Pirke Avot, verse seven: neighbor

Eenie, meenie, meinie, Herford:

Nittai the Arbelite said: Keep far from the evil neighbor, and consort not with the wicked, and be not doubtful of retribution.

Nittai the Arbelite is, of course, the second of the pair of which the first is Judah ben Parahyah, who talked about getting a teacher and a friend, and judging. This is the other side. Not what you want, but what you don’t. When there’s a pair like this, it’s always tempting to like the one that phrases things positively more than the one who phrases things negatively, and I think there’s some justice in that. But despite the choice of negative emphasis, Nittai is not necessarily unjust or uncharitable. You can read them as avuncular advice or as thundering bombast, and there’s no reason for us to be negative ourselves, is there?

So. Keep far from the evil neighbor. The Tosefta on this passage remarks that if a righteous man’s house shares a wall with a wicked man’s house, and the wicked man is struck by leprosy (considered to be punishment for slander), the wall will have to be destroyed, and the righteous man’s house ruined as well. Thus, say the sages, woe to the wicked and woe to his neighbor!

Then there are six paragraphs about leprosy, mostly about Miriam. Because that’s the way these things work. There’s no particular reason to associate Nittai’s saying with leprosy, but once you’ve made the connection, you go with it.

Leaving aside skin diseases and the like, Rabbi Jonah ben Abraham Gerondi in the thirteenth century says that if a man is looking to rent an apartment, he should make it his business to know the characters of his potential neighbors. Not, as I would assume, because of the effect on one’s children, growing up with neighbors who are wicked. That would be my concern; it’s easy enough for children to be influenced by rotten kids next door or even in the school catchment area. No, Rabbi Jonah’s concern is for the adult, who can use opportunities to get close to virtuous neighbors and learn from them, or can use the warning to steer clear of the evil neighbor. He does not (as far as I know) go so far as to say that it is forbidden to rent an apartment next door to a person of low repute, but it’s pretty clearly suboptimal.

Another interesting point: not only is the advice not aimed at protecting the children, it is not (as far as the commentary suggests) aimed at sexual immorality. They don’t talk about the dangers of living next door to a woman of loose morals, or even a whorehouse. They talk about the danger of the righteous man being influenced by the evil neighbor, being tempted to imitate his wicked ways, or (as we’ll get to in the third bit) being collateral damage in the inevitable retribution. For that last reason, we are warned not only to avoid the evil neighbor indoors, but the evil neighbor whose field is next to ours, if we’re the kind of people who have fields.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.