Dealing with our closest neighbour

An Avot mishnah for Shabbat: Perek 1 (Parashat Naso)

In this, our second series of erev Shabbat posts on the perek of the week, we return to Perek 1.

There’s a curious mishnah near the beginning of Avot, at 1:7, which has something to say about the company we keep. Taught by Nittai HaArbeli, it opens like this:

הַרְחֵק מִשָּׁכֵן רָע, וְאַל תִּתְחַבֵּר לָרָשָׁע

Distance yourself from an evil neighbour, and don’t be a friend to a wicked person…

Most commentators not unreasonably take this advice literally, for there is much to discuss on that basis. Issues regularly pondered include how to tell whether a neighbour is bad or not, what’s the difference between “bad neighbour” and “wicked person”, how far to distance or disassociate oneself, and how in practice does one achieve these ends, particularly if one is expected to judge all people favourably unless it is impossible to do so (Avot 1:6). Additionally, in contemporary Jewish society, despite its affluence, the costs associated with moving home are seen as a deterrent—and, even when one moves away from an evil neighbour, there is no guarantee that one’s new neighbours will be any better.

There is an approach to this teaching which not resolve these issues but seeks to divert it from interpersonal relationships to the zone of introspection. In the writings of the Kozhnitzer Maggid and R’ Ovadyah Hedayah we are encouraged to view the “bad neighbour” as our own yetzer hara (“evil inclination”) which competes for our attention with our yetzer tov (“good inclination”).

According to the Vilna Gaon (on Ruth 1:18) the yetzer hara is compared to a fly which sits between the two openings of the heart, buzzing between them. The yetzer hara’s task is to entice us sin. If it fails to achieve this task by direct means, it tries another way: by encouraging us to perform mitzvot that are really only a disguise for an underlying sin—for example short-changing a customer in a shop in order to donate the “profit” to charity.

If the yetzer tov and yetzer hara are both locked inside us, there are plainly limits as to how far we might distance ourselves from our own worse selves. Here there are no easy answers. Keeping away from obvious temptations (bars, fashionable clothing shops, gambling dens, nightclubs, confectionery stores or whatever else takes one’s fancy)—these practical steps can help up to a point. Our sages, quoting God’s own words as it were, go further: barati yetzer hara, barati Torah tavlin (“I created the evil inclination, and I created Torah as its antidote”: Kiddushin 30b). But ultimately we still have to take the antidote. In other words we have no choice other than to cultivate and build up enough self-discipline so that we can effectively put our yetzer hara into a sort of internal exile.

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Nothing to do with real women after all?

The third and final part of Avot 1:5 contains one of the more troublesome statements for modern-day readers of Avot, when Yose ben Yochanan Ish Yerushalayim counsels his pupils not to have too much sichah (idle chatter) with women, and particularly with other men's wives. There are many apologists for this teaching, though some commentators sound a little condescending in their justifications of this statement.

It is however possible to explain this part of the Mishnah in a completely different way, one that has nothing to do with women and with men’s attitudes to women. The explanation runs like this. “Woman” in this context does not refer to female human beings. Rather, it is a metaphor for the yetzer hara, the seductive evil inclination that we all possess, men and women alike. It is well known that humans cannot exist, procreate and develop their own character if they have no yetzer hara at all, or if they have one but pay no attention to it—but they should not engage overmuch with it.

Taking the metaphor further, the chachamim note that one should not engage in too much sichah with “one’s friend’s wife” either. This is because many socially destructive activities, of which adultery is the most obvious example, require the cooperation of one’s own yetzer hara with someone else’s.  Take care, therefore, not to let your evil inclination engage with the evil inclination of your friend.

Is this explanation implausible and far-fetched? One can make out a case for “woman” being a metaphor for the evil inclination, a symbol of seduction, persuasion and guile that will ensnare a good person of either gender and lead him or her off the desired path in circumstances in which brute force is not available or effective. Such a use of “woman” as a metaphor for the yetzer hara has a counterpart in the Book of Proverbs, where the temptation to abandon one’s Judaism and follow idol worship is described as “a strange woman, a foreign woman” (Proverbs 2:16-17, per Rashi, who makes the same association at 6:24), a woman who forgets the husband of her former days. The same alien woman is also depicted as “the lusting soul” whose influence runs counter to a person’s intellect (Proverbs 7:5, per Gersonides). Later, the “foolish woman” says to passers-by who are devoid of understanding: “stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten secretly is more pleasing” (Proverbs 9:13-17, this being generally taken as an allusion to the attractions of adultery). 

The question facing us today is whether we can stretch the metaphor further and generalize this sort of use of the word “woman” into an indication of every direction in which the evil inclination can pull a person. If we do, there is at least some precedent in the Cairo Geniza, where the first folio of a midrashic text (Document T-S e4.10) deals with metaphorical interpretations of the theme of the ‘wife’ in the Torah based on a treatment of the “good woman” as the good inclination and the “evil woman” is the yetzer hara.