What does “be exiled” mean?

Rabbi Nehorai (Avot 4:18) taught: "Be exiled to a place of Torah; don't say that it will follow you, because your colleagues will help you retain it, so don't rely on your own understanding". Anyone who reads this mishnah might assume that its addressee is someone who is already in a place where Torah is being learned and that its message is this: “if you have to leave the place where you are engaged in Torah study, you should make sure that your destination is also a place where you can pursue the same activity—a place where Torah is studied, where its precepts are respected and kept".  The text of the Mishnah is however phrased as an imperative: “Be exiled!” In the second volume of his work Elef HaMagen Rabbi Eliezer Papo (a.k.a. the “Pele Yo’etz”) takes this to mean that you should move to such a place in order to learn Torah even if it means exiling yourself and traveling far away.

There is however no need to take the concept of exile as a physical reality; it can also be a metaphor. “Be exiled” is an imperative, an order to a person to leave the comfort zone of his learning and stretch his mind, taking it beyond the same familiar areas of study. Why, for example, spend another year just going through “Chumash with Rashi", when you can try out another commentator for a change? Why not sign up for a daf yomi learning programme that takes you to the outer reaches of the Babylonian Talmud instead of just learning the most popular bits? Why not change your brand of mussar (moral chastisement) for a while and see if it changes you? 

The mishnah also contains a caveat. If you do venture beyond your comfort zone, don’t think you can do it all by yourself. You may find that you are in difficult and uncharted learning terrain. Nachmanides’ commentary on the Chumash is written in the same Hebrew as Rashi’s, but his conceptual vocabulary is quite different, as is his methodology, and tractates of the Babylonian Talmud may be incomprehensible when they are built on the structure of mishnayot with which you are unfamiliar. Take a friend with you in your exile, keep a chavruta alive in this zone of unfamiliarity, and then you will have a better chance of surviving in your new environment—and even of thriving.