One day, R' Dovid Trenk asked a bachur to bring him a glass of water in shiur. The bachur, a new arrival in Adelphia, saw a chance to get attention and brought his rebbi a paper cup filled with vodka, which is a clear, odorless liquid. Reb Dovid accepted it and immediately realized that if he would react, the boy might get some badly needed attention, but it would also give the bachur an identity as a trouble-maker, which wouldn’t serve him well. So Rabbi Trenk said nothing, and calmly sipped the beverage as if it were water, never saying a word.
A bachur in a particular yeshivah had been mechallel Shabbos by turning on a light, and his rebbi, at a loss for how to address it, approached Rabbi Trenk and asked what to do about it. “What to do?” Rabbi Trenk repeated the question, and grabbed the mechanech’s arm. “You should do nothing. That’s what you should do.” And then he leaned forward and said, “And, my friend, do you know how hard it is to do nothing?”
He had evolved in this area, training himself not to react to perceived wrongdoing over many years. In the early years of the Adelphia Yeshivah, some of the boys would play basketball without yarmulkes on their heads, a practice Rabbi Trenk didn’t approve of. One day, he walked out to the basketball court and saw a bachur playing. “Yisroel, where’s your yarmulke?” The bachur looked up and said, “I don’t know, Rebbi, I must have lost it somewhere.” Rabbi Trenk didn’t hesitate. Knowing precisely where it was, he said, “Well, why don’t you look around in your pocket. I’ll bet you’ll find it.” The talmid sheepishly removed it from his pocket and put it back on his head. The years passed. Decades after the episode, this talmid met Rabbi Trenk and shared what he considered a humorous memory: Rabbi Trenk’s quick retort on the basketball court. The rebbi heard the recollection and he blanched, visibly distressed. “I did that? Please, please be mochel me.”
“But why, Rebbi, what was wrong with what you said?” the talmid argued, feeling bad that he caused Rebbi pain. “The yarmulke was in my pocket, in fact. You were right.” “But Yisroel,” Rabbi Trenk said, “you knew it was there and I knew it was there, so why did I have to say anything?”
The talmid stood there, marveling at the fact that his rebbi — who had been effective and dynamic thirty years earlier — had grown, developing new insights and practices as the years went by.
