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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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.

The Bad Neighbour problem

One of the shortest teachings in Pirkei Avot is that of Nittai HaArbeli:

הַרְחֵק מִשָּׁכֵן רָע, וְאַל תִּתְחַבֵּר לָרָשָׁע, וְאַל תִּתְיָאֵשׁ מִן הַפּוּרְעָנוּת

In English: Distance yourself from a bad neighbour, and do not join up with someone who is wicked, and do not abandon belief in retribution (Avot 1:7).

On a literal interpretation, the first of these three propositions raises many issues. Nor does it easily lend itself to practical application in the modern world. In former times we might simply pull up our tent and pitch it further away from the person whose proximity we wish to avoid. Today, however, the option of physically relocating our homes is usually costly, time-consuming and inconvenient—and there is no guarantee that the place to which we move will not have neighbours who are at least as bad as those whom we seek to avoid.

If we take the instruction to distance ourselves from bad neighbours in a figurative sense, we run into a different problem: just keeping our distance from people whom we regard as bad influences would appear to be implicit in the second proposition in this mishnah, since one does not normally join up with someone who is wicked without having ceased to distance oneself first.

A further issue must be addressed whether we prefer a literal interpretation or a figurative one, which is that we must first decide whether a person is wicked. Nittai’s contemporary, Yehoshua ben Perachyah, has already taught (Avot 1:6) that we should judge others on a favourable basis, having regard to that person’s merit; this judgement should not be made before we have stood in that person’s shoes, as it were, and not on the basis of our own ideals, principles and circumstances (per Hillel, Avot 2:5).

Nittai’s teaching also assumes that the good person whose neighbour is bad will be affected by that person rather than the other way round. This is not an inevitable consequence of having bad neighbours but it is at least a risk that a person should weigh up carefully before deciding what to do.

In Western society, the role of the neighbour in our lives is often dramatically different from that with which Nittai was familiar. Family units have shrunk in size and it is now usual for women to work outside the home. With so many people living in apartment blocks which provide only limited opportunities for getting to know one’s neighbours, for many people there is no “bad neighbour problem” since they scarcely ever come into contact with those who live closest to them. The social media provide much scope for interpersonal contact and even relationship-building, but it is difficult to characterise fellow users of the social media as “neighbours”.

None of the above should be seen as an excuse for ignoring Nittai’s teaching. Rather, we should take it as a statement regarding the need to exercise caution and vigilance when coming into close and regular company of others. Without being judgemental or hostile, we should not let our guard drop and, with it, the standards we hold dear as responsible human beings.

Diapers on the doorstep

A couple of days ago I was surprised to find a neat bundle on my doorstep: a small white bag containing some used diapers. It was not difficult to trace their origin: we have close neighbours with a small child who is as yet not house-trained.

The immediate question I faced was that of what to do.

Had this happened to me in my pre-Pirkei Avot days, I know how would have responded. My first feelings would be those of anger bordering on outrage, fuelled by the fire of righteous indignation. How could anyone dare to do this at all, let alone to a close neighbour! I would have contemplated a number of vigorous responses. These would have included (i) ringing at the neighbours’ door and demanding an explanation while dangling the offending bag in front of whoever had the misfortune to answer the doorbell, and (ii) posting the bag into their letterbox. These initial feelings would have been suppressed only with some difficulty and in the knowledge that, if I utilised the letterbox option, I might be spotted by another resident of the building and branded a trouble-maker.

Now, as a Pirkei Avot man, I find the situation much easier to resolve.

Placing a bag of used diapers on a neighbour’s doorstep is not a usual form of behaviour. Indeed, during the three years in which we have lived in such proximity, this has never happened before. Our relationship with our neighbours, though never close, has always been polite and respectful. Neither they nor we are noisy folk and, to the best of my knowledge, none of us have done anything that might give rise to offence.

In the absence of any evidence that our neighbours were evil or motivated by malicious intent, this seemed the ideal opportunity to judge them favourably in accordance with the precept of Yehoshua ben Perachya (Avot 1:16).

But what reason might they have which could exculpate them? Hillel teaches (Avot 2:5) that one should not judge another person unless one is standing in his or her place. Our neighbours look to me as though they are in their early 30s.  Truth to tell, I can hardly remember anything of being in my 30s at all: the decade was a constant round of broken nights, stressful days and of dashing from one crisis to another as I tried to build a career while bearing my share of responsibility for babies and small children whose demands were many but who lacked the vocabulary to express them. Perhaps our neighbours were struggling, just as I had done, with similar burdens and had inadvertently dropped the diapers on our doorstep when they were interrupted by an emergent crisis and later forgot that they had not taken them all the way down to the refuse bins.

This was all very well in terms of exculpating my neighbours, but I was still left with the unwanted bundle. What should I do with it? When Rabbi Yose HaCohen is asked (Avot 2:13) to identify the good path that a person should choose for himself, he answers that it is the path of being a good neighbour. Now what would a good neighbour do here? I would forgive my neighbours, make sure not to say anything about this incident at all unless it became a regular event, and take the bag down to the refuse bin myself. End of story.

The best part of this little episode is that, by saying nothing to our neighbours, I avoided the risk of falling out with them—and that I avoided both getting angry and wallowing in those feelings of righteous indignation that feel so good at the time but can be so destructive.

Bad neighbours and non-existent punctuation

 Nittai HaArbeli, at Avot 1:7, teaches three things, one of which is  הַרְחֵק מִשָּׁכֵן רָע. This is pretty well universally translated as "distance yourself from a bad neighbour", a translation that makes good sense in the context of the teaching which immediately follows it ("do not befriend someone who is wicked"). The two teachings lean in the same direction, since each advises us to keep our distance, physically and metaphorically, from a bad influence.

It just struck me today that perhaps the two teachings were supposed to stand in apposition to one another. There is no standard punctuation in the Oral Law and one can therefore read the same words in different ways by simply injecting anachronistic punctuation marks in order to allow a different emphasis. Here, the words הַרְחֵק מִשָּׁכֵן רָע can be viewed quite differently by the insertion of a dash, giving a reading that looks like this: הַרְחֵק מִשָּׁכֵן -- רָע. This suggests the following: "Distance yourself from a neighbour? That's bad!" There is not to my knowledge any support for this reading, but it does chime in well with Hillel's injunction in the second perek (at Avot 2:5) that one should not separate oneself from the congregation/community.