פרשת שפטים
'הוא ינום אל אחת הערים האלה וחי וגו' | דברים, י"ט, ה
“He shall flee to one of these cities and he shall live there.”
This posuk contains the law regarding a person who accidentally kills someone, and must be exiled to a city of refuge.
The Rambam rules that for a student who is exiled to a city of refuge, his teacher is sent into exile with him. This is because the posuk says “and he shall live”, meaning that he must be provided with all that he needs to live, and for those who seek wisdom, life without Torah is regarded as death.
R’ Yehuda Leib Chasman zt”l (Ohr Yahel) states: Here we have a new principle concerning levels of spirituality. Although a student can suitably study Torah in his place of exile without a teacher, he is still considered to be deficient, missing an essential part of his life because he lacks the benefit of studying with his teacher.
The idea here is that spiritual success is not like material success. Spirituality is not measured in terms of quantity, but rather in terms of quality. This quality is similar in nature to the World to Come, which is infinite, and something that is infinite cannot be divided into tiny pieces, for each part would itself be infinite. For this reason, the gap between one spiritual level and the next is like the gap between life and death.
We often tend to reduce spiritual values to a number. This tendency can manifest itself by a reluctance to use our spare time for spiritual pursuits, or by a preconceived notion that we cannot study everything (be it the entire Talmud, an entire order, or an entire tractate).
Similarly, when we are finishing a prayer and we realize that we have not been focusing on it, we often fail to try and concentrate at the end. All this stems from the fact that we tend to quantify spiritual values. It is important to recognize that there are things that are so important like Torah and Tefillah, they cannot be quantified.
About the Author: Rabbi Yisroel Meir Rubinfeld
Rabbi Rubinfeld has been in the field of Torah education for over 3 decades and serves as an Executive School Consultant for Torah Umesorah. He provides an array of services to schools across North America, including teacher and principal mentorship, school and curricula evaluations, professional development and parent education.
Rabbi Rubinfeld's expertise includes classroom management and discipline, effective instruction, bullying, cultivating sensitivity in the classroom, impulse disorders (such as ADHD and ODD), and balancing the educational needs of mainstream and special needs children in the classroom.
Rabbi Rubinfeld is the also the founder and director of Torah Umesorah's Lilmod U'Lilamed department which provides professional development for teachers and principals throughout the year.
Rabbi Rubinfeld is a talmid of the distinguished Yeshivos of Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin, the Mirrer Yeshiva in Yerushalayim and Bais Medrash Govoha in Lakewood.