Masechet Avot, Perek Aleph, Mishnah Yod Bet. The Mishnah says, “Be like one of the students of Aharon,” who was an individual who loved peace. He didn’t simply love that people got along with each other; he pursued peace. If he saw people who were not getting along, he did whatever was in his power to reconcile their relationship.
Hachamim (the sages) tell us that Aharon would see two people fighting, go over to one of them, and, in a way, twist the truth a little bit. He would say, “You know, your friend feels terrible about what happened. He’s really beating himself up over it. He really wants to come over to you and tell you how much he feels bad, and he wants to ask forgiveness.” Then, when the person he had just spoken to saw the other friend we were talking about, he would walk over to him and kiss him. He would feel bad. He would make peace with him. He wouldn’t be on edge.
Aharon would reconcile the relationship by bringing people close. They thought they were very far apart, but Aharon would tell them, “No, you’re really much closer than you think.” He would solve the problem for them. They would hug each other and make up with no problem.
He also said that you have to be a person who loves people and brings them closer to the Torah. If someone made an Averah, somebody sinned, and Aharon knew about it, he wouldn’t go over to them and yell at them, give them heavy musar (rebuke), and tell them how bad a person they were for violating the words of the Torah. Rather, Aharon would sort of kill them with kindness. He would walk over to them and treat them beautifully. He would give them love and a tremendous amount of friendship.
That person would start to introspect and say, “You know what? If Aharon only knew what I did, if Aharon really knew the true actions, he wouldn’t treat me like that. He would have nothing to do with me.” So that person would feel inside a motivation to change in order to be worthy of being close to Aharon.
So that’s how he was. He loved people, and through his love, as opposed to harshness—he had no harshness in him—he brought them closer to following in the ways of Torah and to Teshuvah (repentance).