as told to Gershon Hellman by Rabbi Yisroel Fuchs
By Ami Magazine
For over half a century as a rebbe and rosh yeshivah in Talmudical Academy of Adelphia, Camp Monk and Yeshivas Moreshes Yehoshua in Lakewood, Rav Dovid Trenk, zt”l, touched the neshamos of thousands of students. He was a towering personality and great talmid chacham who was willing to literally do whatever it took to reach every student. His incredible love for every student shone through and was felt by all. Rabbi Yisroel Fuchs, a prominent educator in Baltimore and a close talmid of Rav Trenk’s, shares some of his memories of his rebbe:
I first became a talmid in Adelphia over 35 years ago, when I entered Rabbi Trenk’s ninth grade shiur in the yeshivah. He was a very energetic man with a larger-than-life personality, and I was a bit scared of him at first.
If I remember correctly, he taught us Yevamos that year, and he had a bunch of “mentchie” figurines on his desk, which he used as educational tools to act out the cases in the Gemara for us. At first, I thought that it was strange, but he was so engaged in what he was teaching that we all got drawn into it and became engaged in the learning ourselves. It was the first time that I really started to love to learn. He made learning enjoyable. He was running around the classroom and jumping up and down with excitement. I didn’t know what hit me but I loved the shiur.
Rebbe did not really give mussar speeches to us. Instead, Rav Kalman Krohn, zt”l, would come in on Thursday nights to give us shmuessim. But Rebbe’s whole life was a shmuess. Everything he did, the entire way he conducted himself, was a mussar lesson. He really was a walking mussar sefer. The following story really brings out this point:
When I was in tenth grade, I was in a dorm room shmuessing with a few guys after Shacharis. One boy was holding a lit cigarette in his hand. Smoking was one of the things that Rav Dovid would get very animated and upset about. Suddenly, Rebbe walked into the room and saw the bachur with the cigarette in his hand. We all froze, waiting to see what would happen. Rebbe put his head down and said, “I apologize. I forgot to knock on the door before coming in.” And he walked out without saying a word about what he had seen—and never brought it up again.
Later in life, I became a menahel and rebbe myself, in a yeshivah with a dormitory. Before I ever entered any room, I would knock on the door. Because that is what I learned from Rebbe. In that moment, he taught us about respecting a person’s privacy and what it means to be a mentch.
Everything Rebbe did was a lesson for us. The way he davened. The way he talked to people. The way he had respect for everyone—both Jew and non-Jew, young and old. The courtesy he always had.
He was not “acting” in a courteous manner. It was real. He was the most real and genuine person you could ever meet. And his love for everyone was purely genuine.
* * * * *
Vignettes of a Remarkable Person [from Mishpacha Magazine]
* When the daughter of a talmid was diagnosed with an illness, the talmid and his wife were completely overwhelmed. They were in the hospital on that first day, speaking with the doctor, when Rebbi walked into the room. He realized they were in consultation with the doctor, but he didn’t leave. He waited next to the young girl’s bedside for 45 minutes, simply being — feeling, feeling, feeling so deeply — and then he left, without having said a word to his beloved talmid, who was still deep in conversation with the doctor.
* There was a difficult young man in yeshivah. During bein hazmanim, the challenging teenager and his parents had a bitter fight. In desperation, his mother called the only rebbi her son had ever liked. Rabbi Trenk spoke with her, then suddenly said he had to hang up. Two hours later, there was a knock at the front door of the Brooklyn home — it was Rabbi Trenk, there to speak with his talmid. Rabbi Trenk sat with the bochur for ten minutes, reminding him of who he was, the path on which he was headed, then turned to leave, driving two hours back to Adelphia.
*Rabbi Trenk read to them from a mussar sefer each day — not one of the classics, but All For the Boss. He wanted them to dream big, to live Yiddishkeit to the fullest. Rabbi Trenk would speak about gedolei Yisrael with reverence, describing the ahavas Yisrael of his rebbe, the Kopyczynitzer Rebbe, and the kavod haTorah of his rebbi, Rav Shmuel Brudny, who had such respect for his own young talmidim that he would stand up when they came to ask him questions. He told and told and told, speaking of tzaddikim like an art collector discussing priceless works of art, but to the bochurim, Rabbi Trenk was simply articulating the greatness they already saw in him.
* He saw a boy sitting forlornly on a bench during lunchtime on Erev Tishah B’Av. The camper was just a few weeks after his bar mitzvah, and he was terrified about the impending fast, the long, hot, hungry day ahead. Rabbi Trenk sat down and asked what was wrong. The boy didn’t answer, but when Rabbi Trenk persisted, the boy admitted that he was anxious.
“About Tishah B’Av?” Rabbi Trenk asked in surprise, as if the day were six months away.
“Yeah, it’s tonight,” the boy said.
“But Mashiach can still come! ” Rabbi Trenk said. “There won’t be a Tishah B’Av. You’re all worried about nothing.”
That night, this camper saw Rabbi Trenk come into the dimly lit dining room for Kinnos. Rabbi Trenk looked completely devastated, as if trying to process something incomprehensible.
Mashiach hadn’t yet come.
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I didn’t know the Rabbi, but after reading about him, I was very moved and felt great sadness that the boys will be deprived of such greatness that lived among us for a while. What a tremendously special person he was.
But as Rabbi Miller explained in Parshas Chukas, ‘meis’ really means ‘moving on’ to another dimension (that he called Olam Habah). So maybe the Rabbi is looking down on Am Yisrael and watching over his boys.
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