okay now that we've had a look at one specific issue that of matrilineal descent and then we
looked a little bit at some of the sources and methods challenges of studying jewish women in
antiquity let's look at three exceptional examples and we'll hope to learn from these examples some
kind of contrast to the average women in general society it's not a very precise way of doing
things but it's very difficult to work with the nature of the sources that we have before us today
hopefully moving forward to some degree in the medieval period but certainly when we get to the
early modern and the modern period we'll be able to explore women's lives with much more dependence
on their actual voices but let's have a look at the three examples that uh that will give
us some sense of what it must have been like to be a woman in antiquity so these three women were
actually suggested in a book by richard freund who is a very important archaeologist who did
some amazing work in the cave of letters among other places this is the book by the way that
is really quite fascinating called digging through the bible modern archaeology and the ancient bible
and uh he suggests these three characters i also want to mention that uh he was someone
who pioneered the use of colonoscopy tools in exploring hard-to-reach caves right because
his doctor suggested that's a great way to get into hard-to-reach places and i have to mention
that he has a striking resemblance to another famous archaeologist can't quite put my finger
on who it might be but there's a certain look oh my gosh i wish i could go back to
graduate school i would study so many things but one of them would probably be archaeology
at any rate he suggests that we should look at the life of bruhria as an unusual woman of the second
century of late antiquity it's much harder to get back earlier in time as we've discussed but what
do we know about breoria well first of all she was mentioned frequently in the talmud she's the wife
of a very important rabbi rabbit mayor she comes from an important family her father was khanadi
bhantarajyan one of the martyrs of the hadrianic persecution that was related to the barcode
vault so that helps us date breweria besides reby mayer her father gives us a sense of her lifetime
sometime in the second century uh we know from the talmudic account that her sister was actually
taken off to captivity to rome although dr freund has some interesting thoughts on that
as well now one of the fascinating things about her work is that she is so exceptional in that
she is mentioned frequently in the talmud as a sage let us understand that there are about 2
000 different amaryam or later rabbinic figures in the period of the talmud who actually have a named
voice in this massive document and there are there can't be more than 20 women who appear anywhere
and most of these women are are unnamed or they have a title like matronisa something like that
breweria stands out so much as being an incredibly important woman in the actual intellectual give
and take of this massive document she often corrects the sages who respect her learning
and uh she often does it in a way that has kind of like a biting sense of humor like
in one particular example when she is uh accosted by another rabbi who asks her for directions in a
rather you know polite manner and she snaps back at him saying you know galilean fool
he happened to come from the galileo did you not read what it says and she quotes another teaching
do not talk over much with women you should have abbreviated your statement to me and simply said
which way to lord right in other words she's sort of throwing the teachings of the rabbis back at
them and there you get this sense that sometimes there is kind of like a proto-feminist critique in
the things that she says but that's a minor aspect of her teachings her her life story and the kind
of things that she talks about are often profound and very deep she speaks to the nature of personal
tragedy in life as we see with her father and her sister and also with the children of rebbe mayer
who died of one particular sabbath two twin boys terrifying kinds of things god forbid low eleno
and you know she's really a teacher of phenomenal depth of halachic wisdom of acerbic
wit and perspective i mean an amazing woman and she stands out primarily as kind of like the big
exception to the rule of women who are silent who are nameless or voiceless in the talmud
the end of her life is described in a bizarre passage that is only recorded
like a thousand years after her life in the commentary of russia on a track day to vote azara
it doesn't occur anywhere else in rabbinic literature and although it appears in a very
authoritative commentary that of rashi a great sage nevertheless it it's so out of character with
uh that what we know about robbie mayer's life and what we know about brewery's life but it describes
her and as being very ignoble i will leave that up to the rabbinic scholars to debate the nature of
that particular story nevertheless breweria stands out as one tremendous counter-example to the vast
majority of women who did not have the same kind of access to torah learning that was so exemplary
of her life and activity so that's an exception in terms of the realm of scholarship which of course
would be extremely important in the development of jewish society over the next two millennia
another very important figure now in terms of politics would be a figure known as berenice
she was actually royalty in a literal sense her name was julia berenice her dates are somewhere
around the year 26 through the year 85. she was the daughter of king agrippa the first and his
wife cypros now you will recall that there were a few uh puppet kings in the roman period in judea
some of them were very powerful like herod the great who was veronica's great
great grandfather if i calculated that correctly and others were quite diminished in authority king
agrippa the first was one of the latter category he happened to be a more sympathetic figure he's
quoted several times in the talmud usually in a very positive light he ruled from the year
41 through 44. as a royal jewish princess as she was married off primarily for you know purposes
of lineage and and uh connections and things like that to one marcus who was the son of
alexander lesimacus of alexandria he in fact was the alabar of alexandria essentially the leader
of the jewish community there and not only that he was the nephew of a very famous jewish philosopher
philo who will speak about god willing in another lecture she was widowed and then she remarried
her uncle herod polio of chalces widowed a second time and then she went and she essentially moved
in with her brother agrippa the second josephus in this context reports a really nasty relationship
uh rumor about the two of them which is unusual because it is not repeated by roman historians of
the time it's not impossible because this was not an unknown practice among romans but for jews it
would have been extremely scandalous to say the least at any rate at this point she was like at
the peak of her authority she was referred to as regina oregina meaning queen basilea also queen
and she actually served famously in the trial of paul later on uh in this capacity we had a look
at this earlier uh she married a third time to king polamos ii of cilicia who actually converted
to judaism and was circumcised and so on uh but here's another fascinating thing about her she
was in jerusalem at the time of the outbreak of the revolt that'd be in the year 66 and she was
there because she was fulfilling a nazarite vow which is interesting in its own context
nazarism is something that's recorded in the bible and of course there's a whole track database on
the talmud in which basically a person has some kind of like moving experience who and they want
to like do repentance for it they want to do chuva for it and so they undertake some restrictions on
their behavior let their hair grow uh refrain from alcohol wine specifically and and and then
at the end of this period which is limited usually 30 days or 60 days they come to jerusalem and then
they um they offer a sacrifice so she was there at that time when the revolt uh broke out it's
an interesting kind of uh sense of what kind of person she would be if she took on a nazarite vow
and she stood up for the rebels she went to gesius flores the procurator who was very unsympathetic
to the jews and she appeared before him barefoot to beg for mercy for them but she was unable to
stop either the roman onslaught and she was unable to control the the rebel outbreak as
well she ended up fleeing jerusalem when the palace of her brother was burned down
and somehow in this context at this time she is involved in a relationship with none other
than titus that is the son of the emperor of espajan later to become emperor himself
who was responsible for the armies that would destroy jerusalem and the temple
there's some interesting thoughts about what this relationship must have been like
um uh many of the classical historians point to her tremendous beauty she and her sister were
regarded as among the most beautiful women of the eastern mediterranean uh
titus himself was some dozen years her junior that itself would have been unusual
others point to the very unequal relationship between titus as a conqueror and berenice as the
representative of a beleaguered and conquered people and said that this relationship might have
been more of a hostage situation than an affair uh at any rate according to dr freund a very
interesting interpretation her relationship with titus might have been instrumental in allowing the
scholarly refuge in yavneh to persist you recall that rabbi yochanan ben zakai famously asked for
a retreat so the sages could could stay somewhere safe uh and not participate in the revolt and not
be destroyed and this was granted so dr freund argues interestingly enough that uh maybe it
was berenice's relationship with titus that allowed this to happen and if that is the case
then of course she contributed to the survival of judaism in the jewish people as a whole her
relationship with titos was somewhat stormy it was viewed by many as quite scandalous and ultimately
she was forced out of rome and titus died shortly thereafter in the year 79. so she's a fascinating
exceptional individual in the sense that you know she's at the very top of society she is
uh involved in things that royalty are involved with you know with marriages for setting you
know relationships between territories and so on she's involved in the highest levels of government
uh speaking with emperors and she deals with you know huge political issues like the revolt uh but
this is clearly in contrast to the vast majority of women who left no trace on the political
record that we have but it is worthy to note that it is in her romantic relationship that she's
left a real mark on art history as well uh the the relationship of berenice and titus has been
celebrated in a number of works uh literary musical and so on including la clemenza di
tito the the mercy of titus by wolfgang amadeus mozart a famous opera i mean her role in this
relationship has been celebrated in western civilization far outside the uh the jewish
awareness of her existence let us now turn to our final exceptional individual we looked at
breweria as an example of exceptionality in that she was such a renowned scholar
uh berenica because of her high-level political activity as a jewish princess or even queen
now we have a woman who is exceptional in that we suddenly get a huge amount of detail about
her personal life although otherwise she would be unknown to us now speaking about a woman named
babata i'm only going to speak for a few minutes right now but i would urge you to have a look at
uh works on her by dr hannah cotton by dr freund and others i also have an hour-long lecture on
babatha that goes into this in much more detail she was one of the people hiding with the barcoba
rebels in the caves in the dead sea region that we spoke about a couple of videos ago and
she may have died there it's impossible to tell which one of the human remains female remains
would have been associated with her there were many women and children in these caves
but it's likely that she did die there because she would she left behind this pouch which contained a
trove of nearly 20 documents that all link to her personal legal history and by investigating
these documents which are written in a variety of languages hebrew aramaic greek nabataean they all
speak to her extensive legal battles and in these legal battles she saved these documents also like
marriage contracts things like that she saved these documents because clearly she was deeply
involved in these battles that had to do with inheritance issues you know some property that her
parents left to her and also some property that one of her two husbands left to her that second
husband had a co-wife right there in a polygamous relationship not unheard of at that time
and she was disputing with her co-wife over some orchard of date palms things like that and also
she had uh children uh who the court had appointed to the care of apotropai or you know like
custodial officers and she was seeking to get more control over her children and rest it from the
courts and so you know this is not the place to go into the ins and outs of the specifics of her
controversies but the documents portray her as you know very much a woman in charge of her
own affairs it's not clear whether or not she was even literate in these languages she may have had
scribes you know involved in drawing them up and so on but she clearly knew what they meant
because she kept them all together in this this pouch and she she treasured them like you know
i have uh the family documents our passports and things like that
and a special little box and things like that this is these are very valuable documents for her life
and activity and and it gives us a sense of uh the jewish woman in the second century who was not
without means she was probably like upper middle class dealing with uh property issues and so on
uh who took charge of her life and she was clearly an agent involved in her life so we should not
imagine by babata's example that the vast majority of women were passive and allowing kind of life to
wash over them and being passed from man to man in various ways you know this is a woman who's
deeply involved in fighting for her rights and and finding some success from time to time
there are some interesting questions why was she there with the barcoba rebels
herself it's it's possible that she feared the general destruction that was going on
with the romans there's one particular figure who appears to have linked her to barcpa because he's
also mentioned in terms of the barchba chain of command so perhaps it was a familiar relationship
we really don't know but we get a sense of an average woman who has a very important
detailed legal history like many of us do even today and so we we this is a corrective
to the uh the huge silence that we get from the sources on women in general so she's exceptional
not so much in what she did with her life but the fact that we know a lot more about her life
and it reveals some startling things many more fascinating things are going to be learned i'm
sure as we and analyze the archive with greater detail okay i hope you found this video useful
we are definitely going to be incorporating more and more discussion of jewish women
into the lectures as we move forward in time but the next series of lectures are going to
deal with the jewish diaspora in antiquity okay thank you very much for watching you