#beruriah

[devondeal]

The disrespect 😒 Call her a Jewish scholar and leave the husband in the spouse section.

[zookmurnig]

Although the talmudic stories about Beruriah emphasize her sharp intellect, they also capture more complex dimensions of her personality. In some stories she is sweet; in others, angry, and in some tragic. The happiest anecdote is told in tractate Brakhot (10a). When hoodlums harassed her husband, [Rabbi] Meir, he prayed to God that they should die. Beruriah reproached him for his violent words. “Do you justify yourself because of the Psalmist’s plea, ‘Let sins cease from the land?’ But sinners don’t have to die for sins to cease; it is sufficient that they stop sinning.” Whereupon, Rabbi Meir prayed that the hoodlums repent of their evil behavior, and they did.

In another episode, it is Beruriah, not Meir, who is the angry one. Apparently, she had been offended by a popular rabbinic adage, “Don’t speak much to women.” When Rabbi Yossi the Galilean asked her, “Bu which route shall we travel to Lod?” she mocked him: “You foolish Galilean. Don’t the sages teach, ‘Don’t speak much to women.’ You should have said, ‘To Lod, how?’” (Eruvin 53b).

The most famous tale about Beruriah deals with the paramount tragedy of both her and Meir’s life. One Shabbat afternoon, their two sons died—whether they were murdered or were victims of an accident or epidemic, the Talmud does not say. When Rabbi Meir returned home from synagogue, he asked after the boys, but Beruriah put him off, so that instead he recited havdala, the prayer concluding the Sabbath. She then posed a question to him: “Some time ago, I was given a treasure to guard, and now the owner wants it back. Must I return it?”

“Of course,” Meir said, no doubt perplexed by the query. Whereupon, Beruriah led him into the bedroom and showed him the two bodies. “These are the treasures, and God has taken them back.” (Yalkut Proverbs 964).

Jewish Literacy by Rabbi Joseph Telushkin