Preaching at Length

R. Zebadiah, the son-in-law of R. Levi, reported the following happening: R. Meir used to preach in the synagogue of Hamata every Friday evening. There was a woman who used to hear him. Once, he extended his sermon. She went and wanted to come to her house but found the light had gone out. Her husband asked her, “Where have you been?” She said to him, “To hear the preacher’s voice.” He said to her, “Such and such,¹ this woman will not enter into her house unless she went and spat into the preacher’s face.” R. Meir saw this in the holy spirit [i.e., he knew it through supernatural means] and faked pain in his eyes. He said, “Any woman who knows charms for the eye should come and do the charm.” Her neighbors said to her, “This answers your needs. Go to your house, represent yourself as a sorceress, and spit in his eye.” She came to him; he asked her, “Do you know [how] to make a charm for the eye?” In her fear of him, she said no. He said to her, “If you spit into it seven times, he will feel better.” After she had spat, he said to her, “Go, and tell your husband, ‘You said to me once, but she spat seven times!’” His students said to him, “So [by doing this] does one denigrate the Torah? If you had ordered [it] about him, would we not have brought him, whipped him on the footstool, and made him agree to make up with his wife?” He said to them, “The honor of Meir should not be greater than that of his Maker. Since the verse says that the holy name, written in holiness, should be erased by the water in order to make peace between husband and wife [see Numbers 5], is the honor of Meir not so much more so?”