T rue we’re told to judge every person favorably. But what about the teaching to “stay away from a bad neighbor”? Doesn’t he also deserve to be judged favorably — or is there a greater danger that demands our vigilance?

As summer comes to an end and with it the season of reviewing a chapter of Pirkei Avos every Shabbos afternoon let’s take another look at a mishnah we read last week whose idea can carry us through the winter chill as well.

“Nitai the Arbelite says stay away from a bad neighbor. And do not associate with a wicked person and do not abandon belief in retribution” (Avos 1:7).

In the previous mishnah Yehoshua ben Prachyah teaches us to “judge every person favorably.” Nitai of Arbel heard the teaching of his great colleague and felt that it needed clarification. If people would understand it in an oversimplified way thinking they should see nothing but good in others at all times their ability to distinguish between good and evil might become blurred. They might begin not only to judge their fellow man favorably but also to view evil itself in a more favorable light. “Well I can understand him ” they might say of someone who has clearly done wrong. And that could morph into “It’s not that bad after all. Let’s not be judgmental. We learn in Pirkei Avos that we have to judge everyone favorably. Where’s our ahavas Yisrael?”

Nitai the Arbelite realized that the Jewish masses were liable to misinterpret and misapply the concept of judging others favorably and therefore sought to draw clear boundaries to protect the integrity of Rabi Yehoshua’s teaching and prevent people from slipping into moral decay as a result of misunderstanding it. And these are the boundaries he set:

“Stay away from a bad neighbor and do not associate with a wicked person.”

A bad neighbor?

Why does the Tanna specify a bad neighbor rather than simply warn us to keep a distance from any bad person? And just who is this bad neighbor? Does the Tanna mean the irritating neighbor who lives in the apartment across the hall? We don’t need a warning to stay away from a difficult neighbor who disturbs the peace with his constant yelling or one who trashes a shared stairwell or one who always seems to find a way to make life unbearable for those around him.

But if Nitai of Arbel wasn’t talking about the obvious sort of bad neighbor then what did he have in mind? Apparently to someone we wouldn’t have kept a distance from had the Tanna not warned us against him — someone we wouldn’t have thought of as bad without that warning. So who is he and how do we spot him in our neighborhood?

Perhaps the kind of neighbor the Tanna has in mind is the pleasant well-mannered neighbor who doesn’t share our moral compass. A mistaken interpretation of Yehoshua ben Prachya’s exhortation to judge every person favorably might lead us to draw close to such a neighbor although he is a threat to our spiritual integrity. He is permissive; his moral filter is so open that it lets anything in. His whole way of life goes against the spirit of the Torah. And if we look for ways to justify that neighbor’s ways our own moral sense will become less keen. In time we might not see anything wrong with his behavior even if we don’t actually emulate him.

Haven’t we had the experience of meeting an old acquaintance after a long separation and finding that he or she is so far from the person we knew in our youth? Hashkafos and values that we once held in common have diverged along with the separate paths we’ve taken the different environments we’ve lived in. If we ask our old acquaintance what caused him to change so much he’ll say something like “That’s life. You end up going with the flow.”

Yes that’s life. You end up going with the flow. Slowly the dividing line between good and evil becomes faded and blurry. We may not feel it happening. In fact it makes us feel good — so civilized and tolerant so democratic. Yet all the while even if we ourselves would never follow in the ways of the “other” to whom we show so much tolerance our own sense of right and wrong begins to deteriorate.

Nitai the Arbelite held up a stop sign. True we must look for the positive points in others; we must judge our neighbor favorably. But what Nitai the Arbelite is asking of us is to keep our moral sense sharp not to fall asleep on the watch. We must remember that there are lines that are not to be crossed and if we stay on the right side today we won’t be sorry tomorrow.

Perhaps we can take this a step further. Perhaps by “a bad neighbor ” the Tanna also means the greater neighbor that envelops us that pulses all around us and has long had a place within our own selves — the general atmosphere of materialism and unbounded pleasure-seeking that prevails in the modern world and constantly tempts us wearing down our moral values.

Nitai the Arbelite cautions that if we always validate the ways of others to the point of losing our critical sense we won’t be able to survive in the larger society. We need a strategy for blocking the infiltration of alien influences that tempt us to betray our values.

Rabbi Dr. Abraham Twerski also sees this broader meaning of the “bad neighbor” in our mishnah. In his book Visions of the Fathers (ArtScroll) he writes:

“A ‘bad neighbor’ doesn’t necessarily refer to the person who lives next door. It only means a corrupt environment. It is a concept relating to every type of corruption around us. The frivolity that is so common both in the electronic media and in print creates a corrupt environment that we must avoid exposing ourselves to. Seeing reading and hearing things that are vulgar and immodest is liable to desensitize us morally. We’re liable to find ourselves developing personal relationships with people whose morality and values are diametrically opposed to our own.”

Let’s examine what that neighbor has done to our society here in Israel. The Zionist settlers who were here when the State of Israel was declared espoused certain ideals. They were not the ideals of the Torah but certainly they weren’t the materialistic values of today’s society. How did the death of those ideals come about? Hanoch Marmari the former editor of the secular Israeli paper Haaretz presented the true face of modern Israeli society in an issue of The Seventh Eye a magazine devoted to news and criticism of the media and the world of journalism itself. Marmari wrote:

“Money is becoming the ultimate measure of personal or organizational success. Openly and without constraints values of social and community solidarity of bettering the world have been cast off; they have been replaced by a cold purposeful egocentric outlook. You are at the center and there is no one else: do this for your home cultivate and pamper yourself improve your performance dream of more!

“From here comes the new gallery of heroes the brilliant the shrewd or the lucky who got in at the right time did the smart thing and now they’re raking in the profits. The financial press glorifies them and is glorified by them. And behind them trails a wave of advice columns on how to achieve that kind of realization — self-realization of course.

“Those at the top rated by their net worth are the new cultural icons. While government is in the hands of foolish and corrupt politicians (or mere regulators) worthy only of scorn civilization is being shaped by those who amass fortunes. The world of business is now the path to personal redemption.”

Is this how the founders of the State of Israel envisioned their society? Certainly not. But it’s here — the “neighbor” that Nitai the Arbelite was concerned about the neighbor he warned us to stay away from. And not to look for even a smidgen of zechus in it. (Originally featured in Mishpacha Issue 676)