Yalta ילתא

When the guest Ulla passed her no cup of blessing, saying the blessing of a house comes through the husband, Yalta rose, smashed four hundred jars of wine, and answered his apology with a line that became proverbial: "from peddlers, words; from rags, lice".

She knew the law: she discussed with her husband the borders of the permitted—"for everything forbidden the Torah gives a permitted likeness"—and carried questions to the sages when the first answer did not satisfy her. The house of Rav Nachman and Yalta is a rare window into Babylonian aristocracy, where a wife's learning surprised no one.