There are around 120 verses, and we’re on the seventh. And I’m writing something like two or three thousand words on each one. This is crazy. But what the heck anyway, we’re halfway through the verse:
Nittai the Arbelite said: Keep far from the evil neighbor, and consort not with the wicked, and be not doubtful of retribution.
It may seem like consorting with the wicked is a lot like being close to the evil neighbor. Rabbi Menahem ben Solomon Ha-Meiri, in the late thirteenth century, says that there is an important distinction. “Lest a person say ‘I shall take care not to live in the neighborhood of an evil person because that would involve constant association, but I shall associate with him occasionally for purposes of business’ …he is therefore warned now: ‘Do not associate with the wicked’, that is to say, in any kind of association (translation by Judah Goldin, from his Living Talmud edition of the Avot).
On the other hand, Simeon ben Zemah Duran makes the distinction that the evil neighbor transgresses against men, where the second warning is against those that transgress against the Divine. It seems like a reasonable distinction, although it’s not clear in what way keeping far and consorting not are different in those terms. Is it just a repeated warning to stay away, and the difference in verb is purely literary? I’m not altogether happy with that, myself, but then, I don’t have the Hebrew to make any coherent distinction, myself.
I might make this distinction: personally, avoid a bad neighbor. When this happens in large numbers, though, you effectively wind up with a bad neighborhood and a good neighborhood, and the bad neighborhood becomes a red light district. The red-light district is supported by the good neighborhood, because people from that neighborhood, despite wanting to keep a distance between their own homes and the evil neighbor, consort with the wicked. Even those individuals who don’t visit the saloons and brothels support the red-light neighborhood, by their acquiescence to it, by their support for policies and governments that allow it, by their willingness to turn a blind eye to it. Therefore, as a balance to the individual necessity to stay far from the evil neighbor, we are reminded not to consort with the wicked, to hold ourselves responsible for the community consequences of that flight.
No, it isn’t terribly likely that Nittai the Arbelite was thinking of that, but that’s not my fault, is it?
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.