Korach, and The Doors of Gehinom

Synopsis:
There are three doors to Hell: Selfish discontent, silence in the presence of injustice, and the abandonment of community.
UPDATE JULY 2020, COURTESY OF RABBI AVRAHAM BUKSPAN at end.

(My wife spoke this week, and I have to say that I am very proud of the careful thought, energy and focus she brought to the task.)

They say that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. Well, all you ladies here are full of good intentions. So let's talk about the road to Hell.

Chazal (Eiruvin 19a) say that Gehinom has three entrances; one is in the desert, one on the Sea, and one near Yerushalayim. Unlike Gan Eden, as one of the pirushim in the Ein Yaakov says, which only has one door, Gehinom has three. Three doors, no waiting. Now, Chazal were not writing a tour guide, and there are no visitor’s hours in Gehinom, so it’s not likely that they are really talking about where any actual doors to Gehinnom are.

Rav Yakov MiLisa, the Nesivos, has an interesting pirush in his sefer Nachalas Yakov. He says that there three "entrances" refer to the way people fall into the trap of Gehinom. The first, the Gemara says, is the Midbar, the Desert. The Gemara brings from the story of Korach that at his decisive moment of confrontation with Moshe in the Desert, the floor of the desert opened and he fell into Gehinom. This, the Nesivos explains, means that one who opens his mouth and complains, one who foments discord and argument, is treading on the doorstep of Gehinom. The Gemara in Shabbos 52a says there was a couple that would always get into a fight Friday nights, and Rav Meir took it upon himself to sit with them every Friday night, three weeks in a row, and he saw to it that they learned to avoid their usual arguments. The Gemara says that immediately after the third week, a voice was heard, the voice of the Satan, saying, "Woe to me, Rav Meir has evicted me from my dwelling!" Discontent, pettiness, demands and insisting on what you think you deserve without considering the needs of others, these are all ways of inviting the Satan into your house and earn you a ticket to Gehinom.

The second door is the Yahm, the Sea. The Gemara brings that Yonah prayed from the belly of the fish, and asked God to save him “mibetten She’ol,” from the belly of Gehinom. The Nesivos explains that the "Sea of Yonah" refers to a person who, realizing the danger of confrontation and argument, makes a conscious decision to be silent. This person, realizing how dangerous Machlokes is, says, silence is golden; no matter what, I will not get involved! As the Gemara in Pesachim 93a says, "Silence is precious for the wise, and doubly precious for fools." But when injustice is done, one cannot remain silent. Lo sa'amod ahl dahm rei'echa! Each and every member of the community must raise his voice and oppose injustice. You might not see it, but right there, on the sidelines with you, is another one of the doors to Gehinom.

So, what is one to do? You’re damned if you do, and you’re damned if you don’t. The best idea is to just stay away from the Jewish community. Jews, those contentious and stiff-necked people! Who needs the trouble! And that, of course, is the third door of Gehinom, the door that is outside of Yerushalayim. Yerushalayim is the city of brotherhood, Ir shechubra lah yachdav, the city where we come on the Shalosh Regalim to reinforce our sense of one-ness. One who places himself outside of Yerushalayim abandons his identity, he removes himself from the sense of community. It is that community that stands between us and Gehinom.

Ha’olam hazeh gesher tzar me’od! Life is the edge of a knife; stray just a little, and all will be lost. Every life-choice you make can be a blessing or a curse, and you can’t avoid making these immensely serious life-choices. The only eitzah is to take these things to heart, to ask Hashem for Siyata Dishmaya, to seek advice, and to eliminate, as much as possible, the ego pitfalls and subjectivity that poison the thought process.

(Note: the interpretations of the first two doors are from the Nesivos. That of the third door is my wife's.)




From Rabbi Bukspan:

    In BeZos Ani Botei’ach (pp. 93–94), Rav Shach points out that one can never feel complacent, convincing himself that he is not at the doorstep of Gehinnom. He brings the Gemara, which writes that Gehinnom has three entrances: one in the desert, one in the sea, and one in Jerusalem (Eiruvin 19a). He explains that these three entrances allude to three instances in which the yetzer hara tries to get us to sin.

            The first entrance to Gehinnom that is mentioned in the Gemara is the entrance in the wilderness. A person may think that the yetzer hara is only out to get him when he is part of a crowd, for that is when it can entice him to sin and to arouse his selfish attributes in his interpersonal relationships. However, were he to live as a hermit in the desert, the evil inclination would not rule over him. That is why Chazal came to tell us that one of the entrances to Gehinnom is in the desert.

            Rav Shach then brings the example of Kayin and Hevel. Even though they owned every possession and every piece of real estate in the world, they quarreled and feuded with each other, until they divided the wealth. Yet even then, they were not satisfied and they fought. We see from here that even if a person is alone and has it all, the yetzer hara ambushes him. Thus, the entrance to Gehinnom still looms large even in the desert, as it says in Parashas Korach (Bamidbar 16:33): “And they and all they had descended alive to the pit.”

            Based on the Gemara’s reference to the entrance in the sea, Rav Shach explains that even when a person finds himself in a dangerous situation, with a tempest raging all about him, threatening to capsize his ship, he is still not free from the shackles of the evil inclination. This can be seen from the incident of Yonah HaNavi; even when the sea was raging and everyone on the ship was in danger, he did not yet turn to Hashem. And even after they threw him into the sea and he was in mortal peril in the belly of the dag, the male fish, he did not cry out to Hashem. Only after being spit out by the male fish and subsequently swallowed by a dagah, a female fish, with crowded and extremely uncomfortable conditions, did he cry out to Hashem: “from the belly of the grave” (Yonah 2:3). Even when our lives are threatened, our obstinacy may hold us back, letting us sink into the depths of another entrance to Gehinnom, this one with an address in the sea.

            The third gate is in Yerushalayim, as the pasuk states, “The word of Hashem, Who has fire in Zion and a furnace in Jerusalem” (Yeshayahu 31:9). Even Yerushalayim, the holiest place on earth, offers no assurance of freedom from the yetzer hara, for here, too, he has dominion over us.

            So we see, concludes Rav Shach, that in every place and in every situation, the yetzer hara lurks, waiting to pounce upon us and entice us to sin. We must always be on our guard — against the yetzer hara and his ploys, and against the rationalizations that accompany each sin.