Some Jews have pretended Rabbi Elazar Menachem Man Shach was a student of the Chazon Ish. To be clear, I don’t mind hearing the lie itself.
As it says in Proverbs 29:12:
משל מקשיב על דבר שקר כל משרתיו רשעים.
Their motivation is to elevate his stature by associating him with a known Torah scholar. Fine.
My problem with this is that it obscures the legacy of the great Chazon Ish by attributing to his surroundings people who were nothing like him in any way (even before his immense power went to his head). Rabbi Shach was always a Brisker (although he managed to alienate some of them in the Kotler/Feinstein episode) — and the two schools were and are mutually exclusive.
(The Chazon Ish wrote friendly letters to many young scholars and tried to honor and encourage them in countless ways. And when he wrote the word “Emes” (“אבל מעלת כבוד תורתו שליט”א, שהאמת אהוב לו מאוד, דנתי בזה לפניהם למען הגדיל תורה”), this refers to the Brisker idioglossic version of faux-exactitude, no more, just like he was being mostly polite when he wrote to a Breslover of כי באמת אין כל עצב בעולם למי שמכיר את אור האורות של האמת, ונשמת… תבינהו.)
So I write to fix the record.