Dear Friends,
As we approach the Festival of Shavuot, I wanted once again to spend some time this week exploring teachings from the small section of the Mishnah known as Pirkei Avot. Tradition teaches that we read one chapter each week between Passover and Shavuot, and one particular teaching jumped out at me this year. Rabbi Nehorai taught:
“הֱוֵי גוֹלֶה לִמְקוֹם תּוֹרָה”“Exile yourself to a place of learning.”
I found myself struck by the fact that, instead of simply saying “Go study,” the rabbi chose the phrase “Exile yourself.”
When we remain entirely surrounded by familiar assumptions, familiar people, and familiar ideas, very little challenges us to grow. Perhaps Rabbi Nehorai wanted to suggest that real intellectual and spiritual growth rarely happens in complete comfort. By invoking the language of exile, he may have wanted us to understand that genuine learning requires a degree of dislocation—a willingness to leave behind certainty, familiarity, and the security of always feeling right.
In many ways, ours has become a culture that encourages precisely the opposite. Technology increasingly allows us to curate worlds in which we hear mostly from people who already agree with us, reinforce our assumptions, validate our instincts, and mirror our frustrations. That can feel emotionally satisfying. In a world that often feels fractured and threatening, the desire for comfort and certainty is understandable.
But comfort can quietly stunt our growth.
This teaching suggests that wisdom emerges from our willingness to encounter unfamiliar ideas and sit with the discomfort they sometimes create.
That, in turn, leads to another often-overlooked teaching from Pirkei Avot:
“אֵין הַבַּיְשָׁן לָמֵד”“A shy person cannot learn.”
At first glance, that sounds insensitive, even judgmental. After all, some people are naturally quiet or introverted. But I do not think the rabbis were criticizing temperament. I think they were describing a deeper truth about vulnerability.
Learning requires the willingness to risk not knowing. It requires asking questions that may sound foolish. It requires the humility to say, “I don’t understand,” or perhaps even harder, “I may have been wrong.”
And that is never easy.
Social media rewards certainty, not curiosity. Public discourse increasingly punishes nuance. Many people have become terrified of appearing uninformed, uncertain, or intellectually unfinished.
But Judaism has never equated wisdom with certainty.
If anything, our tradition often suggests the opposite: wisdom begins the moment we become comfortable enough to acknowledge how much we do not yet know.
The story is told that Isidor Isaac Rabi was once asked why he became a scientist. He replied:
“My mother made me a scientist without ever knowing it. Every other child would come back from school and be asked, ‘What did you learn today?’ But my mother used to say, ‘Izzy, did you ask a good question today?’ That made the difference.”
Perhaps that is why the Talmud itself is structured not around final answers, but around arguments, questions, disagreements, and unresolved tensions. The goal was never merely the accumulation of information. It was the cultivation of intellectual humility.
Because the rabbis understood something profound:
The opposite of learning is not ignorance.
The opposite of learning is the belief that we already know enough.
Shabbat Shalom,Rabbi Daniel Cohen