And drinking wine. The Mishnah says that Elisha ben Avuyah, who was a rabbi during the time of Rabbi Akiva, was the teacher of Rabbi Meir. Eventually, he left the path of Torah and abandoned his learning. He became known as Acher (the other), but this became a well-known teaching of his. So even though he left the path, the Hachamim (sages) kept this Mishnah within the Mishnayot (Mishnah teachings) of Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers). He taught the following: What is a person who learns Torah as a child compared to? To ink written on new paper. When ink is written on fresh, clean, new paper, it is not going to fade away. The same thing happens when a person learns Torah as a youngster: the Torah he learned is going to stay in his memory, and it is not going to fade easily. It will stay with him for the rest of his life. But what is a person who learns Torah when he is old compared to? He is compared to ink written on erased paper. When it is written on erased paper, that new writing is going to fade away. The paper cannot hold the writing. Similarly, an older person who learns Torah, unfortunately, is going to forget it. This does not downgrade the mitzvah (commandment) that he does. It is a great mitzvah for a person to learn, whether he is young or old, but the quality of the Torah study of somebody who is older and a little more forgetful is lower because he does not remember everything; he does not hold on to everything. But of course, that person is going to receive a tremendous reward for learning Torah.
So the last part of the Mishnah focused on the person who was learning. We said that if a person learns Torah when they are young, they will remember it. So it is better to learn when they are young. But here we are talking about who the teacher is. We are switching the focus from the student to the teacher. What is someone who learned Torah from a young man compared to? The teacher is a young man. What is he compared to? Someone who is eating unripe grapes directly from the wine press. Wine made from grapes that have not ripened all the way is sour—sour grapes—and wine that comes directly from the wine press is sour, sour grapes. It is still mixed with pulp, so it is not pure wine. The same thing applies if a young man is teaching: even though he may have learned a lot of Torah, the Torah he has is still undeveloped. It is not fully there. The explanations he may give do not take the context of the bigger world out there into account. He does not understand people’s experiences. He does not really understand the way the world works. So he may have the facts and the ideas, but he does not have the ability to put them into practice and explain them to people properly, so he is not a teacher. Therefore, like wine that comes from the press, the wine is, of course, sweet, but it is mixed with pulp and other things because it has not settled yet. The same thing applies to the knowledge of this young man: the ideas and the Torah he has have not settled; they have not developed yet. But even though he may have a tremendous amount of Torah, the questions about it have not yet been clarified.
What is someone who learned Torah from an elder, someone who has been learning for many, many years, compared to? To someone who eats ripe grapes and drinks aged wine. The knowledge of this elder sage is sweetened. He has a mature understanding, and the questions have all been resolved in his head. He has the ability, since he has thought everything through for many, many years and decades, to answer the questions that are thrown at him.
Rabbi says, “Don’t look at the bottle, but at what’s in it.” Rabbi disagrees here with the previous Tanna (early rabbinic sage), Rabbi Yose bar Yehuda, who said that you should preferably learn from an older rabbi than from a younger rabbi. He says, “Rabbi, don’t really look at the bottle; look at what it contains.” What he is really saying is that sometimes there are young Hachamim, young rabbis, whose understanding equals that of the great older rabbis. And the inverse: sometimes there is a new bottle that is full of aged wine. That is praise: a young rabbi, a new bottle that has a tremendous amount of chokhmah (wisdom). But now the inverse: an old bottle that sometimes does not even have any new wine in it. Maybe that older sage is not somebody who is holding, not somebody who has the goods. He does not have the content anymore. So the advice of Rabbi is: No, let’s not judge a book by its cover. Let’s not look at the outside, at whether he is young or old. Let’s not make a quick judgment call; rather, let’s make an individual judgment call on each person. Let’s look at what is really inside, at the chokhmah that he has. Even if he is younger, if he has the chokhmah, a person should study by him. And conversely, if he is older but does not have the chokhmah, a person should avoid learning with that sage.