Called to Controversy (32 page)

I was finding out a lot of exciting things. One young lady came to one of our meetings. She was twenty-three years old. Her name was Alice [the afore-mentioned broadside writer, who changed her name to Vicky, short for Victorious]. Miriam Sleichter (formerly Mary Anne Sleichter, now Miriam Nadler) actually led her to Christ. Alice had zeal! I was worried that that zeal was going to get us into trouble.

At any rate, in those days, I traveled a lot. . . . When I returned one Monday, I prepared for my Bible study on Tuesday. But, that particular Tuesday, there were several new people . . . and they explained that they came because of our advertisement in the
Village Voice
. I knew that I hadn't advertised in the
Village Voice
. Afterwards, I asked what happened. Alice, with a big, beamy smile, said, “I paid for that myself!”

Was I grateful? No! I was angry at her. I said, “You could have gotten me in trouble. What does the ad say?” She showed it to me: “We are a group of Jews for Jesus, and would like to invite you to come and study the Bible with us,” and [it] gave the details. Well, there was nothing wrong with the ad, but it was in the
Village Voice
, which was known as alternative media. The
Village Voice
, where they could publish dirty words and discuss subjects that wouldn't be discussed in the
New York Times
or
Tribune
, etc.

Well, I grumbled and mumbled, but nobody [in the mission] really complained. A couple of more [new people] dropped in the following week, and so on.

It got me wondering, and it occurred to me that the people who were communicating best were using slogans. But, “We are Jews for Jesus” was just too long, so I cut it down to “Jews for Jesus.”

Actually, when Moishe first saw the phrase “Jews for Jesus” he didn't especially like it. However, he soon realized its value; it communicated a big message quickly and easily. People remembered it and responded to it. Moishe intensified his efforts to reach the counterculture, trying as he did so to get others excited about the possibilities.

Avi Brickner recalled,

[Moishe] invited me to accompany him to Greenwich Village late one Saturday night (actually staying there until early morning) to view the people on the street and to listen to him as he tried to communicate with them in the parlance of the street. Though I didn't really “get the message” then, I later came to see that Moishe was seeking to communicate to me, in the most effective and impacting way possible, the changes taking place in the society that called for a change in the way the good news was to be effectively communicated.

Moishe wanted to bring Daniel Fuchs in on his ideas, but could not rely on him for encouragement to move forward in the direction he wanted to go. He always received affirmation from Daniel in the more conventional work that he did. But it remained a stretch for Daniel to affirm some of the less conventional means that Moishe was using to communicate the gospel.

Daniel thought the first broadside seemed silly and would embarrass the mission and its donors. Ironically, later, when Moishe had written several broadsides and brought them to a meeting of the FCTJ, a number of members thought the tracts were brilliant and congratulated Daniel on the work that Moishe was doing. One can imagine how awkward that might have been because Daniel still did not feel comfortable with that style of literature.

Yet, despite his discomfort, Daniel made efforts to see what Moishe saw. When Paul Bryant accepted Moishe's invitation to come to New York, he had Moishe, the trainees, and some staff members demonstrating in front of porn theaters in Times Square. Moishe asked Daniel if he would join them. “It's not a protest, so much as it is an attestation of Christ and his love, versus what these guys are selling,” he explained to his boss. And Daniel did come to one of those demonstrations.

Moishe remembered: “He came. He carried a placard for a couple of minutes, and then handed it back, and said, ‘I think I'll just pray.' He stood there and prayed silently, but he saw the action. My life was becoming so radicalized at that point that he no longer understood me. Nor did I understand myself.” Moishe considered Daniel Fuchs his mentor and one of his best friends and was unhappy that the tensions and distance between them continued to grow.

When Moishe was floundering in LA, Daniel's leadership style had given him exactly what he needed. Daniel had taught him a great deal, but since that time, he'd also learned a great deal from many others. And the more Moishe learned, the more he felt what was lacking.

For example, toward late 1969 he heard a management lecture that stressed the importance of balancing responsibility with authority and accountability. No sooner had Moishe heard that than he saw how it applied to his situation, as he later explained:

In 1967 I was charged with reinvigorating the mission but I had no real authority. And I might say that that's one reason why, when Jews for Jesus got going, I always tried to balance those three things in every assignment that I gave, so that each person would have enough authority to manage the responsibility. And the more authority that I gave them, the more accountable they were to me.

So, I found that I couldn't change anything and what was worse, I was training missionaries and sending them to branches that were not prepared to have assistance. All these things that I was teaching them to do, how to visit Jewish people, how to start a children's work, how to do outdoor preaching, were counting for nothing in most of the branches.

Each branch had a different structure; each one had a different emphasis. Some had a good work, but it was based on the leader's personality and how he or she chose to do things. And when some of the older ones retired, often the work they had built fell apart.

Since his boss expected Moishe to revolutionize the mission, why did Moishe believe that Daniel didn't prepare the existing missionaries to do anything differently? Moishe explained,

Daniel didn't understand revolutionary ways. I believe he thought I would come in, and they [existing staff] would be so taken with me that they would immediately want to follow me and do what I suggested. But Daniel had a mistaken idea of leadership and what leadership could do.

Whatever Daniel set his hand to, he did well. But he didn't recognize that not everybody is equally competent at everything that they do. So, in a sense, the mission developed a “one size fits all” attitude, rather than looking to carefully match people in places where their strengths would balance the weaknesses of others, and vice versa. The places the people got sent had little to do with either the situation or the individual's level of competence.

I strongly suggested to [Daniel] that the new missionaries who were Jewish Christians might do well in branches where the head of the branch was a Gentile Christian and they needed a Jewish Christian testimony. He thought that was a wonderful idea. But when it came to balancing things the other way [deploying Gentile missionaries where there was already a strong Jewish testimony], I could not convince him. It was up to me to make deployments, but I had to get his approval. . . .'

[And] Daniel had resigned himself to working around the preferences of some of the senior staff.

These details have not been included for the sake of airing old grievances or critiquing a good man with whom Moishe had long since been reconciled. They are included because understanding Moishe's frustrations over these matters is foundational to understanding many of the principles and policies he insisted upon later as the executive director of Jews for Jesus. They explain some of his attitudes and actions when he faced similar situations and decisions that Dr. Fuchs had faced.

Moishe voiced some other things that troubled him during his New York years:

I had this ideal that every ministry should help every other ministry. And to a degree, that was happening through the Fellowship of Christian Testimonies to the Jews. Ruth Wardell, who was in charge of the ABMJ's Long Island work, was very much involved at her own expense, and she was the first one to suggest that I get involved [with the FCTJ]. But in general, the attitude of most of the established missionaries seemed to be that . . . we were the largest, we had each other, and we didn't need the others. And nobody openly criticized anything. We had the best literature, we had the best this, we had the best that . . . I wasn't always so sure that we had the best of everything. But not only that, I felt that if we did have the best of anything, then we had something to give to the others.

In addition he said:

There were many things I did not realize when I was in Los Angeles. When I went back to New York, I saw that instead of the administration working to uphold missionaries, the missionaries were treated [by some of the headquarters staff] as an unwanted appendage.

I began to see my team [candidates and missionaries] as being separate from the administrative team. In my team [particularly the missionaries who worked out of the Manhattan branch] I had people who, like myself, were willing to work all night. We did what we did, not because it was duty, but because it was fun, and we liked to see things develop. The administrative team arrived on time and left on time.

Moishe did not recall making his complaints or concerns a matter of discourse within the mission: “I've always expressed myself in hyperbole—too often saying, ‘always' or ‘never.' But, for the most part, anyone could have seen that I was very supportive of the ABMJ.” Yet there was at least one person who was not so certain of Moishe's support. And his suspicion finally convinced Moishe that he could not succeed in New York. That person was his mentor, friend, and boss—Daniel Fuchs. This came as a painful shock to Moishe, as did the manner in which he learned of it.

Because he often worked long hours, Moishe frequently ate at his desk. He also made a big batch of chili at least once a year, and there were always leftovers. One day he decided to share some of that chili with a few coworkers, including a man named Bob. Moishe recalled,

I seldom drink alcoholic beverages, but with chili, I usually drink a beer. I had bought myself a can of beer and shared the chili with Bob and others but I found out later on that he had gone and told Daniel Fuchs that I had brought beer into the building. I don't remember if I got beer for anybody else—I tend to think not, but I might have. But there was no rule that you couldn't drink and most people drank wine occasionally.

. . . I later learned that Daniel had told Bob to keep an eye on me and to report back to him. And Bob didn't really know what he was supposed to be looking for, but he figured it must be some wrongdoing.

The way that I found out was that Bob came back to me afterward and explained that he was told by Daniel Fuchs that he'd been assigned to the training program to find out what I was teaching and what I was doing because Fuchs had become suspicious of me. At that point, I knew that I would never teach another training class.

Academic freedom might mean little until you start teaching. But once you find yourself teaching, you know that you need liberty to teach. You need the liberty to express yourself—even if some of your opinions are negative. And so far as I knew, I was not expressing any negative opinions toward either Daniel Fuchs or the ABMJ.

Well, much later I found out that what Daniel Fuchs was really looking for was proof of something he had heard: that I was trying to take over the mission by developing loyalty to myself instead of to the organization.

No doubt many trainees and missionaries
did
feel a loyalty to Moishe. That loyalty could have been seen as a benefit and not a liability to the mission because it came with a sense of enthusiasm for the work. Moishe tried to anticipate the needs of those he supervised, involving them in things he thought they'd be good at and, when possible, keeping them away from those things that they would not be good at. He invested in them, which not only made them loyal to Moishe, but also made them better missionaries.

Would Daniel have responded differently to the rumor/allegation that Moishe was seeking his position if the two of them had not played a part (at least from Moishe's perspective) in unseating Pretlove? Possibly—there's no way to know. But years later in a private conversation during a conference in Baltimore, Fuchs told Moishe whose comments raised those suspicions.
*

Sadly, it was a trusted friend. But by the time Daniel disclosed it (within a year or so prior to his death in 1988), Moishe knew two things. First, he could not claim to be so innocent when he reflected on the incident with Pretlove and the building permits. And second, had Fuchs' suspicions not arisen, Moishe probably would not have felt compelled to leave New York—a move that was necessary to fulfill his destiny.

When Moishe found out that Daniel had asked someone to spy and report on him, he was heartbroken and once again felt that he was failing. He'd already experienced feelings of failure with regard to the actual work of evangelism, but that had turned around with creative new literature and a determination to relate to people who were open to the gospel: namely, the countercultural group known as hippies.

Moishe had also struggled with feelings of failure over his inability to accomplish Daniel's mandate to revolutionize the work. He simply did not have the necessary authority—nor would Daniel exert his authority on Moishe's behalf—to make it happen. Moishe couldn't find a solution to that one, but had continued doing his best to train the missionaries anyway. Now, how could he teach a class if he had to censor his opinions and observations?