You shall get up and go to the place that Hashem will choose. (17:8)
The Mishna says (Avos 4:18), R' Nehorai taught: “Exile yourself to a place of Torah, and do not say that the Torah will come to where you are, because it is through your friends (in learning, who are there) that you will succeed in learning, and do not rely on your own understanding.”
Rashi writes that R' Nehorai is R' Elazar ben Arach. He is called R' Nehorai since he illuminated the eyes of the Chachamim with his Torah (Shabbos 147b). It is important to know this detail, since it makes this teaching of R' Nehorai be seen in a new light.
The Midrash (Koheles Rabbah 7:7) relates that when R' Yochanan ben Zakkai passed away, his students went to Yavneh to continue learning. R' Elazar ben Arach went home to his city of Ama'us and waited for the other Chachamim to come to learn by him (since R' Yochanan ben Zakkai had said about him that he was the greatest of his students [Avos 2:10]). When they did not come, he asked his wife if he could go join them in Yavneh. She asked him, "Who needs whom?" He responded, "They need me." When his wife heard this, she did not let him go to Yavneh, reasoning that those who need the water come to the water, not the other way around. In the end, R' Elazar ben Arach was punished for not going to Yavneh.
Now that we know that R' Nehorai is R' Elazar ben Arach, and with the introduction of the Midrash, this teaching of R' Nehorai is seen in a whole new light.
R' Nehorai was teaching from the lesson he himself had learned. First, he said, exile yourself to a place of Torah, the opposite of what he himself had done. This is because, however great a person is, a place of Torah has a special holiness and divine assistance to help those who learn there.
To this, R' Nehorai added that one should not say that the Torah will come to him. This he learned from his own experience. As great as he was, he nevertheless should have exiled himself to a place of Torah since his friends (in learning) who were there, even if they were not as great as he, would be the ones to increase the Heavenly assistance, which, in turn, would allow him to further succeed in Torah study.
He ends off, “And do not rely on your own understanding.” With this, he intends to reiterate the idea that even if one is so great that he himself can be considered the place of Torah because he has special Heavenly assistance to understand Torah, he nevertheless should go to the place of Torah and not rely only on his own understanding of Torah.
This idea is learned from the passuk in this week's parsha, in which the Torah says that you should “go up to the place that Hashem chooses to clarify all that is unclear to you in the Torah.” On this passuk, the Gemara says (Sanhedrin 14b) that we learn from here that "the place has effect." This means that since Hashem designated this place (Yerushalayim) for the understanding of Torah, it has a unique property that Torah can be understood there more than any other place, even by the same people. The same holds true (on a lesser level) of every place of Torah. A person should go there to learn rather than think he can learn as well where he is (if it is not a place of Torah), since there is a unique Heavenly assistance in a place of Torah.
RABBI YISRAEL REISMAN
