The two Talmuds have very different interpretations of this text. The Palestinian reading is that the merit that mitigates the punishment is the merit of having studied Torah; therefore, a father who wishes to protect his daughter should teach her Torah. The Babylonian Talmud, however, though not directly interpreting Ben-Azzai, manages to imply that according to him, all that the father is required to teach his daughter is the specific fact that merit mitigates.
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Why such teaching should be important and why Ben-Azzai should phrase such a limited teaching as "teaching Torah" are left unanswered. Moreover, according to that reading, the merit that mitigates is
not the merit of knowing Torah,
but some other merit entirely. According to the Palestinian reading, the knowledge that the daughter should have of Torah is in no way restricted to issues having to do with the ritual of the errant wife, and it is the very merit of having studied Torah that stands in her favor. This view would lead to a practice in which women would have studied Torah no less than men, for in a situation in which merit is required, the more the better. Since the rabbinic discourse had enormous normative force in Jewish culture, such an interpretation would have had quite radical implications for the status of women in a society in which the study of Torah was the most valued of all practices. It leads to a construction of gender in which the roles of the sexes in symbolic life are not nearly as sharply differentiated as they have been in all traditional West Asian societies, including Judaism.
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The Palestinian Reading of Ben-Azzai
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The palestinian Talmud comments directly on Ben-Azzai and seems to understand him in a straightforward way to mean that the merit of studying Torah is what will stand for the woman should she undergo the errancy test. I derive this conclusion from observing how the Talmud
contradicts
Ben-Azzai's position:
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 | | Palestinian Talmud:
R. El'azar Ben-Azariah's opinion contradicts Ben-Azzai, for it is taught that there was an incident in which R. Yohanan ben Broka and R. El'azar Hasma were on their way from Yavne to Lydda and they went to visit R. Yehoshua in Peki'in. He asked them what was innovated in the House of Study today? They answered: "We
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| | 4. In all candor it must be admitted that this is the simplest translation of the text as well, for it is most easily read as, "she will know
that
merit mitigates." However, as I claim in the text, this reading makes the statement practically incoherent, and the Hebrew can be read as I have translated it, which certainly seems to be the Palestinian understanding.
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