Beruriah, the wife of the famed Rabbi Meir and daughter of Rabbi Chananiah ben Tradyon, a single of the ten Torah students martyred by the Romans for disseminating Torah among the Jewish men and women was a woman of great studying, knowledge and piety. She has the difference of becoming one of the couple of girls talked about in the Babylonian Talmud and the only a single of these girls who is considered to be a Tanna (Torah sage) in her personal appropriate.
Beruriah lived during the 1st and 2nd hundreds of years of the Widespread Era, correct about the time when the Mishna, or corpus of Rabbinic regulation was getting codified by Rabbi Judah the Prince. The Mishna consists of six orders or sederim and the commentary to the Mishna is acknowledged as the Gemara. The Mishna and Gemara with each other comprise the Talmud. There are truly two Talmudim-the Talmud Bavli or Babylonian Talmud, which is the much more authoritative and the Talmud Yerushalmi or Jerusalem Talmud.
Beruriah was exclusive for girls of her time in that she not only analyzed with the rabbis but taught them as nicely. The Babylonian Talmud, in Tractate Pesachim 62b records that she studied 3 hundred Halakhot or Jewish rules from a few hundred masters in a one day. Her learning was so respected that her male colleagues would often request her sights on Jewish lawful issues, particularly these which pertained straight to girls, amid them ritual purity. In the Tosefta, a corpus of rabbinic legislation that is structurally equivalent to the Mishna, Beruriah is recorded as getting challenged her father on an problem concerning ritual purity and Rabbi Judah guidelines that Beruriah is indeed appropriate. In this identical resource, Rabbi Joshua states that Beruriah is right when she intervenes in a dialogue amongst the Tanna Rabbi Tarfon and some other sages.
https://jewishpodcasts.fm/rabbifisheltodd was also known for not currently being frightened to communicate her brain. In Tractate Eruvin of the Babylonian Talmud (Eruvin 53b), she chastises Rabbi Yosi for not abiding by the Talmudic injunction not to converse with women unnecessarily when he asks her which way to the city of Lod, when he could have just requested her, “where’s Lod?”
There are many tales in rabbinic and other Jewish literature pertaining to Beruriah’s character. Jewish custom portrays her not only as currently being extremely forthright but also as a person who could be extremely tender and gentle. A really popular tale poignantly demonstrates this. In Midrash Mishlei, the selection of Midrash on the E-book of Proverbs (Sefer Mishlei in Hebrew), Beruriah comes residence 1 Shabbat afternoon and finds, to her horror, that her two sons have handed absent. She handles them gingerly with a blanket and awaits the arrival of her spouse Meir from the Beit Midrash or home of study in time to make Havdalah, the ritual to mark the stop of Shabbat. Rather than telling him out rightly of his sons’ fatalities, Beruriah engages in a prolonged discussion so that she can broach the awful news as carefully as she can. When Meir asks right after his sons, she tells him that they went out and begins to put together the Saturday evening meal as nicely as to make Havdalah.
Following Havdalah and after Rabbi Meir had finished ingesting his meal, Beruriah asks him a extremely cryptic query relating to no matter whether one particular must return an product which was remaining in one’s treatment for a considerable interval when the unique owner of the product returns to retrieve it. The manner in which Beruriah phrased this query is quite a lot like a single would when speaking about halakhic matters and the item in concern is, of course, their two sons. Rabbi Meir is astonished at the query and asks Beruriah why she would question the owner’s appropriate to his property whereupon Beruriah escorts Rabbi Meir into the space exactly where their sons lay. On viewing that his sons had died, Rabbi Meir weeps and Beruriah reminds him that the original owner, I.E. G-d, has arrive to claim them. In response, Rabbi Meir quotes Proverbs 31:10, “A woman of valor, who can locate”.
Regrettably, this was not the only tragic episode in Beruriah’s lifestyle. Her mother and brother were martyred together with her father by the Romans on account of instructing Torah and her sister was sold into prostitution. In the latter case, Beruriah convinces Rabbi Meir to rescue her sister and obtaining effectively carried out so, he and Beruriah are forced to flee to Babylonia, present-day Iraq to distance by themselves from the Romans who requested Beruriah’s sister’s destiny.
The power of Beruriah’s character is also exhibited in a story relating to some neighbors who annoyed Rabbi Meir to no conclude. Rabbi Meir in his frustration prayed for their destruction, but Beruriah instructed him to pray for their repentance alternatively, employing her interpretation of a verse from Psalms (104:35) to bolster her argument.
Regardless of her great wisdom and erudition, a legend relating to her dying which was initial penned by the 11th century sage Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo ben Yitzchak), considered to be the best Jewish Biblical and rabbinic commentator has solid a shadow in excess of Beruriah and has put her in a unfavorable mild. In his commentary to Tractate Avodah Zarah 18b of the Babylonian Talmud, a tractate which issues alone largely with the religious and other customs of the non-Jews dwelling in shut proximity to Israel, Beruriah mocks a Talmudic assertion that women are lightheaded and to confirm her improper, Rabbi Meir sends 1 of his learners specifically to seduce her. The college student succeeds, proving the position that all ladies are capable to be swayed, irrespective of the knowledge and information they have attained. Completely ashamed, Beruriah commits suicide by strangling herself.
Rashi’s clarification of Beruriah’s demise did not sit well with every person. Rabenu Nissim ben Yakov of Kairouan clarifies that right after Rabbi Meir’s heroic rescue of her sister, she experienced to flee to Babylonia so that the Romans would not discover her.
Even with the combined notion of her in rabbinic literature, Beruriah’s tale and legacy are a lot admired by females of all Jewish backgrounds and affiliations. She provides an outstanding example of a quite learned scholarly female which presents assistance to girls who want to have interaction in significant Torah understanding which was, until not too long ago, not effortlessly accessible to them. In the Orthodox group, there are an increasing quantity of seminaries and other academic institutions which let girls to do innovative Jewish finding out. In spite of currently being a lady at a time when women’s Torah review was the exception and not the rule, Beruriah shows us that she is able to keep her own and is even considered some thing of a halakhic or Jewish legal authority. Beruriah’s product of profound interior strength and wisdom in the encounter of unspeakable tragedy is also anything which we can all emulate.