Pirkei Avot is a pretty serious tractate, but every so often a little gentle humour filters through. One such example is Avot 5:18, which likens aspiring Torah scholars to various utensils that are more often found in the kitchen than in the study halls:
אַרְבַּע
מִדּוֹת בְּיוֹשְׁבִים לִפְנֵי חֲכָמִים: סְפוֹג, וּמַשְׁפֵּךְ, מְשַׁמֶּֽרֶת,
וְנָפָה. סְפוֹג, שֶׁהוּא סוֹפֵג אֶת הַכֹּל. וּמַשְׁפֵּךְ, שֶׁמַּכְנִיס בְּזוֹ
וּמוֹצִיא בְזוֹ. מְשַׁמֶּֽרֶת, שֶׁמּוֹצִיאָה אֶת הַיַּֽיִן וְקוֹלֶֽטֶת אֶת
הַשְּׁמָרִים. וְנָפָה, שֶׁמּוֹצִיאָה אֶת הַקֶּֽמַח וְקוֹלֶֽטֶת אֶת הַסּֽוֹלֶת
There are four types among those
who sit before the sages: the sponge, the funnel, the strainer and the sieve.
The sponge absorbs everything. The funnel takes in at one end and lets it out
the other. The strainer lets the wine pass through and retains the sediment.
The sieve lets the coarse flour pass through and retains the fine flour.
What do the sages themselves think of this? Most agree that,
while it is a very fine thing to be a sieve, there is less praise for the
sponge, the funnel and the strainer. The funnel retains nothing: it represents
the talmid whose learning goes “in one ear and out the other”. The
strainer is even worse, retaining just the dregs of each class—the witticisms,
the asides, the rabbi’s diversions—while keeping nothing of its subject matter.
As for the sponge, typical of scholarship ancient and modern is this appraisal
by R’ Shlomo Toperoff in his Lev Avot:
“[The sponge] is porous and
easily absorbs all kinds of liquid, clean and unclean. Similarly the first type
of disciple absorbs all things indiscriminately, the good and the bad; he does
not distinguish between the essential and inessential”.
There is however plenty of scope for reappraisal of our four
household items. Maybe they are all good, at least in potential. This seems to
be the view of Rabbi Shmuel de Uçeda, who in his Midrash Shmuel explains
the apparently superfluous words in this mishnah as a call for all four
utensils to be explained twice over, once as praise and once as criticism. We discussed
his approach, which is followed by Rabbi Avraham Azulai in his Ahavah BeTa’anugim,
back in 2022 (see blogpost here,
Facebook post with discussion here).
Here's another account of the four kitchen items from Rabbi
Chaim Palagi, in his Einei Kol Chai, which I can’t resist bringing even
though we still have most of a year till we get to Pesach.
