Chapter 35
Why Did Rav Zera Starve Himself?
page 56:
Other Talmudic Sages came from Babylonia to the Land of Israel, yet we do not find that anyone other than Rav Zera fasted – 100 fasts! – in order to forget the Torah he learned outside the Land. How can this be explained?
It can be said allegorically that Rav Zera wished to have a particular teaching of his be forgotten – namely, the matter of the Three Oaths, including one that Israel must not return en masse, or "as a wall," to the Land of Israel. He saw in his prophetic wisdom that there would come a time when people would use this teaching to justify why they were not returning to the Holy Land, and so he fasted in order that this teaching might be forgotten. For when he himself came to the Holy Land, he merited the privilege of hearing from the Sages of the Land that if the Jewish People had come "as a wall," the Holy Temple would not have been destroyed. He therefore retracted his teaching about the Three Oaths, as we wrote above in the name of the Medrash.
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