Avos, Chapter 1, Mishnah 7. In the previous mishnah we learned the words of Yehoshua ben Perachyah, who advised judging every person favorably and viewing one's fellow in a positive light. In our mishnah, Nittai HaArbeli, his colleague on the court, presents another side of the same matter: someone who attaches himself to people whom he is giving the benefit of the doubt, while in reality they are bad people, is liable to absorb from them a deep negative influence on his life. Nittai HaArbeli therefore takes a far more practical approach: there are bad people out there, and one has to be careful of them.
Evil spreads more easily than good:
It is a fundamental principle, and the prophet Chaggai speaks about it in the second chapter, that tumah spreads more easily than holiness. Even though we have an obligation to spread good and to share light, it is said in the name of the Baal Shem Tov: "the broom that does the cleaning gets dirty." One must therefore be wary of the influence that bad people have on a person and on his family.
"Harcheik mishachein ra" - Distance yourself from a bad neighbor:
A person must keep his distance from a bad neighbor. What this means in practice is a careful examination of the environment in which he chooses to live:
The place where he lives.
The school to which he sends his children.
The apartment building he has chosen to live in.
The neighborhood.
The shul.
These people are going to have a dramatic influence on a person's morality, on his children's sense of what is right and wrong, and on his basic attitudes toward life. A human being is a social creature, and inevitably, someone surrounded by people whose behavior is bad, whose speech is bad, whose values are bad, and who waste their time on bad decisions - it will affect him and leave its mark on him and on his life. That is why the Rambam says: keep your distance. Better for a person to move out to the desert and be alone than to be surrounded by bad people.
Beyond that, a bad neighborhood produces bad phenomena: improper behavior, violence, and damage to property. And beyond that, there is a principle that runs throughout the words of Chazal, and whose source goes back to the story of Korach and onward: "Oy la-rasha, oy li-shcheino" - woe to the wicked man, woe to his neighbor (Mishnah Nega'im, Chapter 12, Mishnah 1). A person who is merely in physical proximity to bad people gets dragged along after them and is even punished together with them. That is how the system works, and that is how life works.
Throughout Jewish history, Jews chose to live in a kind of ghetto that they created for themselves. They were aware that being surrounded by people who do not share their values would have a negative influence, and so they always took care to keep to themselves and to protect themselves from that influence, as much as they were able.
"Ve'al tischabeir la-rasha" - And do not associate with a wicked person:
The second half of the mishnah is a natural outgrowth of the first: a person should not be bound up and connected with a wicked person. Apart from where he lives, one must be careful about connections with bad people in the workplace, in business, in social activity, and in communal activity - again, because of the bad influence they will have. And this applies even for the sake of a mitzvah: one should not partner with them even in order to accomplish good things, because their influence will do damage.
A principle worth repeating to one's staff in business on a regular basis is that you cannot make a good deal with a bad person. This rule has proven itself again and again: every time things were done together with bad people, the experience ended in grief.
The Bartenura offers a parable: someone who walks into a tannery, a place filled with a foul stench - even if he buys nothing of the merchandise sold there, he walks out with the bad smell clinging to him. So too, attachment to bad people leaves its mark on a person and stains him.
More than that, Chazal say: whoever attaches himself to a wicked person, even though he does not act as they act and does not follow that same evil path, receives a reward like theirs and shares in their punishment. The Abarbanel explains that the very act of associating with bad people places partial responsibility on a person. The reason is this: when a third party notices a questionable character and knows that his business partner, or his friend, or the person he plays tennis with, is an upright man - he assumes that the questionable one cannot be so bad, since a good person would never associate with a bad one. It turns out that the association itself serves, to a certain degree, as a kind of endorsement and stamp of approval for him, and therefore the one who associates bears part of the responsibility: unintentionally, but in practice, he encourages others to do business with him and to spend time in his company.
"Ve'al tisya'esh min hapuranus":
One must not despair or lose hope in the idea of retribution and reckoning. Of course we believe in the World to Come, and that the wicked will be punished; but the Rambam points out that this is not limited to the World to Come alone. In this world too a sudden downfall is not uncommon, and there is no reason to doubt that it will reach bad people as well. One should not assume that because they have escaped punishment for so long, and because everyone behaves as they do and cuts corners, he too is entitled to behave that way. On the contrary, the consequences are waiting just around the corner.
This line in the Mishnah calls to mind a conversation that repeats itself with almost every child at around the age of seven. A parent finds the child in the kitchen slicing a piece of cheese with a large kitchen knife and says: "You can't do that, it's dangerous." And the child, as though reading from a script, answers in his childish way: "It's not dangerous. I did it before and nothing happened." That is exactly the point of the Mishnah: the fact that people around us follow an evil path and say "I've done this many times, I've been doing it for years, everyone does it and nothing happens" - proves nothing. They are mistaken: it is dangerous, it is wrong, and the consequences will come - certainly not only in the World to Come, but quite possibly in this world as well.
There is another way to understand the final phrase of the Mishnah, "ve'al tisya'esh min hapuranus." According to this reading, it does not refer specifically to the punishment coming to bad people, but also to a person going through hard times: he must not despair. "There is no such thing as despair in the world," as Rabbi Nachman of Breslov famously said. One must not give up hope, for this too shall pass. And there is the well known story of King Solomon, who was advised to wear a ring engraved with the words "this too shall pass" - and this principle cuts both ways:
One who sees a wicked person currently enjoying the good life: this too shall pass.
One who is currently suffering hardship: let him hold on, because this too shall pass, and let him not lose hope simply because something bad is happening right now. Better times, im yirtzeh Hashem, are right around the corner.
In summary: in this Mishnah Nittai HaArbeli teaches us the practical side that completes the words of Yehoshua ben Perachyah. "Harcheik mishachein ra" - one must carefully examine where he lives, the neighborhood and the shul, for "woe to the wicked man, woe to his neighbor." "Ve'al tis'chabeir lerasha" - even in business and in communal life, and even for the sake of a mitzvah, for the association stains a person like the smell of the tannery, and it also places partial responsibility on the one who associates, since his connection serves as a kind of endorsement of the wicked man. "Ve'al tisya'esh min hapuranus" - the reckoning arrives not only in the World to Come but in this world as well, and conversely, even one who finds himself in hardship should not despair, for this too shall pass.