Called to Controversy (8 page)

Through his teen years, Moishe had developed a more or less pantheistic view that God “is all and in all.” But he wasn't ready to give up the idea that God had a mind and God had a will. He always believed that there was a First Cause that brought the world into existence, but following that, he figured that God might or might not know, care, or otherwise be involved in what was going on. Moishe later described this as “a weak deist view which, by the time I was sixteen or seventeen, was a cynical skepticism.”

Whereas Moishe felt that one couldn't really know much about God and need not be too concerned about his existence, Ceil was quite outspoken about her view that God did not exist at all. As much as Moishe respected her intelligence, she could never persuade him of anything if he thought she hadn't the proper grounds for it. For all he knew, her certainty of God's nonexistence was a subconscious punishment aimed at her overly strict parents and the God she supposedly did not believe in. But whatever reasons she gave to support her unbelief, they never struck him as altogether reasonable. He therefore argued the point and said that certainly there was a God.

Despite his cynicism regarding religion, Moishe felt a need to identify with and belong to the Jewish community. Yet he didn't quite know what his religious obligations were. This ambiguity probably was due to the semi-religious upbringing after early childhood, the largely secular nature of Denver's Jewish community, and the wide range of what people considered “proper Judaism.” Moishe and Ceil agreed that they would have a Jewish household when they married, but it would be an American Jewish household, free of the outdated rules and regulations their families had brought from the Old Country.

Of course when they began talking of marriage at the age of sixteen, no one thought the romance would last that long. And when they were eighteen and decided the time had come to carry out their intentions, their parents were concerned that they were still too young. But whatever people said and whatever they thought, the marriage was apparently meant to be.

Moishe's cousin Dorothy recollected the romance between her cousin and friend and wrote this to me:

Your mother was a very sexy young woman. I always thought she looked like a cat. She moved like one, and with the dark hair and [hazel] almost yellow-gold eyes, she looked like one. Her movements were very natural—she wasn't even aware she was moving like that, but guys sure were. Once she started going with your father, she didn't know any other male existed. . . .

We worked in the same office building one summer. She would come to pick me up for lunch. You could hear her coming down the hall in her high-heeled shoes. The young lawyers would stand at their doorways to watch her walk down the hall. This also she did not see. A couple of them asked her out. She said, “No. I'm engaged.” Then your father came down to the office to see her and she introduced him. Later the guys said, “But Celia, he's just a kid!” She said, “No he isn't, he's my fiancé.” He was a tall gangly kid and sometimes he
acted
like a kid, but none of that mattered—they were in love!!!

SEVEN

When we shoot the gun of anger we can be killed by the recoil.

—MOISHE ROSEN

T
he first sergeant leered at Moishe as he delivered one of his most disgusting insults: “Tell me, Rosen, are all Jewish women whores or just your mother?” Clearly the sergeant was trying to provoke a fight. Moishe clenched his teeth and looked around to see the other guys' reaction. They only looked away. Maybe they didn't want to risk the sergeant's anger by sticking up for Moishe, but what would it have cost for a couple of them to find him later and say, “Hey, Rosen, he's just a jerk. We don't feel that way”? But they never did. In fact Moishe knew that some
did
feel “that way.”

Being hated simply for being Jewish was nothing new; still the seamier realities of military life were a somewhat rude awakening for Moishe. Throughout high school ROTC, and as an underaged member of the National Guard, he had attended weekly drills, collected his three dollars per session, and truth be told, enjoyed the activities and the classes. He had been eager for this time of military service. He could hardly believe that he would receive five and a half dollars for each day. (He'd been raised to that prodigious amount for achieving an officer's rank through correspondence courses.) Not only that, but he'd never been away to any kind of camp before. So with anticipation and a great sense of adventure sixteen-year-old Moishe packed up and left for his fourteen-day drill.

There were two significant facts of which he was unaware. First, a crisis was brewing with the Soviet Union in Berlin and Moishe's Guard unit was about to be nationalized. And second, he would be practically the only Jew in his battery.

The only other Jewish soldier Moishe encountered proved to be small comfort. Some of the guys had a habit of singing out, “Sheeny, sheeny,” whenever they passed him, and he'd just grin as though enjoying a friendly joke. And once, when a group of guys demanded, “Show us your circumcision,” he had dutifully complied while they snickered.

That incident so incensed Moishe that when the others left their hapless victim, Moishe was anything but compassionate. He stormed over and kicked the soldier's tail. “You want to make a fool out of yourself, then make a fool out of yourself,” he barked. “But don't make a fool out of our people. When they insult you for being a Jew, stand up to them!”

Moishe had grown to his full height of six feet one inch and had won enough fistfights over being Jewish that few people wanted to pick that particular quarrel with him. But the first sergeant was not “most people.” Stocky and well muscled, he was four to six inches shorter than Moishe. He used his mouth to compensate for his height as he continually antagonized Moishe with obscene and racist remarks. He used his rank as well, refusing to give Moishe his mail on time, forcing him to ask for what was regularly delivered to others.

As the insults and injustices built up, so did the pressure of Moishe's barely repressed anger. One day he was alone in the barracks when the first sergeant came in and made one of his usual obnoxious remarks. Then he inspected the lockers as though he had just made a passing comment about the weather. Whatever had been holding back Moishe's anger burst, releasing a sudden flood of rage-induced energy.

Moishe picked up a carbine and swung the butt end upside the sergeant's head. It felt so good to hurt him that Moishe was actually frightened by his anger. But even that fear could not hold back his fury as he stood over the sergeant. All the hostility he'd ever felt toward “them”—the world of Jew-hating Christians—culminated as he stood staring into the hate- and fear-filled eyes of the one man who seemed to represent them all.
He doesn't just hate me; he hates my mother, my father, my girlfriend. He was probably cheering for Hitler . . . he'd love to see us all wiped off the face of the earth.

The sergeant rolled onto his stomach, but before he could push himself up, Moishe raised one leg and brought his combat boot down full force on the sergeant's back, hoping the blow would connect with his kidneys. When the sergeant got up, Moishe began goading him into fighting back. When he did, Moishe had the excuse he wanted to hit harder until he finally backed off, his adrenaline spent. The sergeant was disheveled and dazed, but he wasn't bleeding.

Moishe stared at him for a moment, then swallowed hard and said, “You tell anybody what I did, and I'll tell them why. I'll tell them what you've been saying, how you've been keeping my mail from me. Maybe some of the guys will back me up.”

Whether it was fear of exposure or a decision to chalk up the beating as retribution for weeks of harassment, the sergeant didn't report Moishe, nor did he bother him again. His only revenge was to assign the teenager to guard the motor pool for thirty-six straight hours the next day. Halfway through that triple shift, Moishe fainted and ended up in the hospital with exhaustion, but he knew the entire incident could have ended in a far worse scenario. Before long, he found the memory of his violent outburst sickening, and it engendered an abhorrence for fighting that remained with him for the rest of his life.

Moishe hadn't bothered to tell his parents when he signed up for the National Guard. They were accustomed to seeing him in uniform—he'd been participating with the ROTC since he was fourteen. They could hardly be blamed if they didn't notice the difference between Moishe's activities with ROTC and the National Guard. The uniforms were identical except for the color of the piping on the service caps. All Ben and Rose knew—from what Moishe told them and what they could observe—was that his extracurricular activities with the military were teaching him discipline and building his confidence.

From the start, Moishe enjoyed his training. His high school, like many others at the time, offered students a choice between gym class and ROTC. Since Moishe did not go in for competitive sports, the choice was obvious. And whereas he considered himself a failure as an athlete, he did quite well on the rifle range. With a little practice, he earned sharpshooter medals, achieving the highest qualification ROTC gave for small arms.

ROTC provided many opportunities, including a series ten correspondence course to become an officer. He did well in these classes, went on to the series twenty, and was designated as first lieutenant. (He later stated, “I don't know what in the world that meant because I never bought an officer's uniform.”)

Having grown up in the shadow of WW2, Moishe was keenly interested in military science and tactics. He was glad that Germany lost WW2 because Hitler would have killed all the Jews if he could. Other than that, Moishe described his attitude in the following terms: “I've always been interested in the military, but when it came to war, I wasn't mad at anybody. Not even the North Koreans. If the North Koreans were angry at the South Koreans, that was their problem. If the Koreans had invaded America, well, that would have been different. I would go and fight. But I learned something in high school that I never forgot: George Washington warned us against getting involved in foreign wars.”

Moishe's interest in the military was based on strategy and the satisfaction he felt as he learned various skills. He also liked the gear. He wasn't interested in using weapons against people, but he enjoyed learning to operate them much as he'd enjoyed learning to operate a camera or other piece of fine equipment. His experiences with the military—like his experience as salesman—proved him more than competent and gave him confidence: a precious commodity for a teen.

Some of the guys Moishe knew began joining the National Guard, and it wasn't long before he, too, was approached during ROTC by his sergeant and a recruiter. He learned that in the National Guard, he would be expected to go to a weekly drill wherein he would march for two hours, listen to a lecture, and collect three dollars for his time. Then he would go for a full two weeks in the summer and get paid for that, too. Better yet, if he signed anyone else up, he would get five dollars for each person who joined.

And so Moishe lied about his age and signed on the dotted line. He later recalled,

My reason for joining the military was purely mercenary. And I figured if it was anything like ROTC, it would be interesting and maybe fun. I signed up quite a few people who probably joined for similar reasons.

Some of the drills were on Sunday, and they took us out to Camp George West, which was near Golden, Colorado. They introduced us to our primary weapon, a 105 mm howitzer. We used dummy shells and learned to operate as a squad.

As far as Moishe knew, the two-week summer drill would be mostly more of the same, only it would be every day—and of course he'd be away from home. But when the unit was federalized—taken into the regular army because of the Berlin crisis—the summer drill became much more. They were to help with the Berlin Airlift. However, the attorney general of Colorado didn't want to release the National Guard to the U.S. Army, so he obtained a stay and Moishe's unit remained in Colorado at Camp Carson.

Moishe considered it a happy coincidence that all this occurred just as school had let out. His girlfriend, Ceil, had been sent back East for the summer. (Her parents, concerned about how serious the relationship had become, thought it wise to separate the couple for a while.) Other than working part time as a stock boy, he would have spent most of his time with her. Instead, he'd work full time for better pay, and he wouldn't miss Ceil any more than if he'd stayed at home. It didn't occur to Moishe that now that he was actually in the army, it might not be so easy getting out.