As I was leaving Ohr Somayach after my most recent visit about a month ago one of the veteran rebbeim mentioned to me that Rabbi Mendel Weinbach ztz”l had been in the office that morning. I quickly ran back to the office hoping to catch a few minutes with Rav Mendel.

The last time I had seen him was a few months earlier when he gave the opening address at the English-language Siyum HaShas. He was barely recognizable at the time as a consequence of the treatments he was undergoing. But the voice was every bit as powerful and impassioned as I remembered from my days in Ohr Somayach 33 years ago.

Though we knew that Rav Mendel had been battling the dreaded disease for some years it was evident that night despite the power of his speech that he was very sick. So it was with some urgency that I ran back to Ohr Somayach. But the secretary told me that Rav Mendel had left for the day. I made a note to call the next day but never did.

How many reminders do we need to learn one of life’s most important lessons: If you owe someone hakaras hatov tell them for you may not have another chance?

I do not claim to have been one of Rav Mendel’s closest talmidim. Yet when my wife called with the news that he had passed away I was astounded by the wealth of memories that rushed forward. In an odd way my memories of Rav Mendel go back almost 60 years. He was best friends as a bochur in Torah Vodaath with two of my mentors Rabbi Nisson Wolpin and Rabbi Nosson Scherman and they often speak of him in those days with the smile of one savoring a particularly treasured memory.

The check marks in my Ramban on Chumash are taken from the parshah sheets that Rav Mendel prepared. No Chanukah ever passes without my repeating his insight (in a Tisha B’Av drashah) about Chanah’s words to the youngest of her seven sons: When you get to Shamayim tell our forefather Avraham “You built one altar and in the end you did not bring your son on the altar. But I built seven altars and brought seven sons.”

“Is that all that Chanah could think about as she was about to lose her seventh son in one day — bragging rights on Avraham Avinu?” Rav Mendel wondered. In actuality he explained Chanah was singing Avraham Avinu’s praises: Your mesirus nefesh at Akeidas Yitzchak left a permanent mark on Klal Yisrael’s spiritual gene pool. Because of what you did then a simple Jewish woman living 2 000 years later was able to offer her seven sons in a single day.

His descriptions in a Yom Hatzmaut drashah of his own IDF service in a unit identifying the bodies of dead soldiers and of life in the still-new Mattersdorf neighborhood on the Jordanian border in the 1967 War still ring in my ear.

It’s Erev Pesach and my wife and I less than two years in Israel are preparing a large Seder for an array of guests some not-yet religious. A large vat filled with more than a dozen bottles of wine is boiling on the stove as I eat my last piece of bread before burning the chometz. I forget my parents’ admonitions not to eat and talk at the same time and spit a tiny crumb of bread out of my mouth. As I watch in horror the tiny crumb tumbles end over end landing plunk in the middle of the vat of wine.

Panicked I run across the street from Arzei Habirah to Ohr Somayach praying that Rav Mendel is in his office. All I can remember is: chametz is not batul even the most infinitesimal amount. Fortunately Rav Mendel has not returned to Mattersdorf to prepare for the Chag. He smiles as I tell him my sh’eilah. The rule that chometz is not batul is only on Pesach he explains. Try to strain out the crumb when funneling the wine back into bottles Rav Mendel tells me but the wine if perfectly kosher if I don’t find it.

I DID NOT FULLY APPRECIATE Rav Mendel in my two years in Ohr Somayach. Nor could I have. My Torah learning was not at a level to begin to evaluate his mastery of Shas and poskim though it was something I often heard about from my rebbeim at Ohr Somayach. He was in a sense the rebbi of the rebbeim. And until I first took on a public role as editor of the English Yated Ne’eman nearly a decade after leaving Ohr Somayach I had no occasion to benefit from his unfailingly incisive analysis of the Torah community and its various subcultures.

In recent years however he was the person to whom I turned whenever I felt the need to address a potentially controversial subject. I would fax him my pieces and receive his responses in a matter of minutes. If the piece passed muster with him I knew I was on safe ground. If not I knew that I’d better go back to the drawing board.

I do not think I have ever met another person to whom the term geshikt was more applicable. He did so many things well. With other excellent speakers one can tell whether they have prepared. Not with Rav Mendel. He could be counted on for any occasion and without any advanced notice to have the perfect dvar Torah ready. It was said of his beloved Rosh Yeshiva Rav Gedalia Schorr that he could shake pearls out of his sleeve. The same could be said for Rav Mendel.

And he wrote the same way. For decades he wrote several columns a week for the Jewish Press under various pseudonyms or on behalf of others. On more than one occasion I watched him dash off ready-for-print material in a half an hour or less.

Because he did so many things so effortlessly it was easy to miss just how talented he was. That was most true of his Torah learning. Everything was instantly at his fingertips. He would rattle off Torah sources as easily as he did l’havdil the roster of the 1927 Yankees. (A storehouse of baseball trivia can be a valuable asset for the Rosh Yeshivah of a baal teshuvah yeshivah.)

AS GIFTED AS HE WAS I have never met anyone with less need to make others aware of those gifts. Most writers of my acquaintance would sooner write for free than take their name off a column. Not Rav Mendel.

His air was always casual and unassuming. He rode the buses and made his own way back and forth to the simchahs of his talmidim. Leaning far back in the chair in his office as he offered his wry observations the twinkle of a smile on his lips he seemed to resist being addressed in the third person.

That ability to leave his ego out of the picture made him a superb baal eitzah. He had a keen sense of the difference between the ideal and what could be realistically achieved in any given situation and provided astute guidance on how to navigate an imperfect reality without losing sight of the ideal.

He was one of the few Amerikaim to fully integrate into the institutional life of Israeli chareidi society. His was recognized by all as a klugeh Yid and he became a leading player in many communal initiatives outside of Ohr Somayach.

The same lack of ego made him the perfect partner. Sitting together with him and his partner in Ohr Somayach of more than 40 years Rabbi Nota Schiller in the latter’s large office one always sensed the easy rapport and mutual respect between the two. There was never the slightest hint of friction. They complemented one another perfectly.

Never was Rav Mendel’s ability to take himself out of the calculation more evident than that horrible moment around 20 years ago when he was called to identify the body of his son Shimmy who had been struck by a car while bicycling in the Jerusalemforest. On his way to the hospital Rav Mendel thought to himself: Should I hope that it’s not my son? But if it’s not my son it is someone else’s son.

How many of us would have had the question?

Rav Mendel’s lack of need to impress did not derive from a lack of sense of self. Just the opposite. He was so at ease with himself he did not need the approval or admiration of others. Rabbi Simcha Wasserman noted that he was an “individualist” who knew his own mind during the zman that Rav Mendel and nine other Torah Vodaath bochurim spent inLos Angeles to help Rav Simcha start a yeshivah high school. (A photograph of that group which was headed by Rabbi Shmuel Kamenetsky hung in Rav Mendel’s office.)

Perhaps his independent streak made it possible for him to be one of the first to imagine a yeshivah for young adults with no learning experience and enabled him to be so comfortable with those from very different backgrounds.

MY GREATEST DEBT to Rav Mendel can never be repaid. He founded and guided a yeshivah in which rank beginners like myself could learn Torah with some of the greatest scholars of our time — Rabbi Dov Schwartzman ztz”l and yblcht”a Rabbi Moshe Shapira (both before my time) and Rabbi Aharon Feldman and to be exposed to the rich tapestry of Torah thought by Rabbi Nachman Bulman ztz”l.

No less important was the constant message that our late start did not have to be an obstacle to reaching a high level in Torah learning. The highest shiur in the yeshivah today is given by a former talmid and many former talmidim play prominent roles in Ohr Somayach — by virtue of their Torah learning not their alumni status. And former Ohr Somayach talmidim occupy positions as rabbis and maggidei shiur around the world.

Rav Mendel was a dramatic but not emotional speaker. The one time I remember him being overcome by emotion was at the levayah for Rabbi Dovid Speyer ztz”l. Rabbi Speyer began his Torah learning in Ohr Somayach before studying under Rabbi Abba Berman ztz”l for a decade. He then returned to “give back” as the mashgiach at Ohr Somayach for 17 years during which time he forged intense bonds of love with hundreds of talmidim. After his passing Rav Mendel could not speak of him without tears.

The evening after Rav Mendel’s levayah Rabbi Speyer’s son was married — an emotional ending to the day for many Ohr Somayach talmidim who were reminded of being twice orphaned in little more than a year.

I was outside of Jerusalem relating the story of my journey to a group of secular Australian high school students when the loudspeakers announcing Rav Mendel’s levayah went around. But my sons in Jerusalem knew without being told to go to the levayah.

I’m pleased that they understood what they owed to Rav Mendel. And even more so that they feel no disconnect between their status as talmidim in Jerusalem’s most famous yeshivos and their father’s start in Ohr Somayach — rather it is a point of pride for them.

Thank you Rav Mendel for everything you made possible.