My name never fails to elicit a response. On one extreme, I am told, “I don’t even know how to think about how to begin to pronounce that,” and on the other, I hear, “Oh of course, I know your parents.” But what interests me far more are those responses that fall somewhere in the middle— the responses of people who recognize the name, and are, therefore, puzzled as to why I bear it. I am not, of course, talking about those who say: “Why would your parents name you after a high school in New Jersey?” but rather those who ask: “Why would your parents name you after a woman who killed herself?”
Why indeed would my parents, Devora Steinmetz and David Silber, both outspoken feminists, name me after a woman who—according to a Rashi in Tractate Avoda Zara 17b—strangles herself after failing to resist one of her husband’s students’ attempts at seducing her? This question that I am often asked has provoked me to examine the bumpy life-long relationship I have had with my name.
It is hard to know whether I shaped what my name means for me or whether my name shaped who I am. As a member of a tradition which so emphasizes the importance of naming— some would go so far as to say that a name shapes a person’s destiny—and as a child of parents who are renowned for their creative naming capabilities (my siblings’ names include ImaShalom, She’arYashuv, Noadia, Pelaya, and Abaye), it would be a wonder if my name did not contribute to who I am. My parents chose my name because of what it meant to them— it is hardly surprising that the child of these two feminists carries both a legacy and the name of a woman who captured this legacy.
Recently, I sat at a Shabbat meal with a large group of high school girls. As a way of introduction, we went around the table and each said what we wished our name could be, given the opportunity to change it. I racked my brain, but couldn’t come up with anything more fitting than what my name actually is.
This connection with my name, however, was not always present; on the contrary—it got off to a late start. My first grade humash homework assignments bear the name “Princess Sara” scribbled in my six year old handwriting. I got over the Princess Sara stage as soon as I realized that it wasn’t going to catch on, but I continued to hate my name, dreading having to introduce myself.
As I learned to pronounce my name more clearly and gained the patience to repeat it to strangers, I started to search a little deeper. I asked my parents and teachers what “Beruria” meant. The first definition I was given was “Clarity of God,” using the Hebrew letters ברר as in the word ברור (clear). This definition continues to intrigue me, but I cannot fully connect with it, because I cannot wrap my head around what “Clarity of God” means. The second definition I was told was “Chosen of God,” using the Hebrew letters ברר as in the word בררה, or choice. It is this definition of my name that I have continued to find to be truly beautiful—what could be more meaningful than to be chosen by God?
It was in fourth grade, though, that my current relationship with my name began. I distinctly remember a conversation I had with my teacher at the time. We were discussing wrongdoers. One student had suggested that evil people be killed, and I remember piping up and asking—wouldn’t it be better to hope that they would stop being bad? My individualized homework assignment that night was to learn the first piece of gemara I ever encountered, Tractate Berakhot 10a; I pored over three lines of gemara which tell of an identical conversation that the Beruria of old had with her husband Rabbi Meir, one of the most famous second century Tannaim. I fell in love with this woman whom I had unknowingly echoed almost two thousand years after she died.
“…it would be a wonder if my name did not contribute to who I am.”
My relationship with my name moved forward another step in tenth grade Gemara class, when we studied a unit entitled “Women and Talmud Torah.” Although theoretically aimed at understanding why modern women can and should be learning Torah She’be’Al Peh, we spent three of the four weeks reading source after source explaining the prohibition against women learning Torah. But tucked in between tens of sources which decry traditional Torah study for women was a short passage from Tractate Eruvin telling of my namesake Beruria, who kicked a man for studying Torah silently. Despite Rabbi Eliezer’s all too famous statement in Tractate Sotah that teaching women Torah is like teaching them tiflut (usually translated as “immorality”, “licentiousness” or ”triviality”), here was a woman who was feisty enough not only to learn Torah, but to show up in the Bet Midrash—a space to which women were not invited—and critique a male scholar for his quiet, and perhaps overly passive, approach to Torah study. In fact, this same passage of Talmud goes so far as to tell of a student of the very same Rabbi Eliezer quoted in Tractate Sotah who also studied in a quiet tone and proceeded to forget all he had learned. Not only is Beruria’s message supported by this story, but by mentioning that this was a student of Rabbi Eliezer, the Talmud seems to be favoring the actions of a woman who learned Torah while criticizing the man who said that she should not be doing so.
Since high school, when people ask me why I’m named after a woman who killed herself, I tell them that Beruria’s suicide appears in a Rashi with no prior known source. One could wonder why he presents such a story. Rashi is commenting on a text which describes how Rabbi Meir fled to Babylon because of an incident with Beruria. Rashi is filling in a gap left in the text, which is, to borrow a phrase from literary critic Erich Auerbach, “fraught with background.”
One could ask why the tradition that Rashi cites developed, a tradition that depicts Beruria as a woman who succumbs to weakness and takes her out of the Bet Midrash and puts her in the bedroom. Rachel Adler discusses this question in her article The Virgin in the Brothel and Other Anomalies: Character and Context in the Legend of Beruriah. I prefer to pore over the pages of the Talmud which tell tales of the woman who criticized a man in the Bet Midrash for not fully appreciating the words of Torah, the woman who learned more than most of her contemporaries (Tractate Pesahim 62b), and the woman who stepped out of the traditional boundaries in order to do so.
The question that concerns me more than explaining why such a tradition would develop around Beruria, is why the name Beruria reminds people of a fallen woman, rather than the strong-minded and determined woman who learned Torah in the Bet Midrash and who outsmarted some of the greatest rabbis. Why is it that in this modern day, so many of us are educated with this one tradition, found only in Rashi, when there are so many other stories in the Talmud itself about Beruria which portray her in a very different light.
Of course, there is another Rashi—one of my favorites—that provides a very different message. The Talmud in Tractate Kiddushin 32b discusses whether a Rabbi has the capacity to forgo his honor since, after all, this honor is due to him because of the Torah he has learned. This raises the question of to whom the Torah belongs. Rashi comments that the Torah belongs to God, but once the individual learns it, he or she acquires the Torah; upon learning it, the Torah belongs to the individual.
The Torah that so many girls and women learn is a Torah that tells them that it is not for them. The more they learn, the more they feel that the Bet Midrash is not for them, that engagement in Torah discussion is not for them, and that their way of life should be one of deference to others, rather than respect for themselves and active participation in learning and shaping Torah.
And here is where the story of Beruria has such a powerful message. Beruria learned Torah—in Tractate Pesahim, she is held up as a paradigm of scholarship, as she was said to have studied three hundred laws from three hundred teachers in a day (Tractate Pesahim 62b)—and by learning the Torah, she made it her own. Her Torah empowered her; she engaged in discussions about its meaning and she chastised others about the way it should be learned.
Despite the advances that have been made to open the doors of Torah and Talmud study to women, I am a member of a generation that is too-often afraid to proclaim its feminism, a generation which goes to Israel to expand knowledge and comes back from seminary worrying about being too outspoken. This is the generation that immediately associates the Beruria of old with a tradition about her weakness as a woman cited in a single comment of Rashi. In such a generation, I feel privileged to carry the name of a woman whom I associate with the Talmudic descriptions of her scholarship and strength. But this name is also a challenge.
It is incumbent upon me, a modern woman who bears the name Beruria, to change the way Torah is translated in our lives. I know that the Torah I have learned has shaped me in many ways, but I also know that my background has shaped the way I have learned Torah. I have been privileged to have learned in many settings, all of which opened texts to me and taught me to learn more. Bearing the name Beruria reminds me to feel empowered by the Torah that I have learned, to make it my own, and to use this Torah to open doors for all people and challenge the world to let us in.