Called to Controversy (33 page)

The choice had become simple. He could stay in New York and fail, or take the successes he'd begun to have in New York to another place where they could flourish. Knowing that this class of candidates was going to be his last, Moishe met with Daniel, reminded him of their agreement, and made plans to transfer to California that July. It was 1970.

Moishe still felt invested in the candidates and was particularly concerned about Miriam Sleichter, a dynamic personality whom Moishe often referred to as “a spark plug.” He was afraid she would languish in one of the branches. He arranged with Daniel Fuchs for her to go to Israel where she would continue studying and learn Hebrew for a year.

In a sense, by taking the transfer, Moishe had demoted himself. But it was a carefully negotiated demotion. As he later observed, “Even though I've joked that I assigned myself to San Francisco, that had been a prearranged option. What had not been prearranged was that I also assigned myself two cars, an executive salary, and a secretary.”
*

*
By the time of that conversation, the person Daniel named had long since replaced him (Daniel) as president of the mission.

*
That was Marcia Black, another trainee who'd graduated from Moody Bible Institute. Whereas Marcia did secretarial work, she was also very active in evangelistic endeavors that Moishe employed on the West Coast.

TWENTY-TWO

Reality lies somewhere between our highest hopes and our deepest fears. We live in the light of the victory or in the defeats that we anticipate.

—MOISHE ROSEN

N
eon lights flashed competing claims that theirs was the hottest show in town. The three-block strip of Broadway in San Francisco's North Beach was packed with tourists, sailors, and even some lonely locals lured by the promise of the most outrageous and exciting “adult entertainment” imaginable.

A place calling itself “The Garden of Eden” featured one of the most prominent signs on the strip: a voluptuous figure of a naked woman, a palm tree and a leering serpent—all promising “a taste of Paradise.”

Now Moishe was no crusader and he didn't feel it was his place to try shutting down all the sex shops in the city. His calling was to point to Jesus as the solution to sin for Jews and Gentiles. So he wasn't so much railing against those who were “selling” sin as he was pointing out that God was freely offering forgiveness, reconciliation, and a better way to find fulfillment.

Nevertheless, this sign galled him. To trade on the Bible as a ploy for advertising cheap thrills was deplorable. This exploitation of humanity's fall from innocence epitomized the whole North Beach scene. And it made the Garden of Eden the most obvious place to stage a gospel demonstration.

He was leading a group of twenty or so demonstrators clad in denim jackets embroidered with “Jesus Made Me Kosher” and “Jews for Jesus.” About half the group carried colorful, hand-calligraphed placards with slogans such as “God's Love Lasts,” “Love, Not Lust,” and “Jesus Is Coming Again.”

“Get them started with ‘love, not lust,'” Moishe said to Baruch Goldstein, who nodded his assent as he stood at one end of the group. Meanwhile, Moishe had joined the picketers.

As people raised their signs and began to march, Baruch said, “Stay close together, keep moving, and get ready to chant, ‘Love, not lust.'”

After a few moments of silence, someone called out loudly, “Love, not lust,” and the group joined in the rhythmic chant. Everyone looked straight ahead, carefully keeping pace with the person in front of them. There were to be no gaps, no stopping or lingering, nothing that would block the flow of foot traffic on the sidewalk, nothing that could be used as an excuse to curtail the group's right to free speech.

Many passersby stopped to stare at the group. When one drunk tried to join the line, some tourists laughed, figuring this was all part of the evening's entertainment. But others looked at the signs proclaiming God's love in contrast to the tawdry signs offering sex for sale and seemed to realize they had someplace better to be and better ways to spend their money.

Then one woman suddenly stepped up to the picketers and screamed, “That's my religion you're ridiculing!” Shouting obscenities, she began alternately trying to tear up the placards and kicking several of the girls in the group. Finally, she pulled out a pair of scissors and started stabbing at the marchers. It was unclear whether she was trying to get to the placards or to the hands holding them.

No one in the group responded to her. Their commitment to nonviolence was not optional, and the obvious intention not to fight back often prevented the escalation of violence. But this half-crazed woman was working herself up into a more and more violent state, so Moishe sent Bruce Skoropinski, one of the group leaders, to get the police.

The attacker was focusing her rage on a young woman holding a placard that proclaimed: “God Loves You!” When Moishe grabbed the placard in an attempt to redirect the woman's fury, she tried stabbing Moishe's arm repeatedly, but the thick denim sleeve of his jacket protected him. At last she succeeded in inflicting a deep wound on his right hand.

Blood rushed from Moishe's hand, down his arm, and onto the sidewalk. Bystanders began to scream and call for help as the woman continued her efforts. Moishe was frightened, but he and the others had a predetermined strategy, and he now focused all his attention on that strategy as he began to yell, “They're attacking me because I'm a Jew for Jesus! This bar condones violence because they don't like Jesus!”

Moishe tried not to notice how the blood was streaming down from his arm—he held it up high, hoping that would slow the bleeding, not even realizing that the blood from his raised hand together with the sign proclaiming God's love appeared highly symbolic, if not heroic, in this context.

A bystander managed to get the woman off Moishe. Someone procured a clean towel from a nearby restaurant, and Moishe wrapped it around his hand and managed to stop most of the bleeding by the time the police arrived. He picketed as long as he could, bloody hand held high, but was scheduled for a radio interview that night.

Steffi Geiser (later Rubin), one of the earliest Jews for Jesus volunteers and one of the strongest creative forces in the group, helped Moishe get to the interview. Moishe had lost a lot of blood and knew he should not get behind the wheel alone. Before leaving, he made a request to those who stayed behind: “Do one thing for me. Demonstrate here an hour longer than we usually would, to show them that a little blood's not going to stop us.”

As he rode to the radio studio, Moishe fought the lightheadedness that was starting to creep over him. He prayed that God would give him the strength to get through the show.

He arrived at the studio looking like quite a character. A middle-aged man, six foot two, he was sporting a leather cap, blue jeans, and an army surplus denim jacket embroidered with Jews for Jesus on the back while the front was plastered with campaign buttons proclaiming “Free Soviet Jewry” “Torah is Good for the Soul” “Jesus is a Jew” etc. Add to that the blood-soaked towel and jacket sleeve. If the talk show host had any doubt that he'd be interviewing a colorful character that night, all such doubts went out the window the moment Moishe walked in.

Once again, God answered prayers and Moishe made it through the program as though nothing had happened. It wasn't until after the show, when a doctor at a nearby hospital stitched up his hand, that he began to feel really weak and somewhat woozy. After he'd been stitched up, Steffi and Moishe drove back through North Beach just to make sure that the others had left safely. It hardly seemed possible that there had been a dramatic disturbance on the site. He looked at the stitches on the back of his hand.
It happened all right,
he thought sleepily.
I wonder if I can wait till morning to explain this to Ceil.
*

Moishe's hand healed well, but a scar remained—like the knife on the car seat in Gila Bend—to remind him of what had happened. Did he see himself as a role model of courage? Yes and no. He clearly stated, “I saw myself, in the early seventies anyway, as being an example of courage. Someone who could show others what to do. A bit of a way-shower. And I wasn't so much a father to all of these volunteers as a big brother. And that's the role that I like best.”

Yet he also said, “Some of the things that gave me a larger-than-life reputation were just a matter of sticking to a schedule. When I got stabbed, I wasn't being heroic. . . . I was trying to hold things together as best as I could. Oftentimes, that was my reason.”

In this case, holding things together meant preventing the demonstration they'd planned from dissolving as well as sending a message to the opposition that violence was not going to bring about any desired result. Moishe communicated many times that backing off from violence or threats of violence would only encourage more violence. Also holding things together meant not losing the opportunity for that radio interview. He always had a strong sense of the value of the media.

Was this the life he'd envisioned for himself when he told Daniel Fuchs that the time had come for him to take that transfer? No. He knew that he was on an adventure, but there was no way he could have imagined the situations that awaited him in California or the amazing people who would join him to become the group known as Jews for Jesus.

When Moishe first told Ceil that it was time for another cross-country move, she was predictably upset about being uprooted again. But there was one phrase that Moishe didn't use often, and when he did, his wife would follow. That phrase was, “I believe that God is showing me . . .”

Moishe was convinced that the move was God's will for him and for his ministry. He'd learned some hard lessons in New York, lessons he could not have learned in LA. So while he felt the move to New York had been necessary and right, he was also convinced that it was time to move on.

As for the mission's response to the transfer, Moishe said,

I have no doubt that Daniel Fuchs felt put off by the move, but he had promised and he was a man of his word. I wanted to settle in Berkeley, but he received an objection from someone on staff with another mission agency in Oakland. Though Daniel didn't necessarily pay any attention to objections from other missions when it came to deploying his staff, I believe he felt a need to, as he put it, “clip my wings.” So, I was not allowed to live in Berkeley where I wanted to settle. Instead, we headed for Marin County, just north of San Francisco.

The trip from New York to San Francisco turned out to be relaxing and fun.

What should have taken us six straight days of driving ended up taking us about 18 days because we were in no hurry. I was entitled to a month's vacation, which I hadn't taken—ever. So I was entitled to take as long as I wanted to get there. It was like a pilgrimage, because in addition to my wife, two daughters and the family dog, we brought five other women.

We had Vicky [previously mentioned]. She was employed for a time as a secretary for someone on the ABMJ staff, but that hadn't worked out. She remained part of the group and I brought her along because she was a new believer and she just needed someone to look after her. And the same thing was true of Lana Korotkin, a new Jewish believer from Philadelphia. But Lana had also taken a shine to Paul Bryant when he came to New York and that's partly why she wanted to come to California.

Well, we stopped in Philadelphia because Lana said she was going to get some things. She didn't tell me that one of “the things she was going to get” was her younger sister. She came back to the car with Terry, and I'd never met Terry before; but like her sister Lana, she was very artistic and a little kooky. So Lana smiled and said, “I told Terry that she could come with, is that alright?” and Terry smiled and I smiled and said, “Sure.”

Then there was Marcia Black (later Goldstein) who had been in my last training class. I asked her to come and be my secretary. Marcia had the schooling and training to be a missionary but confrontation was difficult for her. She was willing and able and did come out with us to hand out tracts, but what I liked about her was that she emanated a sense of order. Pat Klein was her friend and had graduated from Moody at the same time and she came along, too.

Even the dog was a girl dog. I don't know why I didn't feel uncomfortable surrounded by all these females.