Pirkei Avos Perek 3 Mishna 3

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In the Footsteps of our Fathers

Rabbi Yitzchak Reuven Rubin

Pirkei Avos Perek 3 Mishna 3

It started in Greece, not Italy. I speak of that gooey concoction called Pizza. You wouldn’t believe that such a hodgepodge of tomatoes, flour and oil would become so embedded into the dietary regime of Yidden, but indeed it has. Wherever you go, in any major Jewish town, somewhere you will find the kosher pizza shop. There you will spy Yidden feasting on these delightful messy dripping morsels. Truth is, the Greeks thought of it hundreds of years before the Italians got around to it. It was only in the early 1800s, when an enterprising Neapolitan opened the first pizzeria, that the Italians stole the show from the Greeks.

How this became a heimishe morsel took a bit of doing. It seems that after the Second World War the recipe was brought to America, and soon after, well, the rest is history.

Pizza is in fact the perfect snack food, stuffed with nutrients and calories. You don’t need much to eat it; it defies all need for forks and knives. You just aim it and let it glide into your waiting mouth, hoping against all odds that won’t drip over your shirt. Come to think of it, it is quite a megushmadika (hedonistic, animalistic) type of food, with all that oil and stuff. But then again, you have to know where to buy it. When my kids were growing up in Brooklyn, they were blessed in that they could buy pizza from a rosh yeshiva.

This needs a bit of an explanation. In those days parnasa was not easy, especially for roshei yeshiva and other klei kodesh, people with holy jobs. One such Yid was the proud father of a large family, and he decided that he needed to find a way to make a living without calling upon charity for his needs. (This was in fact the way it had always been in Poland, where many of the Rebbes and Gedolei Yisrael had business interests that allowed them to make a living without being tied to the kehilla treasury.) Our hero thus decided that he would open a pizza shop with a difference. His was a place where you could drop by, purchase a slice of pizza and get a devar Torah all at the same time. The man was an expert in the forming of the dough, but he did so with a unique blend of yiras shamayim. His slices were truly the best, for they came with a full measure of Torah as a topping.

Well, that sweet Rosh Yeshiva has long since gone from his shop. In fact, after marrying off his children he accepted a call to be a Rav in Yerushalayim, where he remained for a number of years till his passing.

Truth to tell, I was never a great pizza lover.Something about its dripping cheese disagrees with me. But I will tell you one thing: I made sure my kids went to that shop so that they could see a Torah Yid actualizing Torah values in the most mundane of places. Additionally, I made a point of attending that Yid’s Medrash shiur every Friday night in the Gerrer shteibel. It was a wondrous illustration of how a true talmid chacham can take any point of Torah and expand it in a hundred different pathways. I always felt the richer coming out from that shiur, and all this from the local pizza maker.

I bring you this memory as an illustration of our mishna: “Rabbi Shimon says: If three have eaten at one table and have not spoken words of Torah there, it is as if they have eaten of offerings to the dead, as it says, ‘For all tables are full of vomit and filth without the Omnipresent.’ But if three have eaten at one table and have spoken words of Torah there, it is as if they have eaten from Hashem’s table, as it says, ‘And he said to me, ‘This is the table that is before Hashem.’”

Mankind differs from other creatures in that he seeks companionship. Animals don’t like to share in their food. They see others as a threat. They guard their store of food and attack anything that comes near it. Humans have a spirit that wants to enjoy its food with company.

Chazal explain that this phenomenon is actually the two characteristics of gevura and chesed that live within the human simultaneously. Gevura is the inward contemplativeness that we all need to have at times, whereas chesed is the will to share and give to others. The Torah Yid is told that he should live with this dichotomy by sharing yet looking within. When we bring Torah to a meal we allow others to learn while we ourselves become more focused. This is a true marriage of gevura and chesed.

The mishna exclaims that sitting with others and not actualizing a Torah lifestyle is as if one is eating a meal of the dead. There can be no spiritual growth in such company, for you are eating but you are not nourishing your soul. Being together with others is not enough. You must introduce the awareness of Hashem into the company, for without this you are not in moral balance. The person who seeks to come closer to his Creator understands that even while doing the most common of activities such as eating he must try to elevate his actions to a higher spirituality.

Our pizza-making Rav did this everyday, and in so doing he personified the full meaning of what it is to eat as one created in the image of Hashem. He would speak words of Torah while spreading the tomato sauce, he would make certain that in his shop the rules of modesty were kept, and he did this all with a deft touch of Polish Yiddishe humor. Every table has this potential of being “before Hashem”; it is up to us to create this.

The mishna says amru alav divrei Torah, which literally translates as “spoken words of Torah over it.” The Sfas Emes explains this means that when the Torah takes supremacy over the material world of the “table” there is a blessing. It is this type of table that stands before Hashem.

Rav Tzadok Hakohen explains that by speaking words of Torah at a meal, one clarifies that Hashem is the source of everything. It is for this reason that Chazal mandated our making of blessings before we eat.

We live in times where we see unfortunate situations of what has been termed “children at risk.” These are young teenagers from heimishe homes who have lost their way. Much has been written on this painful subject, and many are the reasons for what has happened. However, one contributing cause must be the fact that many food outlets, although kosher in the physical realm, are “tables full of vomit and filth.” It can’t be good when young folk stand about outside kosher food emporiums late at night fressing away like street urchins. Perhaps, just maybe, what we could all use is a pizza-making Rav who will bring a little light into their wounded hearts.

Obviously, our own homes should radiate with the warmth and understanding that teaches the entire household how vital Hashem’s blessings are. However this mishna speaks of communal eating, three people not necessarily from one household, “three guys having a pizza.”

Let me share with you from my limited experience. I have seen quite a few youngsters from families that had no background in Torah life whatsoever become Torah adherents simply because they ate a few meals at a “table of Hashem.” Generations of chassidishe tischen, or meals shared with roshei yeshiva, speak out in eloquent proof to this. The chesed and gevura mixture seen at a Torah meal can be the elixir of a positive future. We need but try to make certain every one of our young partake in them.