Parshas VaYeitzei
here’s a nice vort by Rabbi Frand from torah.org
Where did this Tzadik, Yaakov, go after he left Beer Sheva? Our Sages say that he went to study for 14 years in the Yeshiva of Shem and Ever. This is a strange thing. Until now, Yaakov has also been sitting and learning. Now it is time to go — time to go into exile. So what does he do? He goes and sits and learns literally day and night for another 14 years!
Rav Yaakov Kamenetsky says that Yaakov had something to learn, and that is why he had to go to the Yeshiva of Shem and Ever. We all know that the holy patriarchs had their own schools of learning. The Talmud [Yoma 28b] says that our patriarchs constantly had their own Yeshivas. But, nevertheless Yaakov had something specific to gain from the Yeshiva of Shem and Ever. What was it?
Shem was the one who withstood the Generation of the Flood. He had a “special Torah” to teach — the Torah of how to exist in a hostile society, one filled with theft and immorality and corruption. Ever was the one who withstood the heresy of the Generation of the Dispersion (at the Tower of Babel). He, too, had a special Torah to teach.
So now, when Yaakov knew that he was going into Exile, to live with the deceitful Lavan, he had to learn a “different Torah” than he had learned with his father and his grandfather. He had to learn how a Jew survives in Exile, outside the Land of Israel. That is why he had to go to the Yeshiva of Shem and Ever.
Rash”i cites that all that Yaakov learned in the Yeshiva of Shem and Ever he gave over to Yosef. It was this Torah of how a Jew exists in a hostile society, that Yaakov had to give to Yosef, specifically. For Yosef also went down to a hostile environment (Egypt). He, too, needed this “special Torah.”