Called to Controversy

by Ruth Rosen

The ride back was cooler and considerably more exciting as the two Americans held on for dear life to avoid being shaken loose from the tuk-tuk. Moishe looked at Jhan and said, “Whoever would have thought that you and I would be here, sharing this adventure?”

  It was 1980, and Moishe was in Pattaya to participate in a conference called COWE, the Consultation on World Evangelism. To understand COWE, it’s necessary to backtrack. In June 1974, a group of evangelical Christians met in Lausanne, Switzerland. Their purpose was to revitalize an international fellowship of missionaries who could encourage one another, share insights, and keep the cause of bringing the gospel to all people moving forward.

  Moishe was invited to that conference, but was reluctant to leave the country because Jews for Jesus was still less than a year old as an independent mission. He asked and received approval to send Tuvya Zaretsky in his place. Tuvya met a great many people and did not realize until years later that Moishe had relinquished to him a front-row seat from which he witnessed a significant moment in the history of world missions.

  The 1974 group named themselves the Lausanne Committee on World Evangelization (LCWE) and purposed to meet again. The 1980 conference in Pattaya was the second meeting of that group. The conference included seventeen mini-consultation groups to focus on specific areas of world evangelization. Jews for Jesus was part of the group for reaching Jews with the gospel.

  David Harley, then the principal of All Nations Christian College in England, was the COWE coordinator of the miniconsultation group on reaching Jews. He had met Moishe in the late 1970s when Moishe talked with people from CMJ, one the Jewish missions in the UK. To give his first impressions of Moishe, Harley named four things:

  His size. He could barely fit into our car, which he described as a typical British missionary car—i.e., it was too small!

  His warmth and friendliness.

  His dislike of British food. He said he now understood that the British built an empire because they could not stand eating at home.

  His passion to reach Jewish people around the world with the good news [of Jesus].

  The last item made enough of an impression that when Harley was asked to organize study groups for COWE, he wrote to Moishe suggesting that some of the Jews for Jesus staff present papers on Jewish evangelism.

  It was 1979, and Jews for Jesus was in the year of Avodah. Moishe required everyone to write a paper for the conference as part of the assigned studies. This was no small contribution to the preparations that Harley was making.

  Susan Perlman had accompanied Jhan and Moishe to Thailand, and she recalled,

  Moishe cemented relationships with other Jewish missions leaders in a way that only time away from the usual responsibilities could provide. Most of the miniconsultation groups had a minimum of fifty people; the Jewish consultation group had seventeen. But I think we were one of only two groups that actually had finished what they called an LOP—a Lausanne Occasional Paper—because we had done so much prep work.

  The group for Jewish evangelism finished their paper the first day, and with more than a week left of the conference, Moishe and the others brainstormed, strategized, and got to know one another. Some participants decided to form a task force, so they could continue meeting for mutual encouragement and the added stimulus of cross-pollinating ideas and experiences. They called themselves the Lausanne Task Force on Jewish Evangelism, which later became the Lausanne Consultation on Jewish Evangelism (LCJE).

  Commenting on Moishe’s role at the conference and subsequent development of LCJE, David Harley recalled,

  Incalculable! LCJE would never have come into existence but for the enthusiasm and support of Moishe. If I remember correctly, a small group [which included Moishe] met over a meal during the conference in Pattaya and discussed the possibility of forming an international task force on Jewish evangelism. Moishe was very enthusiastic about the idea from the start, and his subsequent support in terms of advice, encouragement, and financial commitment was invaluable. LCJE would never have . . . continued as one of the most significant products of the Lausanne Movement without Moishe’s wholehearted involvement.

  [Yet] he tended to keep more in the background because he was aware of the divisions within the USA among those who were engaged in Jewish evangelism and he did not want to put some people off because [he knew] they thought the group was dominated by Jews for Jesus.

  Moishe played a key role in the LCJE not only because of the commitments David Harley mentioned, but also because he made many of the Jews for Jesus staff available to attend meetings and to do prep work for them. Soon the LCJE met internationally three times a year and regionally once a year.

  The history of the LCJE helps demonstrate that whereas Moishe’s identity was inextricably linked to his founding and leading the ministry of Jews for Jesus, his influence stretched far beyond that mission. He was an international force for the cause to which he devoted his life: making Jesus known to Jewish people.

  At the meeting in Pattaya, Moishe read Ole Christian Kvarme’s paper and commented that Ole was capable of great things. He was certainly right. From 1975 to 1981 Ole was a Lutheran pastor in Haifa and executive secretary for the United Bible Societies in Israel and the West Bank. He held other significant posts before returning to Norway in 1986, first as general secretary of the Norwegian Bible Society, then as dean of the Oslo Cathedral. In 2005, he became the bishop of Oslo in the Lutheran Church of Norway, a position he still holds at the writing of this book.

  Offering his recollections of Moishe, including first encounters, Bishop Kvarme said,

  Some of us Europeans came to our first encounter with him with great skepticism, critical of [what we’d heard concerning] the Jews for Jesus approach in reaching out to Jewish people. But obviously we had not been properly informed. The JFJ material in the preparations for the Pattaya conference had made us curious and prepared us for better things. Simply meeting Moishe together with Susan and Jhan changed everything, almost immediately. Obviously, the first impression was the size of the man. But it did not take long before I discovered a different kind of greatness, his spirit of mind. Here was a person who was deeply anchored in the gospel and evangelical theology, combined with a deep love for his people and Jewish tradition.

  We could not help but listen to Moishe when he spoke, we sensed in his voice a spirit of wisdom and gentleness, but also a strong and creative mind. I also discovered a friend who was generous, who wanted the best for his colleagues and friends, and who gave of himself. . . .

  Without Moishe LCJE would not have come into existence, or it would not have become the significant network it has been through these thirty years. I am thankful for his enthusiasm and creativity, thankful for his wisdom in leadership, sometimes exercised backstage, sometimes in front, always building bridges across organizational barriers and relationship with many churches for the sake of the Gospel to Jewish people. . . .

  I regard getting to know Moishe in 1980 and having the privilege of working with him for almost two decades in the context of LCJE as a tremendous blessing and a high point in my own life and ministry. I am convinced that for many years to come we will see the fruits of his visions and enthusiasm, his creativity and gentle spirit.

  Moishe’s influence extended not only beyond North America, but also beyond the relatively small field of Jewish missions. He was particularly concerned about maintaining what, in evangelical circles, is referred to as a “high view of Scriptures” (that is, both Old and New Testaments of the Bible are inspired by God and without error). He was very interested in Bible colleges and seminaries that taught students to regard the Bible as the Word of God and to examine with a critical eye popular trends that viewed the Bible as anything less than what it presents itself to be.

  One of the seminaries Moishe regarded most highly was Western Seminary, based in Portland, Oregon. Formerly known as Western Conservative Baptist Seminary, the school had a claim on Moishe, first of all, because he was loyal to th
e denomination that had first ordained him for ministry. Moishe also had a high regard for the seminary, its faculty, and its president, Earl Radmacher. He served on the board of directors of the seminary, and in 1986 the school conferred an honorary degree (Doctorate of Divinity) on Moishe.

  Parallel to his strong support of the seminary, Moishe was a member of the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy (ICBI). The group was founded in 1977 to clarify and defend the doctrine of biblical inerrancy.* Moishe first read about the ICBI in Moody Monthly and Christianity Today. He became a supporter, not only financially, but with letters of encouragement and suggestions on how to gain more popular support for the cause. In 1979 he was invited to address the group. Soon after, he was asked to fill the spot of a charter board member who had died. This put him in close contact with well-known Christian theologians—pastors, scholars, and authors.**

  David Brickner and Rich Robinson, two staff members of Jews for Jesus, were invited to one of the meetings. Brickner recalled,

  I was excited to be there. [There were] all of these rock stars of evangelicalism, and Moishe seemed to be known to everybody. And he had this amazing reputation. It wasn’t just Moishe. It was Jews for Jesus [that] had that reputation. It was an excellent reputation, but it was partly because of his genius. People recognized it.

  He [Moishe] said [the ICBI] is an organization that exists for one purpose, and when its purpose is completed, it needs to go out of existence. It doesn’t need to be self-perpetuating. And he spoke with a voice of authority that everybody . . . acknowledged [and saw] that Moishe was the organizational genius [of the group]. He had very strong theological convictions that he could articulate and questions that probed and prodded the theologians to get it right, but he never wrote any of those statements.

  Moishe felt strongly that no group should outlive its usefulness. He was immensely pleased that the ICBI chose to disband in 1988, satisfied that they had completed their task by clearly defining and bringing public attention to the issue of inerrancy.*

  By 1982 Moishe had contributed his own cache of writings that was not so much scholarly as practical and useful for laypeople. In addition to his articles in the Jews for Jesus newsletter and his broadside tracts, Moishe wrote articles for many Christian magazines.**

  The 1980s, perhaps more than any other decade, show that throughout his career, Moishe’s life greatly affected many individuals and groups beyond Jews for Jesus. Nevertheless, Jews for Jesus remained his passion, so much so that it is difficult to write a biography that, from the 1970s onward, does not focus primarily on his role within and his concerns regarding that organization.

  Moishe feared that Jews for Jesus had grown too fast. One of his purposes for the Avodah year was to ascertain who would stay or leave the ministry. He also wanted to see natural leadership emerge, so he half jokingly and half seriously required all who had been leaders prior to Avodah to wear special buttons for the first few days. The buttons said, “I am not a leader.”

  Over the course of the Avodah year, Moishe hoped to see more emphasis on community and a renewal of godliness and evangelistic fervor among the staff. But he also wanted to see a new level of consistency in ministry.

  Jhan Moskowitz reflected,

  Avodah did a lot of good things. It did professionalize us. It really taught us how to be good missionaries. Gave us a standard to work by. But in some ways you know, it moved us away from that spontaneous “tribe.” And I think the eighties were reflective of that, and I know that Moishe bemoaned that loss.

  As someone who took part in Avodah, I agree that the regularizing and professionalizing of ministry made spontaneity more difficult, but I also think that the changing demographic of the staff would have seen to that anyway. As people married and had children, life would naturally become less spontaneous, and people would naturally become more focused on their spouses and children and the routines necessary for family as well as professional life.

  Moishe was a great proponent of marriage and had suggested that Avodah would be a terrific time for single people to marry and for married people to have children—and he rejoiced whenever those events occurred. But he also recognized that entering these stages of life could create natural tensions in how people would want to spend their time. He expected missionaries to realize that theirs was not a nine-to-five job because missionary work does not take place in an office. He insisted that everyone set weekly goals and have a shared understanding of what it meant to meet those goals.

  There is no doubt that Moishe saw his role differently in the post-Avodah era. Comparing his function in the 1980s to that of the 1970s, he said,

  In the 1980s, I feel my role was to be a discerner, to figure out what kind of music, outreach, and branches we needed. [And] because we had resources, I found [some] people coming to us [mostly] because they wanted to get a job, and I needed a great deal of discernment because a highly dedicated, “called” person and a clever job seeker sound the same.

  The other thing between the seventies and the eighties was this: in the seventies we were the revolution, and in the eighties Jews for Jesus wasn’t a novelty; we were the establishment. . . .

  And so, it was a period of establishment. . . . A lot of it was building up the distribution for things that we have done and services we have provided—going nationwide.

  Probably the task I prayed and thought about most was the deployment of personnel and the utilization of resources, to get the right person in the right place or at least the place where they could work. And one of my regrets is that we tried to cover too many fields and thus used some of the less qualified people in leadership.

  Of course all the creativity did not dry up during the 1980s. Moishe never regarded professionalism and creativity as either/or propositions. He believed that within the framework of principles, policies, and procedures, there could still be freedom and creativity. In fact, in 1982, Moishe, with his talent for timing, spurred the group into one its most creative periods. As was often the case, the burst of creativity came in response to opposition.

  One morning, Moishe and the rest of the headquarters staff were devastated when they arrived at the office to be greeted by a blasphemous misuse of the name of Jesus scrawled across the front of the building. Not content merely to paint over the offensive graffiti, Moishe called the staff together to discuss how to heal the deep hurt they felt over the obscene statement. Moishe concluded that since someone had attempted to soil the name of Jesus, the best way to “counter the attack” would be to lift up the name of Jesus, to honor it, and to draw attention to who Jesus really is. Together, the group brainstormed how to do this, and from that came the Y’shua campaign,* which included writing new songs, gospel ads, and even the book titled Y’shua: The Jewish Way to Say Jesus that was offered to those who responded to the ads. The burst of creative communications once again seemed to prove Moishe’s aphorism that “every knock is a boost.” But much of the Y’shua campaign came from Moishe’s sense of timing.

  One matter of timing that Moishe did not seem to address quite as consciously was his shifting role in the lives of many whom he had mentored. By the 1980s, it became clear that aspects of Moishe’s leadership style that had helped to keep the group together in the 1970s were at the point of diminishing returns. He did work at relating differently to the staff as they grew older, got married, and had children of their own; nevertheless, adapting his role in the lives of the maturing staff was not his forte. It therefore remained for others to deal on a somewhat unilateral basis with the changing relationships that are natural between mentors and their maturing mentees.

  Three people who can provide insight into this are Tuvya, Jhan, and Susan. Each of them was part of the original group who remained with Jews for Jesus “through thick and thin.” Each saw Moishe as a mentor.

  Tuvya Zaretsky recalled:

  In 1971, I prayed specifically asking God for a mentor. There is no doubt in my mind that the Lord brought me into Moishe�
��s sphere to fulfill that longing.

  Tuvya went on to explain one of the most memorable times when he received encouragement and affirmation from Moishe.

  In the summer of 1977, I was 30 years old. I had completed a 25-month itinerary with the Liberated Wailing Wall. While it was a pressure-packed, character-stretching, life-changing experience, I wasn’t prepared for the transition off of the tour.

  I had given my all for the ministry and I was a little too eager to settle down. I met a young woman who happened to be serving at our headquarters. It was infatuation at first sight. In spite of my impetuous inclinations, Moishe spoke to me with an expansive, almost visionary calm.

  In the midst of a precarious life transition, on the precipice of making some bad choices, Moishe said to me, “Tuvya, you are a winner.” Those words of encouragement had a huge impact on me at the time. I came through that transition period, a better person by the grace of God and Moishe’s timely affirmation.

  Moishe was too young to be my father. I think only 15 years separated us. However, those caring, uplifting words of confidence gave the sort of fatherly support that a young man needed. It was an extraordinary and very personal moment. I know that God used Moishe to touch many of us with his grace.

  But not all of Moishe’s moments were so grace filled, as has been previously mentioned.

  Tuvya also explained,

  There’s no way that he could have used the same leadership behaviors in the 1980s that he had employed with such an unruly group back in the early 1970s. Moishe did make some adjustments in his leadership style—at least he did with me. Some people said he was “over controlling,” but I found him personally respectful. He was demanding and dissatisfied with mediocrity. He expected everyone in the ministry to strive for excellence. He often said, “It’s better to do the right thing than a good thing.”

  Still, there were times when I considered his behavior to be unnecessary or over the top. It was usually in reaction to something he found unsatisfactory. I don’t know whether those behaviors were from habit or if they were expressions of frustration. The reason didn’t matter to me; I didn’t want to excuse it and I usually found that he didn’t either. I wasn’t going to change the way he occasionally reacted. The best I could do was take responsibility for how I might respond.