A Gathering Place of Fools

The Mishnah says that two who sit together without words of Torah between them form a gathering of cynics. The Modzitzer Rebbe heard from the elder chassid Rav Meshulem of Plontsk that his grandfather, the Kuzhmirer Rebbe, was once a guest in Plontsk, in the home of a wealthy, learned Misnagged who asked him to say a few words at the table. The Kuzhmirer grasped the table with both hands and shoved it far away, to underscore his point. Chazal call such a place a gathering place of fools, rather than calling the people fools. The reason, he said, is that if two Torah scholars sit together and have no words of Torah to share, it must be because of the impurity of the place, since that table once served as a gathering place for fools, whose influence clings to it. The Modzitzer adds that he later found the same explanation in the name of Rav Michele of Zlotshuv.