Today I received, by WhatsApp attachment, the picture that appears above. The confusion over lockdown rules in many countries has led to frustration, anger and doubtless many people either ignoring them completely or employing their own personal means of interpreting them.
Pirkei Avot is quite clear on the matter. Hillel the Elder teaches (2:5) that you should never say something that cannot easily be understood if your intention is that people should understand it. This applies as much to the written word as to the spoken variety. A particularly annoying aspect of the current uncertainty concerning Covid-19 regulations is the speed at which they change -- currently more quickly than the rate at which they are absorbed into the understanding of many people who are being required to comply with them. The best approach in general is to express rules in the fewest words one can since, the more words one uses, the greater the prospect of error (1:17).
