T his week marks the 50th yahrtzeit of Elimelech Gavriel (Mike) Tress. Mike almost single-handedly transformed a loose federation of Shalosh Seudos clubs for young men into the modern Agudah movement in America. For today’s yeshivah- and Bais Yaakov–trained generation the story of how a clean-shaven college-educated businessman with no yeshivah background brought Agudath Israel of America into existence through the sheer force of his magnetic personality is too improbable to be believed.
His background should have made Mike a much more likely candidate for the fledgling Young Israel movement created by English-speaking young people raised in religious homes. Yet the vision of Agudath Israel drew Mike. Seeking to increase his Jewish learning in the Brooklyn Public Library he stumbled upon an article by Moreinu Yaakov Rosenheim describing Agudath Israel as the representative of the collective body of Klal Yisrael united around Torah and under the leadership of gedolei Torah.
Mike became enchanted with gedolei Torah and conveyed that reverence to his young followers. Rabbi Shlomo Rotenberg who grew up in Antwerp and had unlike Mike actually seen many of the great European Torah giants found tears coming to his eyes listening to Mike speak about the gedolim.
When Rav Aharon Kotler arrived at Grand Central Station in April 1941 the large group of young people on hand to greet him was eager to accept his leadership because they had heard their first hero Mike pronounce Reb Aharon’s name and those of the Chofetz Chaim Rav Chaim Ozer the Gerrer Rebbe and the Chortkover Rebbe so many times and with such awe. He invariably pronounced the names together as if there were no differences between them. In that naiveté? lay a deeper truth: That which unites the greatest Torah leaders is much greater than what distinguishes them.
