"Rav Menachem Yechiel Dovid ben Rav Avraham Yehoshua Heschel, z"l"

Good evening and welcome to The Real World.

Tonight is the yahrzeit of Rav Dovid Trenk, Rav Menachem Yechiel Dovid ben Rav Avraham Yehoshua Heschel, z"l. After he was niftar, his Rebbetzin graciously allowed me into her house to look through his sefarim to find material for the book I wrote about him. I found a very precious, worn out sefer called Zichron Shmuel with the Torah of his Rebbe- Rav Shmuel Brudny. As I went through the sefer, I found a vort that was underlined with such force, that pages later you could still feel the indentation of the markup.

The vort was written on the words צדיק כתמר יפרח כארז בלבנון ישגה, the righteous bloom like a date-palm; they thrive like a cedar in Lebanon. Why is a tzaddik compared to both the תמר and the ארז?

Rav Shmuel explains that the תמר- the palm tree- doesn't grow as tall as the ארז- the cedar tree. However, it gives off fruit, which pulls out some of the nutrients, thereby preventing it from growing unimpeded. The ארז, on the other hand, doesn't give off fruit and therefore grows much higher.

A tzaddik is not someone who only grows high, focused on his own growth. He is also not just someone who just gives and gives, not focused on his own growth. A tzaddik is both: צדיק כתמר יפרח, a tzaddik gives off fruit like a palm tree, כארז בלבנון ישגה, but also grows tall like a cedar. (In this week's parsha, Parshas Korach, we learn that Korach is connected to the sofei teivos of the passuk צדיק כתמר יפרח because his tikkun will be to understand the role of the tzaddik- Moshe).

This was the vort that Rabbi Trenk underlined from his Rebbe. A tzaddik is someone who is able to do both: soar to the heavens and still give over to the people. This vort personifies Reb Dovid Trenk; he was a yid who when people saw him daven, they remained frozen just staring at him.

Someone told me that they were making a Hachnasas Sefer Torah for the yeshiva and the weather forecast was predicting rain. The man told Rabbi Trenk, "Rebbe, it is supposed to rain tonight." Rabbi Trenk answered, "Give me an hour." He went into a room with a tehillim and came out saying, "it is not going to rain." This was something that he did regularly. He did it by the Camp Munk circus and other times, as well. He firmly believed, 'It is not going to rain."

A single girl came over to Rabbi Dovid Trenk by the Torah uMesorah convention to ask for a bracha. He told her to say Amen to his bracha and all will be good for her. He was a Rebbishe person. He was a tzaddik. Rav Mattisyahu Solomon called him a "Lamed Vavnik."

At the same time, a mother from Lakewood told me that Rabbi Trenk did something that no Rosh Yeshiva ever did: he picked up all of the bachurim in his yeshiva for Shacharis. He drove his van through Lakewood traffic every morning, picking up the talmidim in his van.

There was a bachur who had a hard time waking up and Rabbi Trenk patiently would tell the mother, "He'll get there." He would pick up some other boys and come back. Three times on average, Rabbi Trenk would return to pick up this boy until he would be ready. Finally, Rabbi Trenk would get all of the boys into the yeshiva and they would start shacharis with everyone present.

The mother felt stupid. Once. Twice. Three times! Rabbi Dovid Trenk had to drive around Lakewood, wait, and come back for her son?! She said, "Reb Dovid, why are you doing this? Why are you investing so much time, effort, and energy for my son?! He isn't getting out of bed!"

Rabbi Trenk told this Yiddishe Mama, who only wants to hear the good of her child, "If you only understood how your son says Pesukei D'zimra and what he brings to the room, if you only understood how I feel when I hear him say Baruch She'amar, you would understand that I cannot daven without him."

צדיק כתמר יפרח כארז בלבנון ישגה- This man's tefillos were בוקע רקיעים. At the same time he said, "I cannot daven without this kid who I had to wake up three times because of the way that he says Baruch She'amar." That is the legacy of Rav Dovid Trenk, zechuso yagen aleinu