Throughout the millennia, the name Korach has personified one idea: machlokes, controversy, strife, dispute for the sake of destruction. As Korach succeeded in destroying himself and his followers, so, too, do the modern-day heirs to his ignominious title destroy themselves and all those who chose the ill-fated path of following him.
In a letter written in 5760, Horav Aharon Leib Shteinman, Shlita, bemoans the fact that disputes among individuals – and even among institutions – have risen to epic proportions. The Rosh Yeshivah expresses his extreme pain and anguish over this tragedy. Each party thinks that he is justified, not only in his claim, but he even conjures up a dispensation to speak lashon hara and slander the other party. The only ways to put an end to this pandemic are: to adopt the middah, character trait, of vittur, tolerance, forbearance – to look away, to ignore and often swallow one’s pride, so that a full-scale flare-up of tempers does not take place.
Horav Hersh Palei, zl, was well-known as an individual who went out of his way to distance himself from any form of machlokes. He viewed controversy as a flaming fire which would singe anyone who came within its proximity. In a similar vein, Horav Feivel Epstein, zl, son of Horav Moshe Mordechai Epstein, zl, Rosh Yeshivas Slabodka was wont to say, “If I had before me two possibilities: on one side a burning fire and on the other side the fire of machlokes, I would choose to walk into the actual fire, because it is cooler!”
