There were once some outlaws in
the neighbourhood of Rabbi Meir who caused him a great deal of trouble. Rabbi
Meir accordingly prayed that they should die. His wife Beruria said to him: How
can you establish [that such a prayer should be permitted]? Is it because it is
written “Let hatta'im cease” [Tehillim 104:35]? But is it written hot'im
[sinners]? It is written hatta'im [sins]! Now, look at the end of
the verse: “and let the wicked men be no more”. Since the sins will
cease, there will be no more sinners! Rather pray for them that they
should repent, and then there will be no more wicked people. He did pray for
them, and they repented.
What does this have to do with Pirkei Avot?
At Avot 4:24 Shmuel HaKatan teaches that we should not
rejoice at the fall of our enemies. In
his Lev Avot, R’ Shlomo Toperoff quotes Chief Rabbi Dr Hertz as teaching
that we are not even commanded to hate our enemies: our task as Jews is not to
curse but to bless, to receive insults but not to deliver them. R’ Toperoff
then brings the tale of Beruria to illustrate the correct Jewish response to
evil behaviour in others.
But he doesn’t. Beruria is edited out of the text. Lev Avot
reads like this (at p.258):
“Commenting on Ps.104:35, ‘Let the
sins be consumed out of the earth, and let the wicked be no more’, the Rabbis
point out that the text does not refer to ‘sinners’ but to ‘sins’. Thus with
the eradication of sins, there will be no wicked on earth. For this reason R.
Meir says, ‘One should not pray for the death of the wicked but that they
should turn their hearts to God and repent of their wickedness’ [Ber.10a]”.
I’ve not (yet) found any early version of this tale that
omits reference to Beruria and I’m quite mystified as to how it happened here.
The passage in the Talmud to which R’ Toperoff refers is so well known that he
is unlikely to have erred through ignorance, and he was not known to have a negative
attitude towards women.
The advice and assistance of readers (both women and men) on
this matter would be greatly appreciated.
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