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.
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.
