One cloudy day in Jerusalem, nearly 2,000 years ago, the city's sages sat listening to a woman named Bruria. It is said that on that day she instructed them on 300 points of rabbinical law. In the history of Judaism there has never been another woman who enjoyed such authority. Dalia Hoshen, who wrote a biography of Bruria, has described her as a Tannait, a Mishnaic sage. In the Talmud she comes across as knowledgeable, opinionated, blunt, tough, and with a violent streak. There was also a terrible scandal linked to her, which was kept secret until Rashi revealed it after a delay of several centuries. Now this secret is at the center of a new feature film, "Bruria," directed by Avraham Kushnir. 

The film, which premiered at the Jerusalem Film Festival, depicts a crisis in the life of a modern ultra-Orthodox family, which in certain aspects resembles the story of Bruria and Rabbi Meir. Its plot is based on the assumption that it was not by chance that Judaism concealed this story, which contains a message of equality between the sexes. 

Dalia Hoshen's book, "Beruria the Tannait: A Theological Reading of a Female Mishnaic Scholar" (University Press of America, 2007), has thus far been published only in English. Hoshen, a researcher of the Talmud, says one must distinguish between the Talmudic Bruria, who is deserving of admiration as a Tannait, and the post-Talmudic Bruria, the protagonist of the very embarrassing "tale of Bruria." Hoshen, who lectured this year at The College of Judea and Samaria in Ariel, says that this story "somehow got itself mixed up" into Rashi's writings, perhaps under the influence of similar stories she says exist in the heritage of Islam.