What shall we do with the noxious neighbour?

Pirkei Avot places great importance on neighbours. According to Rabbi Yose HaKohen, the good path a person should pursue in life is that of being a good neighbour (Avot 2:13); conversely, the bad path that one should avoid is that of being a bad one (Avot 2:14). Nittai HaArbeli goes further, teaching that one should actually keep one’s distance from a bad neighbour (Avot 1:7).

Nittai’s teaching is not hard to comprehend. It is self-evident that bad neighbours mean trouble, something that many readers who have suffered at the hands of such neighbours can corroborate. The Torah requires the demolition of a house that has been afflicted with tzora’at, a sort of biblical mould that is associated with lashon hara—inappropriate and often damaging speech. When those walls come down, it may be that one is a party wall shared with a good and innocent neighbour, who will be adversely affected by the wrongful speech emanating from next door.

What does distancing oneself from a bad neighbour mean today? It can be a challenging piece of advice to implement. Avot itself poses problems. How can we establish that a person is bad when we are told not to judge others unless we are standing in their place (Avot 2:5) and when in any event have been previously instructed (at Avot 1:6) to judge others favourably if at all possible? And by what objective criteria do we assess whether a person is bad at all? The Hebrew word used here is ra, which is often translated as “wicked” but which may mean much less. For example, at Berachot 8a Resh Lakish describes as being ra a person who has a synagogue in his town but does not go there to pray.

Assuming that we overcome these obstacles, we must then consider how to distance ourselves from such a neighbour. Two obvious possibilities present themselves:

1.   1. Move away from our bad neighbour: in ancient times this exercise may have posed fewer problems but the difficulties, inconvenience and expense we face today can be immense. We may have to terminate a lease and enter a new one, or renegotiate a mortgage, facing brokerage, legal and surveyors’ fees.  Then there are removal costs. Next there is the hassle of contacting suppliers of electricity, gas, water and other services plus notification of change of address. The move may also involve a transfer of children to a new school. Ultimately we would probably still have no guarantee that our new neighbours are any better than the old ones or that, however good they are, they will remain there permanently and not be replaced by less good ones.

2.   2. Move the bad neighbour away from ourselves: this is more convenient but far less likely to occur unless the bad neighbour can be persuaded, bribed or otherwise induced to relocate to a place that is more congenial for him. Alternatively, if the person is sufficiently wicked as to be a real criminal, it may be possible to invoke the powers of the police to arrest him, hoping that he will receive a severe custodial sentence. This path is itself thwart with problems because it is not the way of a good Jew to inform on his neighbour to the authorities unless he has secured a valid rabbinical dispensation to do so.

There remains a further possibility, one which I feel accords best with the general ethos of Pirkei Avot: rather than remove oneself from the bad neighbour, or vice versa, seek to remove the badness from the neighbour, who will then be a bad neighbour no longer.

This approach fits in with Hillel’s broad advice at Avot 1:12 that one should emulate Aharon HaKohen and seek to bring others close to the Torah—which in this instance can mean bringing them closer to the normative behaviour of the society in which they live. It is also consonant with the spirit of loving rebuke (Avot 6:6) which can mean not only loving to receive rebuke but rebuking others in a loving and caring way. Moving away from other people might produce practical results in the short term, but it is ultimately a way of simply running away from a problem rather than facing up to it. Avot is driven by the need to improve one’s middot, and this approach to Nitttai HaArbeli’s mishnah does just that.