The domestic history of Meir is in many respects touching. " It has already been stated that our rabbi was married to Beruria, so famed for her talents and rabbinical lore as, in the opinion of contemporaries, to occupy a high place among the sages of the time. Her sister had, after the martyrdom of their parents, been carried to Rome for the purpose of public prostitution. But there Providence had watched over her honor. When the persecutions ceased, Beruria found no rest till Meir went to Rome to rescue his sister-in-law from infa- my. Before entering on the dangerous undertaking, he resolved to try whether her principles had remained un- shaken. Disguising himself as a Roman, he approached her, and, having satisfactorily ascertained her steadfast- ness, he bribed the attendants and procured her escape, though in the attempt he himself escaped capture only by disguise and feigning to eat forbidden meat. . . . Beruria, tliroughout all these trials, proved herself not only an attached, but a devoted wife. She had shared his trials when, during the persecutions, Meir had tied from Palestine. On his return she cheered and encour- aged him, and by her conduct softened the domestic afflictions with which he was visited. For examjilc, while on a certain Sabbath the rabbi was engaged in the college, his two sons were suddenly taken ill and died. To spare her husband some hours of grief, and especially not to commute the festivities of the Sab- bath into a season of mourning, the mother carefully repressed her own feelings and concealed the sad tid- ings. The Sabbath had been spent as usual, and its holy exercises and stillness were ended with the evening. when Beruria asked her husband whether it were not duty readily and cheerfully to restore to its owner any property, however i>leasant, which had been intrusted for safe-keeping. NN'lien the astonished rabbi answered the strange in<iuiry in the allirmative, his weeping wife took him by the hand, and led him to the bed on which the lifeless remains of their two children were stretched, reminding him that he whose two children these right- fully were had taken back what for a time he had in- trusted to their keeping." Unfortunately Beruria after-
wards compromised her character and committed sui- cide. Her death appears to have unsettled Meir's tran- quillity. He left Palestine and resided some time in Babylonia, whence he returned to his colleagues with another and less learned bride.
Meir, besides cultivating intercourse with the most noted theologians of his own time, was also on friendly and even intimate terms with heathen sages, especially with Naumenius the idiilosopher, of Apamea, in Syria. The princi])lcs of this philosopher were essentially those of Neo-Platonism, in the peculiar modification of that philosophy which the influx of Eastern elements had brought about. The most noted, if not the most sophis- tical, among Meir's numerous pupils, was Symmachus, of Samaritan origin, known as a translator of the Bible into Greek. He had attended Meir's prelections, and thoroughly imbibed his method. It is said that this dialectician on one occasion undertook by forty-nine ar- guments to prove that the touch of a certain dead rep- tile could not defile a person. It was opprobriously said of Symmachus by his contemporaries that his ancestors could not have heard the law on Mount Sinai. Sym- machus afterwards joined the Christian sect of the Ebionites. His translation of the Bible is stated to have been more free from errors and more faithful than that of Aquila. According to Griitz, this Symmachus is not the translator of the Bible.
Jleir had frequently changed his residence. When the Sanhedrim was restituted under Simeon (q. v.), he returned to the Holy Land, and was elected vicar of the rabbinical see ; but his continual disagreements with the Nasi induced him at last to leave I'alestine for Asia Minor, where he died, bequeathing to his countrymen the following proud and characteristic message: '"Tell the children of the Holy Land that their Messiah has died in a strange country." According to his expressed wish, the tabernacle of his unquiet spirit found its last resting-place by the sea-shore, where his grave was washed by the waves, and looked out upon the wide, storm-tossed ocean. See Etheridge, Intr. to Hihr. Lit- erature, p. 79 sq.; Griitz, Gesvh. d. Jiiden, iv, 188-196, 468-470; Edersheim, Hist, of the Jewish Xation (Edin- burgh, 1857), p. -251-259. (B. P.)
Meir, Abulafia, kl-Li;\vi hkx-Todros, a Jewish savant of note, was born about 1180, and was a native of Burgos. He taught the law at Toledo, where he died in 1244. He wrote various cabalistical works, such as the D"^;Eb|l ■'.2S5, a part of which was published in Hebrew and Latin by Rittangel in the •Tn'i^';i "iSO (Amst. 1662). He wrote also a letter against Maimon- ides's ni^JX, a treatise on the Masorah, entitled "The Fence of the Law," miop 5*^0 f^jD'^j ^"'1 some no- vellas on parts of the Mishna. Sec Flirst, Bill Jud. i, 16; Etheridge, Introd. to Ilehr. Literature, p. 276, 277; Griitz, Gesch. d. Jiiden, vii, 33 sq. ; Jost, Gesch, d. Juden- thums, iii, 8, 9 ; Lindo, History of the Jeics of Spain and Portiifjal, p. 81 ; Finn, Sephardim, or the History of the Jews in Spain and Portugal, p. 193 (Lond. 1841). (B. P.) Meir ben-Baruch (also called by the Jews .lAi- haniin, from the initial letters^ -."S- S"" ""I'a ai'hr, our t( acker the rabbi Miir). one of the mo.<t dis- tinguished Jewish literati during the ^Middle Ages, was born in 1230. He was the first ollicial chief rabbi in the German empire, to which dignity he was nominated by the emperor Rudolph I of Hajisburg. He had his seat and college at Rottenburg-an-der-Tauber, whence he is also called Meir of Holtenhir;/ or Meier Roltenbury. The unsettled condition of the Jews in the German emjiire, especially the oppressions and persecutions which threat- ened them every year, obliged Jlcir to leave the coun- try. In the spring of 12H(; he ])repared to go to Syria. There, it was said, a Messiah bad appeared to deliver the unhappy people. When aljoiit to enter tlie vessel which would convey him and his co-religionists who had followed him from Italy to the East, he was recog-