particularly those that directly related to women, including ritual purity. In the Tosefta, a body of rabbinical law that is structurally similar to the Mishnah, it is recorded that Beruriah challenged her father on an issue related to ritual purity, and Rabbi Judah rules that Beruriah is correct. In this same source, Rabbi Joshua states that she Beruriah is right when she intervenes in a discussion between Tanna Rabbi Tarfon and some other sages.
Beruriah was also known for not being afraid to speak her mind. In the Babylonian Talmud’s Treatise Eruvin (Eruvin 53b), he chides Rabbi Yosi for failing to abide by the Talmudic injunction not to converse with women unnecessarily when he asks him in which direction is the city of Lod, when he could have simply asked, “¿ where is lod?”
There are many stories in rabbinic and Jewish literature related to the character of Beruriah. Jewish tradition portrays her as not only very outspoken but also someone who could be extremely tender and gentle. A very famous story poignantly demonstrates this. In Midrash Mishlei, the Midrash collection on the Book of Proverbs (Sefer Mishlei in Hebrew), Beruriah comes home one Shabbat afternoon to discover, to her horror, that both of her sons have passed away. She gingerly covers them with a blanket and awaits the arrival of her husband’s Meir from the Beit Midrash or house of study in time to perform Havdalah, the ritual that marks the end of Shabbat. Instead of properly telling her about the death of her children, Beruriah engages in a lengthy conversation so that she can deal with the terrible news as gently as possible. When Meir asks about her children, she tells him that they went out and begins preparing the Saturday night meal, as well as doing Havdalah.
After Havdalah and after Rabbi Meir has finished eating, Beruriah asks him a very cryptic question about whether to return an item left in one’s care for a significant period when the item’s original owner returns to retrieve it. The way Beruriah phrased this question is very similar to how one would ask when discussing halakhic matters and the item in question is, of course, her two children. Rabbi Meir is stunned by the question and asks Beruriah why he would question the owner’s right to his property, so Beruriah escorts Rabbi Meir to the room where his children lie. Seeing that his sons had died, Rabbi Meir cries and Beruriah reminds him that the original owner, IE Gd, has come to claim them. In response, Rabbi Meir quotes Proverbs 31:10, “The woman of worth, whom he can find.”
Unfortunately, this was not the only tragic episode in Beruriah’s life. His mother and her brother were martyred along with her father by the Romans for teaching Torah, and her sister was sold into prostitution. In the latter case, Beruriah convinces Rabbi Meir to rescue his sister, and in doing so successfully, he and Beruriah are forced to flee to Babylonia, present-day Iraq, to distance themselves from the Romans who ordered the fate of Beruriah’s sister. Beruriah.
Beruriah’s strength of character is also shown in a story about some neighbors who pestered Rabbi Meir to no end. Rabbi Meir, in his frustration, prayed for his destruction, but Beruriah instructed him to pray for his repentance, using her interpretation of a verse from Psalms (104:35) to bolster his argument.
Despite his tremendous wisdom and scholarship, a legend about his death that was first penned by the 11th-century sage Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo ben Yitzchak), considered the greatest Jewish rabbinic and biblical commentator, has cast a shadow over Beruriah and the has placed it in a negative light. In his commentary on the Babylonian Talmud’s Treatise Avodah Zarah 18b, a treatise that deals largely with the religious and other customs of non-Jews living in the vicinity of Israel, Beruriah mocks From the Talmudic claim that women are dazed and to prove her evil, Rabbi Meir sends one of his students specifically to seduce her. The student succeeds, proving the point that all women can be influenced, regardless of their wisdom and knowledge. Completely ashamed, Beruriah commits suicide by strangling herself.
Rashi’s explanation of Beruriah’s death did not sit well with everyone. Rabbeinu Nissim ben Yakov of Kairouan explains that after Rabbi Meir’s heroic rescue of her sister, she had to flee to Babylon lest the Romans find her.
Despite the mixed perception of her in rabbinic literature, Beruriah’s story and legacy are greatly admired by women of all Jewish backgrounds and affiliations. She provides an excellent example of a very knowledgeable scholar woman providing support to women who want to engage in serious Torah study that, until recently, was not easily accessible to them. In the Orthodox community, there are a growing number of seminaries and other educational institutions that allow women to pursue advanced Jewish learning. Despite being a woman at a time when women’s Torah study was the exception rather than the rule, Beruriah shows us that she is capable of holding her own and is even considered something of a Jewish or halakhic legal authority. Beruriah’s model of deep inner strength and wisdom in the face of unspeakable tragedy is also something we can all emulate.
