A newly hired rebbi came to solicit advice from Rabbi Trenk before starting his chinuch career. “I asked around,” he told Rabbi Trenk, “and the other mechanchim all said that I have to start by laying down the law, and once the bachurim know I mean business, I can soften up.” “No,” said Rabbi Trenk, “no, no, no. Just go in and love them and teach them and listen to them and build them. That’s all you have to know.”
A bachur left Adelphia, and eventually fell out of the frum community and Torah living. He encountered his old rebbi, Rabbi Trenk, many years later and introduced his rebbi to the non-Jewish girl at his side. “Rabbi, this is my girlfriend,” he said. Rabbi Trenk smiled pleasantly and met his gaze. “And you are my talmid, and I will love you forever,” he said, as if finishing the sentence.
On Rosh Hashanah during Rabbi Trenk’s last years, when he already lived in Lakewood, he spoke in his yeshivah before tekias shofar, discussing Akeidas Yitzchak, which had been in that day’s Krias HaTorah. Hakadosh Baruch Hu told Avraham Avinu to sacrifice his son, and Avraham asks which son. Hashem says, “The son that you love,” and Avraham Avinu says that he loves them both. “Come on,” Rabbi Trenk said, “let’s be honest. Here he had one son who embodied perfect yirah, he’d never done an aveirah, and the other one who was a pere adam, wild and disobedient — is it possible that a tzaddik like Avraham didn’t know which son he loved more?” “ The answer,” Reb Dovid banged on the shtender, “the answer is that he loved them both equally, he saw the good side of Yishmael just as he saw the good side of Yitzchak; he saw the potential in Yishmael just as he did in Yitzchak. He loved both his sons.” It was quiet in the room, and then Reb Dovid concluded, “And that’s why Rashi tells us at the end of the parashah that we see that Yishmael did teshuvah… of course he did teshuvah! His father loved him and his father believed in him, he had where to come back to…” With that message — his unconditional love for them and fervent belief in them — he was ready to blow shofar, ushering in the moment of teshuvah.
There was one talmid who challenged Rabbi Trenk repeatedly. “But there was one thing I couldn’t get my rebbi to do,” he recalls, “and that was give up on me. I tried, again and again and again. I pushed him, but he wouldn’t give up on me, and eventually he won. He waited me out, and his love beat my anger.” A bachur in the yeshivah in Adelphia committed an act of vandalism, and local police officers appeared in yeshivah to apprehend him. Rabbi Trenk heard about it and came tearing out of the beis medrash, running toward the police car. Rabbi Trenk saw the bachur about to be handcuffed, and he drew himself up to his full height and roared, “I am responsible for this boy and you can be sure he will get what he deserves…” Rabbi Trenk addressed the officer. “Can you leave him with me and I will take him to the woodshed and discipline him the old-fashioned way?” The officer looked Rabbi Trenk up and down and nodded. “Yes,” he said, thrusting the boy toward his teacher. Rabbi Trenk did take the young man with him, leading back inside the building. He lifted him up and… kissed him on the forehead, gently asking, “Tzaddik, why? How could you?”
Reb Dovid’s brother, Reb Zevi, once shared the foundation of Reb Dovid’s philosophy. “My brother,” Reb Zevi recalled, “was often in the car, traveling between Adelphia and Lakewood or Brooklyn. He didn’t listen to music, so what did he do in the car? He listened to a tape. Which tape?” Reb Zevi answered. “He listened to the same tape, again and again. Then he would press pause and rewind and listen to it again. He listened to it hundreds of times, maybe thousands. Sometimes, he would call me into the car and say, ‘Zevi, you’ve got to hear this, come in,’ and he would play it for me, as if I had never heard it before. He always drew life from it, because it was the bedrock of what he believed.” The tape featured a shmuess by Reb Mattisyahu Salomon, and the part that so moved Reb Dovid was the mashgiach asking, in a slight sing-song, “Voss vilst du fuhn di kinder? What do you want from the children?” Then the mashgiach continued: “When you were their age, you were doing the exact same things… what do you want from the children? When you were their age, you were doing the exact same things… voss vilst du fuhn di kinder?”
One Shabbos, a young boy in Camp Munk, the child of one of the division heads, mistakenly turned on a light. The eight-year-old was inconsolable, crying bitter tears at the chillul Shabbos, even as his parents tried to reassure him that it had been an accident, and he was just a child: it was okay. Finally, they suggested that they go together to Rabbi Trenk and tell him what happened. Yes, the child agreed, he wanted to do that. He himself told Rabbi Trenk of his “aveirah,” how he had accidentally flicked the switch. “What should I do?” he asked tearfully. “What should you do?” Rabbi Trenk looked down at him. “Kalman,” he cried out, “what you should do is you should thank the Eibishter that He made you a human being and He didn’t make you a frog or a tree or a chaloptche — He made you a human being and human beings make mistakes! Say ‘Thank you, Hashem, for making me a human being!’ ” The boy wiped away his tears, pleased with the answer. Later on, the child looked up at his father, his eyes brimming with clarity and honesty. “Tatty,” he said, “I hope I never forget what Rabbi Trenk told me.”
Just Love Them - Yisroel Besser Artscroll
