friend

Distinctions

amis (עמית)

Rabbi Elazar Rokeach of Worms (commentary to the Siddur): one who comes now and then, not often, so it carries less intimacy than chaver. Rabbi Wertheimer: amis, unlike chaver, is not built on a word for connection at all; it denotes the man with whom one has business dealings.

chaver (חבר)

Root ח-ב-ר, joining. Rokeach: a chaver is one who has left his original place and attached himself (chibur) elsewhere, as a member of a body is called a chaver of it; alternatively, two who were apart and have now drawn close, old friends reunited. Wertheimer: connection in one shared respect, the way two men are friends because they learn in the same place. Chazal apply chaver to a wife as well (Shabbos 63a). One of Yisro's seven names is Chever, because he became a chaver of Hashem.

reya (רע)

The most intimate. Rokeach: the one you are with constantly and to whom you reveal your secrets. Wertheimer: complete affection, the highest form of companionship. Tanach bears this out: reiacha asher kenafshecha, "your friend who is as your own self" (Devarim 13:7), among those whose pull toward avodah zarah is hardest to resist; and ve'ahavta lereiacha kamocha (Vayikra 19:18). Chazal in places apply the mitzvah of loving one's reya as oneself to one's wife (Kiddushin 41a, Niddah 17a), and reiasi is the ordinary way a man refers to his wife. Targum Onkelos renders rei'eihu sometimes as chavrei and sometimes as rachamohi, "one who loves him," according to the context. Yisro's name Reuel is read as his having become a reya of Hashem.

The article flags one usage it cannot fit the scale: Shemos 11:2, where the Jews are told to ask their Egyptian rei'eihu for vessels, uses the most intimate of the three.

The root of reya

ר-ע ordinarily means bad or evil. Mishlei 13:20 already plays on it: ro'eh chesilim yeiro'a. Rashi: yeiro'a there is not "will become evil" but "will be broken" (see also Maharsha to Berachos 63a on Mishlei 18:24). Hence the Talmudic kosel ra'ua, a broken wall, and teruah, the broken-up shofar blasts against the unbroken tekiah. The column offers two ways to hold the opposites together, both of them tentative: "it seems" that this is one more Hebrew word carrying a sense and its reverse, or, as he then suggests himself, a reya is precisely one whose separate existence is a brokenness off from you, really meant to be attached to you.

The column closes on the theme of friendship with two lines from public life: the American poet Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), "The only way to have a friend is to be one," and President Bill Clinton's "Shalom Chaver."

Rendering guidance

• Set renderings before translating. The column's own English is chaver = friend, amis = acquaintance, reya = confidante; where the secret-keeping sense is not what is live, associate for amis and companion for reya carry the same scale.
• Ve'ahavta lereiacha kamocha: the settled English is "love your fellow as yourself." Keep it; the entry's scale is for passages that contrast the words, not for retranslating a pasuk everyone knows.
• Trap: English "friend" will absorb all three, and "companion" will absorb chaver and reya together. When a source grades them (Yisro's names, Rokeach's list), render each differently or the whole point disappears.
• Trap (ours, not the column's): chaver in a Mishnaic context often means something else entirely, the man trusted in matters of tumah and maasros against an am ha'aretz. That chaver is not on this scale.
• A wordplay on ר-ע as "broken" (Mishlei 13:20 and the teruah connection) cannot be carried in English. Transliterate and gloss.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "G-d's Best Friend," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 18 Shevat 5778 (2018-02-03): raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/7620-g-ds-best-friend.md. Primary loci cited: the Midrash on Yisro's seven names; Devarim 13:7; Vayikra 19:18; Shemos 11:2; Kiddushin 41a; Niddah 17a; Shabbos 63a; Mishlei 13:20 with Rashi, and 18:24 with Maharsha to Berachos 63a; Targum Onkelos. The article dates Rabbi Elazar Rokeach of Worms to the late 12th century and gives Rabbi Wertheimer's years as 1866-1935; it closes with the Emerson and Clinton lines quoted above.