 | | On the Sabbath these matters were related to R. Yehoshua.
He said, "Beruria said well."
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| | (Tosefta Kelim Baba Metzia 1:6)
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These texts, whatever else they may be, are certainly highly marked representations of a learned woman. That is to say, they are an acknowledgment of the structural possibility within the culture that a woman could achieve such knowledge of Torah as to be authoritatively cited in an important question of ritual practice. As such, they can be read as part of the same social force represented by Ben-Azzai and the Tosefta cited in the previous sectiona counter-hegemonic voice that recognizes the reality of
some
women's intellectual and spiritual accomplishment.
16
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In the Babylonian Talmud, the legend of Beruria the learned woman is also maintained. She is portrayed as having learned "three hundred ritual laws in one day from three hundred Rabbis" (Pesachim 62b). Moreover, she even teaches a moral lesson to her husband, the great Rabbi Meir, by besting him at midrashic reading of a verse:
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| | 16. Goodblatt argues two points with reference to these texts: one, that they do not constitute evidence for the identification of these two personalities (Goodblatt 1975, 77), and two, that they do not constitute evidence that this woman, or women, was learned (ibid., 83). He argues that this is the sort of knowledge that a daughter would have had by virtue of being part of a rabbinic household. On the first point, I am prepared to agree with the plausibility of his claim, but on the second, I disagree. Neither of these ritual situations is so common as to constitute the sort of matters that any member of a rabbinic household would have observedindeed, both situations (certainly the first) are presented as unusual. Moreover, the first narrative contradicts Goodblatt's claim from within itself. If the daughter were simply reporting the practice in her household, why did her brother have a different suggestion? It is possible, of course, that the daughter obtained her knowledge not through formal instruction but simply through being present at learned discussions or lessons given by her father at home. This alone would form an avenue of resistance to the discourse of exclusion of women from study, and it is not the same as Goodblatt's claim that hers was merely "practical" knowledge of kitchen practice, which I find highly implausible for the reasons stated. There is even one version of this text (and quite an important oneR. Yehuda ben Kalonymos), in which it was her
father
that she bested here; that version, at any rate, would entirely forestall Goodblatt's claim that this was knowledge the girl had picked up from seeing the practice of her household. The story rather suggests in both cases that the woman (or girl) in question had an understanding of principles of religious law that she could apply to specific hypothetical situations, and the text in both cases strongly marks its approbation of her knowledge, a fact that will be of some importance below.
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| | On the basis of these two traditions, it is less surprising that the Babylonians regarded these as two stories of the same woman (see also Davis 1991). In fact, I would suggest that the literary similarity of the two narratives suggests that they may be variants of the same basic story. It certainly seems from this text, moreover, that Beruria was a well-known figure in the Palestinian tradition as well.
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