Called to Controversy

by Ruth Rosen

  Jhan Moskowitz added,

  By the 80s we were [geographically] separated. Our relationship [Jhan’s and the various branch leaders no longer in San Francisco] was on the telephone and at council meetings. We were a bunch of emerging leaders that Moishe had to figure out how to release, healthily. And I’m not sure he knew how. I think he worked at it but . . . that was a difficult time, the 80s.

  When asked if there was a particular event or process that Jhan utilized to see his relationship with Moishe differently, he said,

  Yes, I did. I was in England, 1983. I was in charge of the London witnessing campaign, “Messiah Has Come.” And for the summer, I didn’t talk to Moishe. We just didn’t talk. I didn’t report in once a week. And I really had to rely on my own leadership gifts. It was after that that I felt like, he can be my friend, and he can be my boss, but he’s not my mentor anymore. The interesting thing is, that helped me stay [with Jews for Jesus].

  You get to a certain place where you start defining yourself and trying to find out where that individual who is so significant in your life, where his influences kind of end, and yours start. And I think that summer was a real paradigm shift for me. It wasn’t that I stopped learning from him, but he stopped being the dominant voice in my life.

  I felt fortunate that circumstances and God and grace allowed me to be able to continue to be listening and loving [Moishe] and [at the same time] finding my own voice.

  Some have suggested that Moishe tended to relate better to women. Susan Perlman said,

  I actually do think he did better with women than with men. I think part of that is because Moishe was such a sensitive, verbal person. But I don’t think that he was able to relate to women better than men in the mentoring role simply because they were women . . . he also had a high regard for women that a lot of women, particularly in evangelical circles don’t feel [from other male leaders]. That was a very enabling thing that men didn’t need from him. If I look at other Jewish missions and other missions back in those days, the idea of having women leading teams or being chief advisors was not very common. Moishe just looked at people. Their gender and their age weren’t the issue. If they had something to contribute, he gave them opportunities. And I think that he had a lot of brainy women around . . . because he gave them opportunities that they weren’t getting elsewhere.

  In terms of the mentoring relationship she had with Moishe, Susan recalled,

  In a sense it was very much a matter of situational mentoring. Moishe would go on visits to Jewish people [who didn’t believe in Jesus] and he would take me along and I would observe how he would interact. And then after the visit was over, we would talk about it; we’d analyze it. He’d say, “What did you learn?”

  Moishe was always throwing out aphorisms and taught me through those as well. Things like “Susan, in life you’re going to have to choose whether you want to get something done or get credit for it.” Or “there are good choices and then there is the best choice to make in a situation.”

  Some of how he mentored me I don’t even know if he was aware of. But I would see how he treated people and cared for them and especially how he related to younger people. When Moishe had opportunities [he could have kept] for himself, I observed him giving those to others to do and helping them to do them in a successful way.

  Susan also responded to the question of whether she reached a certain point when she felt that that mentoring period was drawing to an end, and whether it was a difficult transition:

  Yeah, that is definitely true. I continued to learn things from Moishe, but I don’t see it in the same way as my early role with him. The transition. . . . was difficult all around. When he was mentoring me, he almost had a father role in my life and there came a point where I felt like, ‘Okay, [now] he’s more of an older brother than a father.’ I wanted to maintain the proper respect but I [no longer felt] that I was the student he was the teacher in every situation.

  And yet, he had other staff that were close to him throughout that period of time, younger staff that he continued to mentor. I think Moishe always liked that role of being a mentor. He always needed people to mentor.

  One person whom Moishe mentored in the 1980s was David Brickner, Avi and Leah Brickner’s son and middle child. That relationship, which proved to be crucial for the older man as well as the younger man, was fated to become more than a little complex.

  * A simple definition of inerrancy is the view that when all facts are known, they will demonstrate that the Bible in its original text is entirely true.

  ** A small sampling of those in this group included James M. Boice, Edmund P. Clowney, Gleason Archer, Harold Hoehner, Walter C. Kaiser Jr., D. James Kennedy, J. I. Packer, and R. C. Sproul.

  * They had produced major statements in 1978, 1982, and 1986; some of their work appeared in Carl F. H. Henry’s book, God, Revelation and Authority, vol. 4 (Waco, Tx.: Word Books, 1979), on pp. 211-219 as well as in A General Introduction to the Bible, by Norman L. Geisler and William E. Nix (Chicago: Moody Press, rev. 1986), at pp. 181-185. R. C. Sproul wrote an official commentary on the ICBI articles in the ICBI.

  ** He also wrote a modest collection of books and booklets, including The Sayings of Chairman Moishe (a simply illustrated compilation of his aphorisms published in 1972); Jews for Jesus (a history of the mission’s earliest days, written jointly with William Proctor, 1974); Share the New Life with a Jew (a handbook on understanding and overcoming barriers to sharing one’s faith, coauthored with Ceil Rosen, 1976); Christ in the Passover (also coauthored with Ceil in 1977); and Y’shua: The Jewish Way to Say Jesus (a prophecy primer of passages in the Hebrew Scriptures that point to Jesus as Messiah, a collaboration with Rich Robinson, 1982).

  * Much thought and discussion went into how the group would spell Y’shua. Moishe was concerned that those unfamiliar with the word would have trouble pronouncing it when they saw it in print. He thought that Yeshua would be too easily mispronounced as Yeeshua.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  We are not preaching ourselves, but Christ. And whether or not we do well does not depend on how well we serve Jews for Jesus, but on how well we serve Christ.

  —MOISHE ROSEN

  Moishe wasn’t afraid, but he was definitely concerned. As usual, he’d tried to think of everything that could go wrong and how he would respond. They might not allow him onto the plane. Worse, they might allow him to leave the country, then arrest him on some crazy charge and hold him for investigation for who knew how long. He’d prayed about it and felt now was finally the time for him to make his first trip to Israel. After all, the Liberated Wailing Wall, Tuvya, and others known to be Jews for Jesus had already been there.

  So far, Jews for Jesus had only had occasional “in and out” evangelistic forays. If Moishe was allowed in, he’d return with a study group of missiologists who’d help Jews for Jesus formulate a consistent approach to taking the gospel to Israel. The group would include the president of Biola College as well as the head of the missions department of Dallas Theological Seminary. “Everyone on staff was proud that Moishe was a staunch supporter of Israel. In the 1970s he had even encouraged some of the Jews for Jesus donors to start their own ministry called “Christians for Israel.”

  “So there he was at JFK in the line to be processed. At last it was his turn. He handed his passport to the pert Israeli officer, a young woman with a vivacious smile. She studied his passport, which demonstrated that he had been abroad numerous times, though never to Israel. “You have the name of a famous apostate,” she observed, still smiling.

  Moishe smiled back and gave a one-word affirmation.

  “Are you connected with Jews for Jesus?” she asked.

  Moishe replied blandly, “You might say so.”

  She nodded and said, “You know, I have the power to keep you from coming home.” By “home,” she meant Israel, recognizing the almost universal connection that Jewish people felt with the land.

  Moishe, his voice still amicabl
e, looked the young woman in the eye and said, “Yes, I know that you do. But let me tell you what would happen.” He showed her a list of telephone numbers that he would call, including those of the Associated Press and the New York Times. He added, “And they’d be ready to hear from me because you’d have created an international incident.”

  The security agent didn’t blink. She merely said, “Well, I didn’t say I would do it, did I?” With a smile, she waved Moishe through.

  He trudged to the gate, the ubiquitous black leather briefcase in hand. Waiting to board he noticed that about half the passengers were Hasidim, (a sect of Orthodox Jews) while the rest seemed to be various tourists. Then locating his seat he found himself settled in amidst a sea of beards and black coats.

  Why’d they put me in the Hasidic section? he wondered drowsily after he found his seat. Oh, yeah, Perlman decided I should get kosher meals when I travel. She thinks they’re healthier. Well, I guess it makes sense for the airline to seat all the kosher people together.

  As they waited for takeoff, the man to Moishe’s left decided to strike up a conversation:

  “I see you’re Jewsh.” He pronounced the word as though there were no “i.”

  Moishe nodded, not certain what the man could see of his Jewishness, other than the fact that he’d been seated in the obviously Jewish section.

  “So, where are you from?” the man continued.

  “I’m from the West Coast—San Francisco.”

  “Oh, I have an uncle in the movie business.”

  Moishe nodded but said nothing. The plane had taken off. He was dead tired. The man obviously wanted to make conversation. He can see by my clothes that I’m no Hasid and probably hopes he can recruit me for Chabad (the outgoing Hasidic organization whose “missionary” zeal—to bring other Jews into what they felt was a proper Jewish lifestyle—rivaled that of Jews for Jesus).

  “So, what do you do for a living?”

  Moishe shook his head. “You wouldn’t want to know.” He’d often used that line to pique curiosity, but this time, he was actually hoping the man would take it at face value and leave him alone. He was ready for a nap.

  After a moment’s reflection, the man spoke up again: “You know, if you’re a diamond smuggler, that’s not against Jewish law. I wouldn’t hold it against you.”

  Moishe shook his head. “No. I’m not a smuggler.”

  “So, what then? What could be so bad?”

  The mission leader sighed. “Did you ever hear about Jews for Jesus?”

  “Oh, yes, we know all about them,” his inquisitive neighbor replied. “Let me tell you, the head of Jews for Jesus isn’t even a Jew. He’s Italian. Our rabbi told us all about it.”

  Moishe couldn’t help smiling as he shook his head. “I promise you, the rabbi doesn’t know all about it.” He reached for his passport and wordlessly handed it to his seat mate, whose eyes got bigger, almost like you’d see in a cartoon, Moishe thought.

  The man whispered to a fellow traveler, and within moments, there was a commotion as many people changed seats. Soon all the women and children were on the outer edges of the section, and the largest and sturdiest-looking men were closer to Moishe.

  The man said, “We have to know something. We have to know that you’re a real Jew.”

  Moishe shook his head. “No, you don’t.”

  “Wouldn’t I go to hell if I believed that you were going there, and you weren’t?”

  “No, you’d go to hell because of your sins, just like everyone else who hasn’t received the atonement God offers.”

  “Just one thing” the other said. “You know what this is?” And he pulled out his tefillim.*

  “Yes,” Moishe answered wearily, and pulling his briefcase out from under the seat in front of him, he produced his own tefillim. He began wrapping the leather straps around his arm in the prescribed manner. I’m sure I’m making mistakes, he thought, and no doubt he was. Having learned the ritual as a child, he had not practiced it for many years—nor was he in the habit of carrying tefillim with him.

  The man’s eyes opened even wider than before as he watched. Then he said, “Anybody could learn that.”

  Moishe was quick to agree and soon dozed off.

  His fellow passengers were left to ponder if there was really anything so offensive about this man, other than the sound of extremely loud snoring.

  Moishe’s first visit to Israel passed without incident, though certain people seemed to keep him company wherever he went. He did appreciate being spared the unpleasant scene experienced by the Liberated Wailing Wall and the New Jerusalem Players in 1984 when they arrived in Israel for the second to last stop on their world tour. That team had been led by David Brickner, one of the up-and-coming new leaders whom Moishe had begun to mentor. David recalled,

  We were met at the gate by people who presented us with a bouquet of dead flowers and pronounced, “Welcome, missionaries, we are praying for a speedy death.” They had gotten our itineraries and knew everywhere that we were going to be.

  What was far more discouraging was that the believers we were supposed to work with there didn’t want us to wear our Jews for Jesus T-shirts or use the tracts that we were prepared to hand out. . . .

  Moishe made some suggestions to me about how to approach [one of the established leaders who was requiring these restrictions] but told me if I couldn’t get anywhere, to call him.

  It didn’t take long for me to see that I wasn’t getting anywhere, so I called Moishe. A minute later I told [said leader] that Moishe Rosen was hoping to speak to him; he got on the phone with Moishe, and when he got off, he said, “Okay, you can wear your T-shirts and you can hand out whatever literature you want.”

  Moishe could make things happen. In this case being so open did make for a very eventful tour as the antimissionaries actively opposed the group. But the group was willing to take the heat for the sake of the many Israelis who were curious and even interested in what they had to say. As is usually the case, the hostility of those trying to silence the group only increased the sympathy and interest of the others.

  David called his boss from the airport as they prepared to leave Israel. “We’ve gotten through the toughest part of the tour,” he informed Moishe.

  “Don’t be so sure,” Moishe replied. “You’ve still got South Africa.”

  David later recalled, “I thought, South Africa? What’s the big deal about South Africa?” In fact, there were riots everywhere they went, and they needed police protection. “[The antimissionaries there] made Israel look like a cakewalk. So that was a very prescient moment. It was almost eerie, the way Moishe seemed able to predict how things would be.” After the tour, David brought the Liberated Wailing Wall back to San Francisco. ’

  No doubt Moishe took an interest in David primarily because of who and what David was, but that interest also had a foundation in Moishe’s friendship with the young man’s parents, Avi and Leah Brickner.*

  Not until he was a student at Boston University did David become serious about the beliefs and values his parents had taught him. The Jews for Jesus Boston branch played an important role in challenging and encouraging him, and eventually he felt that he could best fulfill his destiny by serving with Jews for Jesus. He remained involved with the ministry throughout the rest of his time in college and beyond, and through various leadership roles, was mentored by Moishe.

  David recalled,

  I always had a very loving and a respectful relationship with Moishe, but I never felt like what he said came from Mount Sinai. And [when I saw him make what I regarded as mistakes] I felt like “Okay, I’m never gonna be as smart as Moishe or have the mind he’s got, but I do understand some things that I am that he is not.” And it made me feel good about our relationship.

  In some ways, David was more fully formed than most of the first generation of Jews for Jesus had been at his age. He already had the spiritual framework and upbringing that Moishe, to some extent, had provided for
many of the core volunteers and early staff. Perhaps that had some bearing on why David, who considered Moishe to be his mentor and one of the most influential people in his life, didn’t experience the kind of transition in his relationship with Moishe that some of the others did in the 1980s.

  Once Moishe made up his mind to do or say something, it was difficult to get him to change course. Difficult, but not impossible.

  Jhan recalled, “I remember it was in the middle eighties in a council meeting in Chicago when Susan and Mitch and I really pushed Moishe to go international. An opportunity in England was opening up, some of us really believed God was paving the way, and Moishe never wanted to go international. His maximum was one hundred twenty missionaries. That was it; that was all he felt he could manage.” But eventually, Moishe relented, and Jews for Jesus incorporated several international branches during his tenure as executive director, including South Africa, Russia, the UK, and France.

  Moishe preferred to help and encourage missionaries “across the pond” to stay with their own mission agencies rather than come under the auspices of Jews for Jesus. This was certainly the case with a young Jewish believer named Richard Harvey, whom he met in the late 1970s in London, and mentored in the 1980s. He eventually brought Richard on staff but only after realizing that he would not otherwise remain in the field of Jewish evangelism.

  Richard recalled how he first met Moishe at a conference at London Bible College (now London School of Theology) where there were about 20 young Jewish believers in Jesus. “I remember clearly what he said to us. He spoke about what was happening in the USA, and said, ‘You may think you are a small number, but God can do great things through you.’ I remember this big man with a booming voice and his American accent. But it was the content of what he said, a prophetic word to me as a young believer, that impressed me.”