Called to Controversy (2 page)

The elevator door opened, and he stepped in. He prayed silently for his mother and for courage. Once again the door slid open. He stepped out of the elevator and walked down the long corridor to her room.

His father, brother, and sister-in-law were talking in the hall. They acknowledged him but did not say much. He entered the room and swallowed hard as he saw her lying there, looking small and weak. She had been such a strong woman. “Ma?” She turned to look at him. Though she was too spent to manage much expression, he felt she was glad to see him. “Hi, Ma.” He mustered a weak smile and would have kissed her forehead or maybe her cheek, but he knew that sort of thing embarrassed her. He sat in the chair next to her bed, as close as he could get, and searched her face, hoping for a sign that there would be something he could say or do for her. No one from the medical staff or from the family had told his mother that she was dying, but she was an intelligent woman. She met his gaze, and he saw comprehension in her eyes. She knew why he had come. She understood that she would never see the other side of those big glass doors. She began to cry, a quiet, childlike whimper: “I don't want to die.”

Ma, I don't want you to die either!
he groaned, but not out loud.

Still whimpering, she repeated, as though it were a song, “I don't want to die. I want to live. I want to live.” Just like in the movies.

He saw her, frightened, as she faced death and it was one of the worst things he'd ever witnessed. He would never forgive himself if he did not at least try to offer her the hope that he'd found. The moment hung before him, daunting and inevitable.

He patted her arm lightly, hoping the touch would bring some comfort. “Ma,” he said, feeling almost as though he was listening to someone else's voice say the words carefully and calmly, “you don't have to be afraid . . .you really
can
live forever . . .”

That was as far as he got. Rose Rosen sat up, her gray-blue eyes suddenly wide, alert, and flashing with anger. With a strength that belied her condition she spat out the last words he ever heard from her lips: “If you've come to tell me about Jesus, you can go to hell!”

One might wonder why Moishe Rosen did it. Not why did he distress his dying mother by trying to tell her about Jesus. He had no choice about that because he firmly believed that Jesus could bring her peace, quiet her fears, and give her the hope of heaven.

Yet one might wonder why he ever allowed himself to consider Jesus as an option fifteen years earlier. Hadn't he realized it would lead to a moment like this? And why had he brought shame on his family by becoming a missionary? Why did he accept that it was his lot in life to be called
meshumad
(traitor) or in more sterile terms,
apostate
?

At times, unsolicited answers to these and other questions have been suggested by some who opposed his efforts. Remarks during his lifetime ranged from “He's not really Jewish” to “He did it for the money” to “He did it to win the approval of the goyim” (Gentiles) to “He's evil.” One of the more interesting explanations was: “He's a self-hating Jew.” Various rabbis and Jewish community leaders have made these remarks in newspaper and magazine articles, and many of their opinions and accusations trickled down to the public.

Moishe never took those remarks personally. Such statements concerning his faith and profession were like buttresses on the buildings of a status quo skyline—constructed to support the assertion that there's no good or wholesome reason for a Jew to believe and proclaim that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah. That assertion is so concrete that many see it as foundational for Jewish identity. After all, very few “givens” remain when it comes to describing what it means to be Jewish.

On the whole, the Jewish people are not likely to agree anytime soon on a set of beliefs and behaviors that make up one's Jewish identity. While a significant sector of the Jewish community is devoutly committed to a set of traditional beliefs, many others are far more subjective about what it means to be a Jew, often relying on what one cannot believe or do in order to set boundaries around their Jewishness. And the “cannots” become fewer all the time. Assimilation and intermarriage make it desirable to exclude as few as possible from the Jewish fold. Jewish Buddhists, agnostics, and Unitarians abound, and all may find their place within the community. And so the question arises, Where do we draw the line?

It often comes down to the following assertion: You cannot be Jewish and have a Christian belief in Jesus, because being Jewish and Christian are mutually exclusive. To many, this assertion is considered not only self-evident, but crucial to Jewish survival, almost the lynchpin of Jewish identity. The certainty that Jesus is not for Jews has kept collective heads above water in a sea that roils with relativism, secularism, and many other isms that have little to do with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

What has all this to do with a man whose beloved mother suggested that he go to hell rather than tell her about Jesus? Just this. Moishe Rosen grew up with the same set of assumptions and nonnegotiables regarding his identity as the rest of his Jewish family and friends—yet his life took a radically different turn.

Most people find it painful to part with lifelong assumptions. In this, Moishe was like anyone else. He often said that he was an ordinary person who would have been content to go on living an ordinary life based on ordinary assumptions—assumptions that excluded Jesus. Yet his life did not remain ordinary. Whether one lauds or loathes Moishe Rosen's mission in life, he became an extraordinary force, causing countless people to question age-old assumptions about being Jewish and believing in Jesus.

Here is how it happened . . .

PART ONE
The Early Years

ONE

I was born in Kansas City, but raised in Denver. So far as I knew, I would never leave my home town.

—MOISHE ROSEN

B
en Rosen was seeing Kansas City through different eyes now that it was his home. As a child, he'd been there often—whenever he and his brother, Dave, visited their married sister, Annie Singer. Sadly, they were more welcome at her house than in the Denver home that had once been theirs. Within a year from the day the boys' mother, Dora, died of diabetic complications, their father, Edel, had taken a new wife. She seemed to resent the fact that her three youngest stepchildren, Ben, Dave, and Ida, were too small to fend for themselves. Edel did not resist his new wife's insistence that his children make way for her own five, all daughters.

Annie took in Ida, the youngest sibling, and helped the boys whenever she could. Dave and Ben took turns visiting her in Kansas City. The one who stayed in Denver did chores by day and curled up to sleep in the unheated shed at night.

With maternal love barely a memory and a father who was not known for treating his children affectionately,
*
it's no wonder that Ben grew up tough and proud of it. Perhaps for a time he was a little too tough. He always remained true to his father, even covering for Edel in the matter of some bad checks. When Ben found himself on the wrong side of the law, he gritted his teeth and took it rather than implicate his father. After that incident, Ben decided the best way to turn his life around was to leave Denver. With Annie and Ida in Kansas City, he headed for Missouri.

Finding a job wasn't difficult. Tall and strong, Ben had a quiet confidence and was not afraid of hard work. As he strode down Troost Avenue one sunny day in 1928, Ben had reason to be optimistic—and hungry. The smell of food brought him into the local bakery / delicatessen, and the sight of a lovely young woman behind the counter kept him coming back. Ben watched with admiration as Rose Baker deftly carved corned beef and lox into thin slices, demonstrating a strong, steady hand as well as a pretty face and figure. He began to flirt.

Rose might have blushed inwardly, but she accepted his attentions with outward composure. She mentioned that she had just bought a tennis outfit, and Ben quickly offered to teach her, though he knew nothing about the game. After Rose agreed to go out with him, Ben explained that he was “just kidding” about the tennis lessons. He had a wide, easy grin and eyes that telegraphed his mirth even when he tried to keep a straight face. Rose smiled back. The rest, as they say, is history. Rose's sister Esther had a man of her own, Sam Cohen, and so the Baker sisters made it a double wedding.

Were it not for this love story, Moishe Rosen, and subsequently Jews for Jesus, probably would not exist. Nor is it likely that it would have come about if the Bakers and the Rosens had settled far from one another. Unlike so many Jewish immigrants who struggled to build new lives near other Jews in the enclaves of Manhattan's Lower East Side or Brooklyn, these two families chose less populated, yet robust Jewish communities farther west. Though completely unknown to one another, one day two of their offspring would meet and marry and produce two sons. One of those sons would revolutionize Christian missionary efforts among Jewish people in what many would consider a shocking turn of events.

Who can predict the effects of seemingly unrelated circumstances? When Jacob Baker and his family left Austria, they were not fleeing anti-Semitism; they were taking a brisk walk away from it. Hitler and his black-booted terror troops were not yet on the horizon, and under the reign of Franz Joseph, Jews were treated relatively well. Unhindered by many restrictions that confronted Jews throughout Europe, the Bakers lived rather comfortably. Jacob was a carpenter who built especially fine cabinetry and had developed a formula for furniture polishes. His skills were highly respected and suitably rewarded by the Franz Joseph regime via a commission in the military.

However, when the Bakers' oldest son, Arthur, was ready to train for his chosen profession, the family discovered that Austrian equality did not extend quite far enough to admit Jews into medical school. Jacob decided to move his entire family to America where the young man's dreams might be fulfilled. Jacob was willing to sacrifice the status and connections he enjoyed for his son to become a doctor—but the young man was not accepted to medical school in America, either. Yet Papa Baker did not want to turn back. Had he not pressed on in his new life, who can say what would have become of him and his family in Austria? No one knew the horrors that awaited European Jews when the Bakers made their way to Kansas City to join their cousins, the Beisers, who had previously emigrated.

Jacob, his wife, Dora, and their sons Arthur, Joe, and Ben, along with their daughter, Esther, found their places in a Jewish community and settled into a way of life that would later be termed Reform—even though the synagogues they attended were Orthodox and later Conservative. Certainly they believed in God, and the heart of the family beat with an unequivocally Jewish rhythm, cycling through celebrations and sorrows shared by Jews everywhere. But they were more ethnically than religiously oriented. Into this setting the last two Baker children—Rose, and a younger brother, Milton—were born.

Edel Rosen left his Eastern European homeland under less sanguine circumstances as Russian persecution against Jews was prevalent and pointed. While details remain unknown, family lore has it that if the persecution itself had not been reason enough for the family to flee to America, Edel, through some act of vengeance against the persecutors, had become a fugitive from the law. One of Edel's uncles had made the voyage two years earlier; when officials at Ellis Island noted his lung condition, they sent him to Denver, Colorado. There the air was therapeutic, and he would find treatment to help him regain his health and become a productive citizen. Edel joined him.