“What I am about to do is a great transgression. I will disobey Thy sacred commandment and violate Thy counsel. But I cannot do otherwise. God in heaven, I can live no longer. May the good merits of my father intercede for me. The worth of my father, the holy martyr, who refused the offer of the executioner to hasten his horrible death, lest the forced hastening resemble, in Thine eyes, self-murder. May he protect me. Thou wilt have to grant his daughter forgiveness for taking her own life in order all the sooner to meet her children. Eternal God, take me to them; part us nevermore. Punish me not after death as severely as Thou hast punished me in my life. I surrender my soul into Thy merciful hands. I go to Thee and to my children.” Now she arose from her bed and garbed herself in purest white, writing with firm hand something upon a tablet. Then from a casket she drew a small, sharp knife, testing its blade upon her finger-nail. Calmly and piously she prayed “Hear, Oh Israel,” and severed the veins of both her arms. With blood streaming from her, and without a cry of pain, she extinguished the light, stretched herself out upon the bed, and began the journey to her little ones. She kept her eyes wide open as she lay there bleeding to death, and beheld her children before her. Far off there in the graveyard, in their graves, they had sat up, white and steeped in sadness, awaiting her arrival. And she said to them, “Wait, I come to you, my darling sons! Soon I shall be with you, precious hearts!” Endlessly she whispered fond endearments, mother-words. Not for a moment did she give a thought to the olden days. She could behold only her children and the road to them. Only at the end, when the long, long sleep was coming over her and the vision of her children and the way to them grew blurred and dim, did she utter in peaceful yearning, with silent tears, “Mayer! Mayer!” XI And it happened that when the handsome Simeon returned to the Yeshiva the students there cried out in horror at his altered looks. “See,” he exclaimed, “what has overtaken me because for thirty days I dashed myself against the stony strength of Beruriah. Her strength and purity are above all uncertainty, but I am utterly undone.” And Rabbi Mayer glowered triumphantly at his disciples, took his staff and wallet and left to seek Beruriah. But he found her dead,—gone to join her children. And on the tablet were written these few words: “He who cuts open the apple also destroys it.” He seized his temples, his eyes expanded wildly, and he burst forth into a heart-breaking, soul-rending wail: “Beruriah!” THE TEMPTATIONS OF RABBI AKIBA THE TEMPTATIONS OF RABBI AKIBA Heavens, how stern and pious a Jew this Rabbi Akiba was! Scarcely his peer to be found in all Judea.