ideal study partner, when that partner is potentially a woman, makes it impossible for Beruria to fit in on Adler's reading. "Authority in rabbinic Judaism flowed through the medium of rabbinic relationships, and the rabbis could not imagine how to give Beruriah authority without including her in the web of rabbinic relationshipsthe web of teachers and students and study partners. And they could not imagine doing that without also imagining her sexuality as a source of havoc" (32).
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We find excellent illustration of Adler's cultural thesis in a text that appears several times in the Palestinian corpus of rabbinic literature, but significantly perhaps, never in the Babylonian. Interestingly enough, and perhaps not coincidentally, the story involves, once more, Rabbi Meir:
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 | | Rabbi Meir used to sit and teach on the Sabbath nights. A certain woman was there listening to him. Once his discourse was extended, and she waited until he had finished discoursing. She went home and found the candle already extinguished. Her husband said to her, "Where were you?" She said to him, "I was sitting and listening to the teacher." He said, "I swear that you will not enter here until you go and spit in the face of the teacher." She stayed away the first week, two, and a third. Her neighbor-women said to her, ''Are you still angry with each other?! We will come with you to the teacher.'' When Rabbi Meir saw them, he saw by the Holy Spirit. He said to them, "Is there anyone among you who is learned in the magical curing of eyes?" Her neighbors said to her, "Now go and spit in his face and you will be permitted to your husband." When she sat before him, she withdrew from him. She said to him, "Rabbi, I am not learned in the magical curing of eyes." He said to her, "Spit in my face seven times and I will be cured." She spat in his face seven times. He said to her, "Go tell your husband, 'You said one time, I spat seven times!'" His disciples said to him, "Rabbi, are we permitted to dishonor thus the Torah?! Should you not have requested of one of us that we say an incantation?" He said to them, "Is it not enough for Meir to be like his Maker? For Rabbi Ishma'el has said, "Peace is so important that a name written in holiness can be erased in the water, in order to establish peace between a husband and a wife."
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| | (Wayyiqra Rabba 9: 9; and see
Palestinian Talmud Sota 1:4)
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On the one hand, this story does confirm the structural anomaly to which Adler refers. The husband was clearly jealous of his wife's interest in Torah and the fact that as a result of that interest he was deprived of her company on the Sabbath eve. Indeed, he seems to have suspected her of
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