The Bruriah Incident
Continuing on Avodah Zarah 18. Rabbi Eitam Henken hy”d, wrote an article many years back about the Bruriah incident.
To elaborate on the Beruriah incident: Chanina ben Tradyon’s daughter had been punished and placed into a brother. Bruriah, Rabbi Meir’s wife, was her sister, and Bruriah prevailed on Rabbi Meir to save her sister. The first chapter of the story ends with Rabbi Meir then bribing the guard together with a promise that “God of Meir save me” would work. The second chapter has the guard about to be executed, calling it out, the Romans issuing a BOLO for Rabbi Meir, and him narrowly avoiding it, either by Eliyahu HaNavi embracing him while pretending to be a prostitute or by Rabbi Meir pretending to taste bishul akum. Finally, the gemara states:
קָם עֲרַק, אֲתָא לְבָבֶל. אִיכָּא דְּאָמְרִי: מֵהַאי מַעֲשֶׂה, וְאִיכָּא דְּאָמְרִי: מִמַּעֲשֶׂה דִּבְרוּרְיָא.
Rabbi Meir arose, fled, and arrived in Babylonia. The Gemara notes: There are those who say that he fled because of this incident, and there are those who say that he fled due to embarrassment from the incident involving his wife Berurya.
What is “this incident”? The immediately preceding incident, where his life was in danger. What is the “incident with Bruriah”? It certainly seems like a separate incident. Rashi explains (using Sefaria community translation):
ואיכא דאמרי משום מעשה דברוריא - שפעם אחת ליגלגה על שאמרו חכמים (קדושין דף פ:) נשים דעתן קלות הן עלייהו ואמר לה חייך סופך להודות לדבריהם וצוה לאחד מתלמידיו לנסותה לדבר עבירה והפציר בה ימים רבים עד שנתרצית וכשנודע לה חנקה עצמה וערק רבי מאיר מחמת כסופא:
And some say, because of the story of Beruriah: As one time, she mocked that which the Sages said (Kiddushin 80b), "The conviction of women is weak about them." And he said [to himself], "By your life, In the end you will concede to their words." And [so] he commanded one of his students to test her with a matter of sin. And [that student] pleaded with her many days until she agreed. And when she found out, she strangled herself. And [so] Rabbi Meir ran away due to embarrassment.
A summary of Eitam Henkin’s article, an article which is posted on his WordPress blog and also appears in the following English book,
It also appears in summary form on mi yodeya:
R. Eitam Henkin (R. Y.H. Henkin's son) wrote an essay on the curious Rashi.
He claims there that the text attributed to Rashi was a later interpolation by an errant student, since it is not referred to by any of the subsequent commentaries for centuries. His argument is not the usual "must have been an errant student" type, but rather is quite convincingly laid out from textual evidence.
He concludes (based on another rishon) that the simple understanding of the maaseh referred to on 18b is actually the maaseh mentioned on 18a about Beruriah and her embarrassment:
ברוריא דביתהו דר' מאיר ברתיה דר' חנינא בן תרדיון הואי אמרה לו זילא בי מלתא דיתבא אחתאי בקובה של זונות שקל תרקבא דדינרי ואזל
Beruria, the wife of R. Meir, was a daughter of R. Hanina b. Teradion. She said to R. Meir 'I am ashamed to have my sister placed in a brothel.' So he took a tarkab-full of denarii and set out.
This is connected to Rashi’s מחמת כסופא which he states at the very end. The embarrassment is simply Bruriah’s embarrassment, or Rabbi Meir’s embarrassment, stemming from the situation of her sister.
I have a few thoughts on the matter. First… maybe? But on the other hand, maybe not.
We have the open-canon / closed-canon approach in play here. Not for people, but for incidents. If the gemara makes mention of a known story, should we look internal to the Talmudic corpus, or were there external stories, known but either never part of the gemara or lost from the gemara?
For instance, the famous story of Rav Safra being scrupulously honest, so that when he was silent due to reciting Shema and the buyer kept upping the price, he insisted on the lower original amount he had agreed to in his heart. Yes, that story hits all sorts of tropes, as stories do. But that story actually appears in the She’iltot of Rav Achai Gaon. And, the gemara refers to its existence.
It might be more “peshat”-aligned to say that an external story did exist, and the gemara obliquely refers to it.
Similarly, we had Rashbam thinking that the Kushite woman that Moshe took was the queen of Kush as related in a chronicle. Even though the work has a midrashic feel to it.I don’t know if this was the true original story intended by the gemara, but just because we have theological / halachic problems with the story (e.g. wasn’t this lifnei iver / how could the student have done this), or find the story “problematic” from a modern Western and quasi-feminist perspective does not mean that Rashi would be troubled to the same extent. Just as Rashbam found this external source about the Queen of Kush credible, Rashi could have heard this other source from some teacher and related it. This even if it was not the original story that stood outside the canon.
Yes, I am generally skeptical of the idea of the errant student. If you want to know the “interesting” / controversial comments of Ibn Ezra, all you need to look for is his supercommentator, Avi Ezri, who will comment that this or that was written by a talmid toeh vechaser badaat, an errant student.
Yes, occasionally students did enter their own ideas into their teacher’s writings, and yes, this was true in many cases within Rashi’s writing. But the temptation, given our discomfort with the story, may lead us to adopt an Avi Ezra kind of approach, since it gives us an out.