Sponge, funnel, strainer and sifter

There are four types among those who sit in the presence of the sages: the sponge, the funnel, the strainer, and the sifter.

"The sponge," who soaks up everything. "The funnel," who takes in at this end and lets out at the other. "The strainer," who lets out the wine and retains the lees. "The sifter," who removes the coarse meal and collects the fine flour.

— Pirkei Avot, chapter 5, mishna 18

This saying from the Rabbinical Jewish Talmud describes four types of learners. Needless to say, there is a hierarchy of values going on here. Which of the types of learners do we want to be?

Do we want to be a sponge, soaking up everything? This might at first seem to be the best, but let’s continue.

What about the funnel? No, it’s easy to see that this type of learner is the one described by the phrase “in one ear, out the other,” which probably even comes from this passage.

How about the strainer? It seems to me that this type of learner is one who thinks “too hard,” who strains his mind in inner deliberations, only to let out the wine and keep the lees, that is, the mind loses what is valuable and wastes itself on inanities.

So far, it seems like the sponge may be the best type of learner. But wait, there’s one more…

What about the sifter? This type removes the coarse meal and collects the fine flour. What can this possibly mean? What is the coarse meal, and what the fine flour? It seems to me that this might be the best type of learner, one who not only absorbs knowledge but does something with it, knowing how to separate what is useful from what is not.

It was reading a post on Fr Stephen’s blog that made me think of this wise saying, but what he wrote about is not directly related to the idea behind this mishna. It was this passage that caught my attention:

“Orthodoxy exists as a place for the embracing of teaching and the living out of its reality: it is not a place for the sifting of opinion.”

If this statement were to be placed within the context of this mishna of the Pirkei Avot, it might seem that Fr Stephen is saying it’s best to be the sponge, and not so good to be the sifter, but I don’t think this is what his post was getting at. Rather, as I understand him, and as I understand Orthodoxy, he’s just saying that it is a place to learn what is right and do it and not a place to endlessly wrangle about words.

Even in Orthodoxy, even in Christianity at large, just as in Judaism, we need to be “cunning as serpents and innocent as doves,” as our Rabbi Y’shua ha-Moshíach hayá omér (used to say), or “sifters removing the coarse and collecting the fine flour,” as the Jewish rabbis have taught and recorded in this mishna.

Or even, as Elder Ephrém has so audaciously written, “God doesn’t want us to be ignoramuses.”