Called to Controversy (22 page)

As the time drew near for their second child to be born, the family had moved to a slightly larger place in Montclair. Moishe got a part-time job at Sears Roebuck in anticipation of the higher rent.

Though Lyn was quite young, she retained several memories of the family's Bible school days and of her father's dealings with her, including the following:

I didn't know that others would have considered us poor while he was in Bible college; and I don't remember a sense of going without with the exception of one event. Dad had taken Mother to the doctor for a prenatal visit and while he waited, he took me to a bakery to buy cream puffs. They were so big that I needed both hands to hold mine. When it came time to cross the big street, I clutched my cream puff in one hand while my other hand was safely in the grasp of Dad's huge strong fingers.

As we reached the other side I dropped my cream puff—before I had even tasted the filling. I was very disappointed and began to cry. I could see that Dad felt terrible as he explained we couldn't afford to go back for another one, but that if I didn't mind the bite marks, I could have his. More than fifty years later I can honestly say no cream puff ever tasted so sweet.

Lyn trusted her father implicitly. When it was time to remove the stitches she'd gotten on my birthday, he took her to the doctor, who also happened to be the coroner of the county of Newark. Moishe recalled that he “had a bedside manner that would work better with dead people.”

The doctor snipped the three or four sutures in Lyn's head. It didn't hurt, but it frightened her. When she began to cry and pulled away, the doctor was so unnerved that he couldn't finish. Moishe offered to help, and the doctor handed him the tweezers. Lyn immediately calmed down as her daddy pulled out the stitches.

With her dad in charge Lyn quickly returned to her good-natured self, and the doctor relaxed. Apparently he was trying to build a regular practice, so he asked Moishe, “Do you have a family doctor?”

Moishe did not, and agreed to have a physical. The doctor was very thorough, and after the exam, he announced, “You've got narcolepsy.”

Moishe shrugged. “When I was sixteen, I dozed off all the time, but I think that it went away after I was married.”

The doctor replied, “Well, it's back.” He went on to describe several symptoms of narcolepsy, and Moishe had all of them.

Moishe's doctor prescribed amphetamines, which again became part of his daily regimen, this time for the rest of his life. He explained, “What amphetamines do to most people, they don't do to me. I don't feel nervous or jumpy. In fact, if I don't take them, it's harder for me to sit in one place; it's harder for me to focus.”

He certainly needed all the help he could get to focus. Life in New Jersey would have been full enough had it consisted only of school and family life—not to mention the part-time work at Sears during the last year or so. But Moishe's purpose in being there was to prepare for ministry, so the ABMJ was a very prominent aspect of his life during those three years and not only during the summer when school was out.

At the mission center Moishe was surprised that people addressed one another as “Miss,” “Mister,” or “Mrs.” whenever anyone else was present. Even those in the higher echelons addressed the staff and volunteers that way. In describing those days, Moishe explained,

We were all treated very respectfully—not like young kids who were just learning the ropes. The missionaries called each other by first name in private and as long as we were by ourselves, the missionaries encouraged us to call them by their first names too. There was what they call esprit d' corps, a special camaraderie that we all felt because we were insiders. It was a professional, yet pleasant atmosphere.

The mission quickly became my family, and they had a cradle-to-the-grave program for their constituents, including cemetery plots where Jewish people could be buried. They were very good at helping Jewish people in need.

During the school year, Moishe went to the mission center only on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays. Like the other missionaries, he had a desk on the sixth floor. However, Moishe did not spend much time at his desk. Early on, he'd developed a rapport with Joe Serafin, the man who told him the basics of conducting a street meeting. Serafin, a Hungarian, was not part of the missionary staff. He was a utility person hired to run the elevator and perform various errands. Yet he often stood outside the door, telling passersby about Jesus. Moishe liked to stand there with Joe and listen as the older man shared his faith. Serafin told Moishe, “Don't let yourself become a desk jockey. People spend too much time sitting at their desks. You can't witness on your seat; you gotta use your feet.” This made perfect sense to Moishe, and he never forgot the admonition. Later, when it was his turn to supervise field missionaries, it was one of his guiding principles.

Moishe was one of several students whom the mission was sponsoring through Bible school, but they did not all attend Northeastern. Somehow, it fell to Moishe to supervise the group, an assignment he did not particularly want. He agreed conditionally: “If I have to be in charge, I need the authority that goes with the responsibility.” The mission met those terms, and Moishe had his first job supervising other missionaries.

Part of being in charge was looking out for the interests of those he supervised. Sometimes he had to speak to Harold Pretlove on their behalf, but the man was no Joseph Hoffman Cohn, who had been the consummate leader of the ABMJ. Moishe was sorry that he never had the chance to meet him. (Cohn died shortly after Moishe and Ceil became believers in Jesus.) Yet his influence at the ABMJ remained pervasive. According to Moishe,

People were always telling stories about Dr. Cohn. Nobody ever called him
Joe
Cohn; it was always
Dr
. Cohn. He was a very strong chief who didn't appreciate challenges to his leadership from the staff. And what they told me about him greatly influenced me. I got the impression that he knew how to do things the right way.

Everybody talked about how tough Dr. Cohn was, and they recollected his style of supervision. Once a week, he'd come in and call a meeting of the staff. He'd bring an inspirational word. Then they would discuss the work, and after the discussion, Dr. Cohn would go to his office on the second floor. The missionaries would come in one by one and account for their week's work. . . .

I remember hearing about Dr. Cohn and what a good memory he had and how much he delighted in catching a cheater. There was no judicial hearing. There was no process. If he felt someone was not honest in reporting their work, that was it. Anyone who lied or cheated to misrepresent the amount of work they were doing was gone. And though I never met him, I admired his ability and his resolve to weed out any sort of dishonesty.

Following the death of Dr. Cohn, the leadership of the mission was divided three ways. Harold Pretlove was officially in charge, but Daniel Fuchs and Emil Gruen each had their own areas of authority and, Moishe believed, did the actual work of running the mission.

Gruen had recruited Moishe and was a great encourager. Moishe particularly appreciated the way in which he corrected people. Moishe recalled, “After hearing me preach he gave me some good suggestions: He told me, ‘You started with your voice very loud and you trailed off. It's much better if you build as you go. Save most of your breath for the end of a sentence.' Then he demonstrated how to do it. He also told me: “When I'm on my way to speak to any group, I always pray that God will give me a love for the people who come to listen.”

Moishe thought of Emil Gruen as a very loving person with “a very strong sense of propriety. He set a very balanced example, and that helped me to see what was expected of me.
*
I learned from Emil that you never became pals with those you ministered to. You were there to minister, and that was the attitude. People you ministered to could expect certain things of you, and not others, and that was good. I appreciated the professionalism.”

Other people who influenced Moishe were Henry and Margaret Heydt, Sydney Parker, and especially Daniel Fuchs. Dr. Heydt had been the president and founder of Lancaster School of the Bible and was a theologian. He was more or less the resident “answer man” at the ABMJ. Sydney Parker was a missionary. As for Daniel Fuchs, Moishe said, “He was really my mentor. We had common interests, including photography.'”

Parker's influence was somewhat complex, as Moishe recalled:

My friend Sydney Parker in a sense influenced me in a negative-positive-negative way. His theology was what would then be called neoorthodoxy. Now they would simply refer to it as liberalism. He challenged me at a good time in my life because I was at a very formative stage.

He taught one of the training courses I took; it was on Jewish thought and theology. But instead of teaching what I would call Jewish theology, he explained certain theories of how the Bible was written, and he espoused ideas that don't fit within the evangelical framework.

Sydney took courses at Union Theological Seminary, and he liked to take me to sit in with him. I soon realized that Sydney didn't believe exactly the same way I did. He did believe that Jesus died for his sins, and he said he believed in the resurrection. I didn't quite know in what way he believed because he didn't seem to take things too literally, but he did have faith. And he was trying to enlighten me. Eventually, when it became known what he was teaching, he had to leave the mission.

The interesting thing is, when I went and I listened to these great liberals of the day, they didn't influence me. Their attitude toward the Bible was to take it apart and dissect it, and what they were saying didn't speak to me. Most of my biblical education was establishing the trustworthiness of Scripture, and that's always been my conviction. But it was good for me to hear the other side.

Moishe was learning from everyone he could, including Isaac Finestone, leader of another Jewish mission known as Messengers of the New Covenant in Newark, New Jersey. Finestone invited Moishe to a Bible study that he taught in an informal way.

When Moishe got there, he found forty or fifty people sitting around a big dining room table, some at the table, others in a second row around the table, and still others in chairs here and there. Finestone was slow to speak and encouraged others to participate. Like Fred Kendall (his half brother, who was also in ministry), he occasionally broke out into a song, and the people sang with him. Moishe felt it was a very Jewish way of studying—everyone's Bibles out on the table—and it gave a certain equality to have the leader teaching from a sitting position. Moishe used that method for years to come.

The New Jersey years were packed with all kinds of lessons for the new missionary. But there were some things that he seemed to know intuitively—things that sometimes surprised those who were more experienced than he. Some fifty years later, Moishe received an e-mail from a man he'd known during those student days with the ABMJ: “I remember how you helped an elderly Jewish man who was very sick and smelly go to the bathroom at the mission. I avoided him but you did not. I saw a part of you that impressed me, which not everyone has had the privilege of seeing: a sensitive and caring heart. Daniel asked me to train you when you were a student, but I soon saw someone who could have trained me.”

The incident that this man was referring to was something that Moishe would have shrugged off as simply doing his duty. He recalled helping that man, but he didn't see that it set him apart from others. He never regarded himself as particularly pious or holy, but he did use the phrase “practical piety,” referring to doing one's spiritual duty without any spiritual glow or holy feelings about it. Practical piety pushed Moishe to do what was difficult, and it also helped him to overcome the more obvious types of temptations. It was the kind of piety that reminded him that God was always with him and there were no secret sins.

Not all temptations involved grappling with sin, however. One of the most dangerous temptations Moishe encountered taught him an important lesson and demonstrated God's protection in a bizarre way. He recalled,

There is a kind of twilight zone when going to sleep or waking up. And that time of semiconsciousness is when I've often heard the voice of temptation. One such incident occurred during a ferry trip. . . . I remember coming home on the ferry boat in July on one of the hottest days of the year. I went to the upper deck to get fresh air. . . . Soon I was looking down at the foam where the prow of the boat was cutting the wake. I was so hot and tired, and as I stared down into the water, I was somewhat hypnotized by it.

Then I heard the words in my mind,
Jump off, dive in, cool off in the cool, cool, water
. And over and over again, in my mind I was hearing how cool it was down there. I wanted to jump in . . . but as much as I wanted to climb over the rail, my hands wouldn't let go of the rail. Suddenly I looked at my hands instead of the water and when I realized . . . what I was trying to do, I snapped out of the hypnotic state. In a flash, I realized that temptation had come straight from hell. It was really spooky. I never had any inclination, before or since, toward any kind of suicide. But going over that rail would have been suicide.

I concluded that hypnotism is dangerous and should be avoided. And I also learned something about temptation. The temptation wasn't to kill myself; the temptation was to cool myself. The thought of death didn't occur to me at all.