The Coming of Josephson

By Jack Markowitz

Jess Josephson has an idea to improve the world. So do countless pipe dreamers of course. But Jess is different, a successful businessman and millionaire, able to finance his own crusade to the point of refusing donations. He “buys” his first audience, at $20 cash per person to fill a New York sports arena. After that, buoyed by irresistible news-making, there seems no stopping him – not by riot, gunfire, the pleas of politicians and state police nor the love of a beautiful woman. The issues go beyond his own comfort and safety. More wars are inevitable, as he sees it, unless this tumultuous era finds a “better idea of God.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jack Markowitz
• Release date: Nov 10, 2013
• ISBN: 9781493614660

Jack Markowitz

Veteran newsman Jack Markowitz’s career spans six decades. He has filed millions of words in New York, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Father of five daughters, he’s been a copyboy, reporter, business editor and columnist, still writes a weekly commentary in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. His first book, “A Walk on the Crust of Hell,” was a 1973 collection of true hero stories. This novel, copyrighted in 2000, is here revised and updated. The conflicts addressed by Jess Josephson, he says, “haven’t gone away, they’ve gone crazy.”

Book preview

1.

One morning in late winter an advertisement appeared in New York’s largest newspaper. It spread across a full page in the gaudy typefaces of a circus poster. This was the text:

ON THE LEVEL

I will pay you Twenty Dollars

– $20.00 Cash –

(In an envelope placed in your hand)

To Come Out and Hear Me

SPEAK

Briefly – Say, 20 Minutes –

At New Manhattan DiaDome

Lexington Ave. Gate

Sunday, March 9

8 P.M.

-

Of course you will ask: Why would anybody do this? I’ll tell you. I want an audience. Enough to pay for your time. It is that important. When I have said my piece, you get a $20 bill. Then good-bye. No strings. No names or addresses. If 20,000 people come out, it will cost me $400,000. Plus the hiring of the hall. Plus this ad. But it will be worth it.

-Jess Josephson

Repeat: THIS IS ON THE LEVEL.

My idea! said Mary Mulcahy at the door of M. L. Silverman. They were neighbors in a faded high-rise off Riverside Drive. Flushed of cheek and much too fat (a tub filler, as she said), the woman was all but breathless. Can you imagine, Meyer … dreaming up a stunt twenty years ago – at least twenty – then one day there it is! A full-pager. Just what you’d have ordered. It’s … vindication! The newspaper hung from her fingers like a ship’s sails ready to fill.

Don’t tell me yet, said Silverman, a widower of an age when suspense is either intolerable or one of the last tingles. Come in, you’ll have coffee.

I never found the right account, Mary said while her host rattled about with cups, spoons, and senior citizen instant. Imagine the daring of the fellow. All his chips on the table, up front. With a pair of half-lens glasses on her nose she read the text aloud, rolling it on her palate like an amusing wine. Repeat, she ended, waggling a finger at all skeptics and holdbacks, this is on the level! Then she laughed, which caused her neighbor to hack in mild contagion, though he failed to see the humor.

There’s bound to be a catch, said the man of experience..

"Of course, Meyer. But he’s paying people to hear him. My idea! Asleep these twenty years behind the magic fire, waiting for a Siegfried."

A blank stare told her the retired schoolmaster had missed the operatic reference or was focused too hard on the catch. What’s he after, do you think?

You tell me, said the Mulcahy (when professionally aroused she thought of herself that way, ready to do Irish battle). Come, Meyer, react. Be the voice of the people. What does this rogue want of us?

The other stroked his chin. Something … He was thinking aloud. Then his rheumy eyes brightened. … That will bring him in a hundred for every twenty.

Ah, you’re in the right direction. But make it a thousand.

So much?

I’ll tell you the first thing he’s selling. Curiosity. Word of mouth. He has us talking about it. That’s the beauty of this stunt, although the bait I had in mind years ago, would you believe, was only two dollars.

Inflation, said Silverman so solemnly his guest had to laugh. Tonal sounds arose from her. She seemed to contain, for a woman past the bloom, a lingering music. His eyes wandered to a gap in her blouse buttons, strained by a voluminous bosom. She projected an absurd girlishness. Her red hair, streaked with gray and hard to brush, expressed as she sometimes fancied unquenchable youthful fires.

You loved the advertising game, said the old man.

Public relations, she corrected him. I was in the P.R. end. Know what I’d be doing this minute? Phoning city desks, TV and radio editors. ‘Who is this guy?’ I’d ask like any member of the public. ‘What’s his racket?’ Get ‘em investigating. News is what you want. The free stuff is worth ten times more than advertising. This Josephson, I bet, has someone stirring the pot right now.

As the day proceeded, however, the P.R. lady was surprised to find the pot not stirring. Surprised and also gratified. It showed instincts like hers were still needed out there. The other newspapers contained not a word; she ran out to a kiosk on Broadway to check. Nor could she catch a mention on radio or television.

But next morning was better: ten paragraphs on an inside page of the Times. And no repeat of the ad, which was correct, classic, the budget blown on a single placement, an elephant thrown in the town pond, and let all the ripples spread. The news story was straightforward and humorless, but the Mulcahy treasured every word with her neighbor, this time over real coffee, and sweet rolls, in her place.

After many inquiries (and how about that for first-day response?) DiaDome management had required a $400,000 performance bond to insure the advertised $20 per head would indeed be paid. This may have been a first. No one could recall a New York speaker buying an audience. Described by a staff person as friendly and businesslike, the advertiser had paid one visit to the hall and reserved its first open Sunday. The rent, amount undisclosed, was advanced by cashier’s check. Mr. Josephson gave no clue to what he would speak about. But he did leave an address, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and an affiliation. He was a home builder.

Uh-huh, a real estate deal, said Silverman, confirmed in one of his surmises.

No, said Mary. I’m still betting it’s something … transcendent (possibly a first-time use of that word in her life). Didn’t he make a point of calling it important? She had memorized the ad.

And you believe him?

With a blush straight out of high school she smiled. I do, kind of.

At last, and in a pack, TV and radio discovered the elephant in the pond. By evening the networks were giving it prime time. One made it the text for its anchor’s all-important closing comment:

Amid the cacophony of the age, in our failure to touch even as we reach out; amid the drumbeat of ceaseless communication, it is fun – yet sobering, too – to find someone who wants attention so much he’ll pay for it. ‘Lend me your ears,’ cried Marc Antony. Not good enough today. ‘Sell me them!’ says a guy named Jess.

WHO IS MONEYBAGS SPEAKER? the Post headlined next morning. On Hook for $400 G’s (‘Cause He Wantsa Be Heard Sooo Bad) – See Page 3. The story was datelined Pittsburgh. Two staff members had been sent out there. But Jess Josephson could not be found, either at his apartment in town or what the report called his gentleman’s farm in bosky western Pennsylvania. The mystery man, as it said, was on leave from his privately-owned company (annual salesguess: $150 million). We’re not building anything around New York, a puzzled aide was quoted. Two photographs ran with the story, one of a glassy corporate headquarters: JB Construction, Inc. The other, unprofessionally shot, fuzzy in sunshine, was of a grinning young man in T shirt, jeans, and boots; and at his side, with an arm around his shoulder, an elder in business suit. The caption: Jess Josephson, before his promotion to company president six years ago, with his late father, millionaire builder Morris Josephson.

Nice-looking boy, said Silverman. And from the names, Jewish.

And don’t think it hurts, Mary said, to get the tabloids calling you a ‘mystery man.’

Friday brought more news, this time of a $20,000 rental surcharge for added security. All this publicity about the cash he’s handing out, said a DiaDome spokesman. We don’t want to give ideas to crooks. Evening television caught Mr. Mystery in Manhattan, emerging from a bank in trench coat and dark glasses. With a grin he held up a twenty-dollar bill. Tacky, Mary thought. She would not have let a cameraman put him up to that. He dodged gracefully, though, when asked what he planned to talk about. I don’t want to scoop myself, he said. Come hear. But take off the shades. Don’t look like you’re hiding something, the Mulcahy mentally advised.

At age sixty-two the P.R. lady declined to consider herself put to pasture. In fact an insurance company still employed her part-time. With an earlier start she believed she might have had her own agency; if she hadn’t spent so many years as a nurse; not to mention a nun. (She still sometimes thought about the handsome patient, an injured cop, who had shamelessly flirted, calling her Virgin Mary.) Her leap over the wall, then so-called, didn’t happen till years later, when it proved easier than she had imagined to quit the sisters and join an agency that specialized in fund-raising for health causes. In thirty years outside, helped by clients in Wall Street and an inheritance from an uncle who never approved of pretty girls taking the veil in the first place, she had put aside a nest egg and was under no real pressure to keep working. Even her late-blooming relationships with men hadn’t turned out all that badly. One was headed straight for matrimony, had her lover, a Jewish radiologist, not died of a heart attack in the midst of a nasty divorce. She still wore the ring poor Bernie gave her; still found it comforting, too, despite a battered faith, to shed a tear now and then at a Latin Mass.

A final pre-event angle turned up in the Sunday papers. A welfare rights group planned a march of the needy to the DiaDome. If anybody is handing out money, said a spokeswoman, it belongs to folks who can’t keep food on the table.

Mary gave her neighbor Silverman first refusal rights to accompany her, but she understood his reluctance to venture out after dark and in truth her preference was to attend alone. The promo might prove irresistible, and what if she saw a chance to slip a business card in this Josephson’s hand? She also wanted to arrive early, to watch the place fill. This was her idea on trial. She had proprietary feelings.

She climbed up out of the subway at 6:30. The air was raw and windy. A remnant of dusk faded down the canyon towards Jersey. The avenue in front of the arena was lighted white as day but with none of the warmth. Two television trucks were parked by the curb, a positive sign of coverage. A cameraman in a parka stood on one of the truck roofs shifting from side to side in the cold, waiting for a crowd to shoot. Block letters on the marquee said: JESS SPEAKS 8 PM.

In the lobby Mary braced for a horde of derelicts baited by the twenty dollars. Yet the fraternity of the extended hand was mixed with people of respectable enough appearance, a rare integration. Passing through a turnstile, she entered the hall itself and thought, oh, a lot to fill. The light was dim, the space vast in the familiar surprise of great interiors. Empty seats stretched to black distances. The speaker’s platform looked dwarfed, despite a row of flags extending it down one side of the hall. Red, white, and blue bunting hung on the dais, left over perhaps from a veterans or union convention. The stage was bare except for a single standing microphone, its shaft glistening.

Mary’s impulse was to sit towards the back. The speaker might prove a letdown, or the audience so skimpy she would stick out in a front seat, the fat lady eccentric. Yet she also felt a need to read her man’s face and hoped by example to encourage others all the way in. The back pew syndrome was deadly, she felt; whenever she had authority she would shoo people forward. The result of these deliberations was a center seat on an aisle, third row, farther forward than anyone else yet present. She unbuttoned her coat and threw it off her shoulders. She felt hot and tense, as if the obligation to fill the house were somehow hers. A big four-sided clock overhead read 6:38, still plenty of time. But early arrivals who straggled in under the red EXITs showed no signs of festivity, subdued by the immensity of the place, as if assembling for a cathedral funeral.

Just before 7:00 came stirrings of life. A gang of young people, students in headgear and jackets, entered with noise and horseplay. Come closer, kids, Mary willed them forward. They filed into her section but rows back, keeping an escape route open, nevertheless forming a potential cheering (or jeering) section. Soon after came the welfare army, hundreds strong, glad to be out of the cold. Marching two and three abreast, many carrying placards, and feeling entitled, they made for the front rows of the center, right center, and left center sections, filling every seat till they ran out of bodies. Glad to have you, Mary said, rising to admit a row full. A huge black woman glared down at her, inspecting for sarcasm. But her greeting was real. I’d love to fill this place, she said.

Now came cameras. Lights played over heads and waving arms, silhouetting people, raising the level of cheer. Microphones approached persons never before asked for an opinion. Think you’ll get your money? What if the twenty bucks is only good against a purchase? Entire sections stood and did the wave as light beams swept them.

By 7:40 the Mulcahy had grown comforted. The arena was at least half full. A hurrah went up when two hundred-odd shabby types marched in. They raised a crude banner: Bronx Homeless. Some shook signs for the cameras. One said, Warmer Here Than Where I Sleep. Another: Twenty bucks? I’ve Done It For Less, Kiddo.

A hush fell when a man walked onto the dais, but he was in janitor’s uniform. He tapped the microphone: Testing, one, two. Wiseacres applauded and he hurried off. Great speech, whereza money? someone yelled. Short but to the point, cracked another. At 7:45 an unseen organist struck up a tune. Someone near Mary recognized it, The Man I Love. She recalled the line, Someday he’ll come along … The next tune drew a laugh: Send in the Clowns. When the organ played, I Got Plenty o’ Nothin’, the homeless and welfare groups stood and hurrahed as if acknowledged. That’s right! That’s us!

At last the overhead clock came to the hour. The organ sounded three chords. House lights dimmed, brightening by contrast the spot on the standing microphone. The air felt thick with noise, body heat, and anticipation. Mary craned about for a final estimate: at least three-quarters filled … more. Not bad.

A door opened at one side of the dais. A man strode to the microphone. The crowd buzzed. There had been no introduction but this was unmistakably he. He had on a white suit, blue shirt, striped necktie. The image of riverboat gambler came to mind; cruise director; male model. A dude, Mary heard a black woman say near her. Her own thought was: a charmer. But the suit was wrong: too flashy. Here was a fellow who needed a certain amount of touching up. Yet who else but he had saddled up her bronc and taken it to ride? She was disposed to like him very much.

Tall and trim, he took a moment to shield his eyes against the spotlight glare, as if as curious about the audience as they were about him. He looked to be thirty or so, his face of good color but not ideally chiseled, the nose a trifle deviated, possibly reshaped in some previous adventure. His hair was dark, the brow wide and unlined, with a vein at the temple that suggested, reliably or not, sensitivity. His jaw was square but at ease; and the glance he cast over the crowd – his crowd, sought, bought, and paid for – looked shrewd and assessing. He leaned into the microphone, all but kissing it like a cabaret singer, his words taking flight without strain, birds of sound to dark and distant reaches.

Okay, he said, I’m the crazy guy.

Chuckles lapped through the hall. Just the note, thought Mary Mulcahy. You’ve got us, what will you do with us?

Now let me tell you what it’s all about, said Jess Josephson.

2.

Here it comes, the Rev. Peter Winslow thought. Do we live another minute?

I believe, the speaker said, the religions of this world have grown obsolete and have got to go. They are not doing a good job for God, and they’re not doing a job for us.

His voice boomed from loudspeakers. To Winslow, who stood at the head of an aisle, the sound seemed huge, rolling over the crowd like a thunder of prophecy, more than could have come from a little mouth on a distant stage.

Look around you, people, said the thunderer. Some very bad news for the human race is coming – already here in fact. And not from God, don’t blame Him. From us. Cultural breakdown and moral rot, just for starters. And suicide bombers, too – driven by a faith gone crazy! Religions that ought to give us a sensible belief, the grounding to live decently and well, aren’t up to it anymore. We need something better …

Letdown! Winslow felt it like the listing of a ship. The moment religion gets mentioned, the deadliest of subjects. Someone near voiced an obscenity, echoing the minister’s own thought. And after such sweet buildup. … But give him a minute. Give him a chance to surprise you.

We need a better idea of God, the voice boomed, reverberating from walls, floors, and balconies. A common sense idea that stops dividing people. That makes people smarter, not dumber.

A rumble of resistance arose. The speaker let it pass like a surfer on a swell. A goddamn atheist we hadda come hear, someone said within earshot of the Rev. Mr. Winslow, who now made a decision to move towards the stage.

I won’t try to tell you religions don’t do any good, the loudspeakers boomed. Sure they do, in a charitable way. But I say this. Today their idea of God does more harm than good. It’s time to put an end to them.

The dam burst. Jeering broke out. The stage looked a hell of a distance away to Peter Winslow, who was on leave from a Presbyterian church with a mostly white congregation in Pittsburgh and for the first time wished to be back there. He moved faster and it would not have been well to get in his way. He stood a solid two hundred and ten pounds, once a college tackle, and his crewcut of steel-gray hair hinted at a nostalgia for his twenty years as a Marine. And not chaplaining either but in combat units, the Gulf War and Iraq. Put an end to them, Jess? Is that all? Enough for one night’s work?

Siddown! the jawbone of an ass brayed across the arena.

The crowd-pleaser raised a hand. You might think I’m here to talk atheism. No, sir, he said. I wouldn’t try to sell you something so empty. I’ve got something better, a lot better. He paused for them to want it, like a teacher in a noisy class. But it can’t be baloney, he said. Religion has got to get off the baloney diet. It can’t promise illusions like heaven, much less the Muslim seventy-two virgins. It can’t …

This stiff wantsa get killed, someone said as Winslow strode past. The minister-on-leave blamed himself. He had wanted to circulate for feedback; to learn what worked and what didn’t. But had he overestimated Jess? He should have stayed backstage – onstage even, in a two-man front. Why wave these red flags? Give ‘em the good stuff!

Instead the builder excavated a deeper hole for himself. It can’t promise, he said into the noise, that after we die … Die, die, die, Winslow heard multi-speaker echoes. Our souls will go on living in endless bliss. That’s what I call baloney. The word began grating on the ex-marine. Just say bullshit, he thought, you’re in New York now. He reached the bottom of the aisle and stared up at his accomplice. To the natives Jess must have looked like a wee bird on a red, white, and blue nest, chirping some damned un-American stuff, too. Arms folded, he stood like a laborer paid by the hour; no skin off his back that the job was held up. He didn’t even look surprised. He had come to tack his theses on the world’s door, and some would gag on it; all right then. Maybe he gets his kicks this way, Winslow thought; stirring up the animals, acting out lion-tamer fantasies. Who am I hooked up with here? He could not truthfully say he knew his heretic very well. Three months before, they had not met.

Now, belatedly, the crowd-buyer had to acknowledge a degree of public displeasure. Hey, folks, I thought we had a deal here, he said. I pay you twenty bucks, you give me twenty minutes. I’m keeping up my end. A spatter of applause greeted this display of brass.

To his left Winslow passed a section packed with the poor. Hip to hip under the eyes of the speaker, they were better behaved than most, yet without enthusiasm, as if the shame of being bought (like their ancestors!) had dawned on them. It meant seeing stones thrown at the Lord. The few whites among them looked misplaced. One was a fat redhead, a surprising ally. She shouted through cupped hands, Talk, Jess, we’ll listen, and caught the rascal’s eye. He threw her a wink.

I said heaven is baloney, he said into the din. But there’s no hell either. That surprised them. Hell, now. There’s real nonsense for you, he said, feeding into it. Terrorizing the good people more than the bad, what’s the sense of that? And there’s nothing to it. Want to know why? He raised his hands, palms up, in a gesture of sweet willingness to elucidate. The noise retreated a decibel or two.

Winslow’s face felt as if on fire. Not one but a bank of lights around the balcony beamed at the stage. Squinting into the glare, he saw the audience as Jess above him must have seen it, in dense dark haze, a formless body steaming with breath, heat, and odors, massively alive, a creature of one life and many lives. To win such a beast to your cause! The pensioned marine sensed something of the desire that drives demagogues (and maybe his friend up there).

Take the worst guy you can imagine, said Jess Josephson and wasted no time offering Hitler. He thrust a fist over the dais rail as if plunging the dictator in Dante’s inferno. Five seconds, ten seconds, his hand flailed in mimed agony. We’re talking lots of degrees here, folks. We’re talking blast furnaces, he said. And in no time the sinner seemed to have experienced correction. Oh, he’s burnt bad, folks, Jess said, inspecting his hand. Yet he plunged it back. People laughed. He exhibited a knack for comic timing. It pleased the elder accomplice. But what is God supposed to do if you listen to the religions? Keep him there for eternity! After he’s learned his lesson. What’s the good of punishing endlessly? Are you going to reform this guy, or do one bit of good for anybody he’s harmed? Sadism without limit is all it is. Sorry, folks, I think better of God. I don’t buy that.

Damn right, Winslow nodded on the floor below. And a true applause broke out, though not from everyone. Some people don’t even want hell debunked, he thought. Walkouts moved up the aisles. But forget unanimity, the Presbyterian told himself. That’s where faith always gets in trouble, going for a hundred percent, even if it has to kill you. Why does God have to be the only hundred percent question? He jammed his hands in the pockets of his blazer (a habit his wife had quit trying to break; Instant Baggywear, she called him.) But this was more like it. First hit of the game.

The extinguisher of hellfire now claimed that heaven makes no better sense. Want to know why? he said, repeating the hands-up gesture. Same reason. Eternity! What are we supposed to do for a billion years, play golf? With no clubs, no holes, no balls? The double entendres drew laughter. Don’t cheapen it, Winslow thought. Try out lines like that on me.

"But the worst thing about heaven, the worst thing … He let the sentence hang in air, and curiosity brought the noise down. … Is that there’s no work to do. Just sitting around. Forever. That’s absurd, folks! God wouldn’t have done that to us. He’s a worker himself, right? A creator? He wouldn’t make doing nothing the ideal. Just what we all need, an eternity of boredom. We’d be screaming to get out of there. Heaven would be as bad as hell. They count on people not thinking it through, that’s all."

He seemed to welcome the jeers mixed with laughter. It made Peter Winslow wonder. Would he welcome a dozen faithfuls charging up on stage to break his bones, too? Couldn’t beat the publicity. For all his personal charm (a thoroughly nice guy, that’s the wonder of it, the churchman had more than once assured his wife) Jess behind a microphone seemed capable of, if not intent on, inciting riot. I am going to get my head beat in with this guy, the senior troublemaker intuited.

Having disposed of the afterlife, the crowd-baiter turned to this life. He asked if God could be shown reliably to answer prayers on earth. He paused, as if not wanting to rush anyone. Then he gave his own answer: that after centuries of failed performance, religion falls back on a non-answer. The ways of the Lord are inscrutable. So just believe. And when something really awful happens, believe more. He’s testing you, Joe, loves you better for all the misery piled on. Sorry, folks, I don’t buy that either.

Go to hell then! someone shouted. Yeah! cried others. About time! There were people for whom Jess Josephson was undercutting all hopes of straightening accounts. Not in this life, and none afterwards? No justice at all? Winslow passed a cripple with stumps for legs, maybe a war vet, in a wheelchair, who had come in out of the cold or for the wretched twenty bucks. Was it worth it to learn he’d never stand again, even in the gates of heaven? Fuckin’ atheist! the man shouted.

Okay, try it another way, the incorrigible one bore on. He posed the idea of praying and indeed getting cured of cancer. "But if God lends a hand, why did he spare me and not the guy in the next bed, with six kids, all praying better than I do? Or six thousand killed the same day in an earthquake? Or six million in the Nazi holocaust? Why me? What’s so wonderful about me? He turned to another section of the hall. I’m sorry, folks, I have to be blunt about this." (Winslow smiled. And till now you’ve been so tactful!) "It’s offensive, downright offensive, to think God singled me out. Where is His sense of proportion? This is a big world, awful things happening every moment. Children starving, women raped, prisoners tortured, all begging for help. Yet God reaches down in my gut to cure one cancer but lets a ship full of people sink a thousand miles away? His eye is on the sparrow, we’re told. But a mother crying over a dead child: ‘Look at this sparrow, how could You miss this sparrow here?’"

Hairs rose on the back of Peter Winslow’s neck. This was the Josephson he had counted on, eloquent, angry. "A God who answers some prayers is less trustworthy than a God who answers none, said Jess. If no prayers are answered, okay, we can live with that. We know we’ve got to help ourselves. But a God who advertises prayer answers and then does and doesn’t, is like a referee who changes the rules in the middle of the game. Then changes them back again. Keeps changing them, so you never know where you stand. You play wondering when he’ll turn on you. And deep down, I’m afraid, you hate Him."

Boo! a man yelled, close enough to make Winslow’s ears ring. Keep your fuckin’ money! The foulmouth kicked past someone in an aisle seat. Others stood, shouted, waved fists, but Jess seemed to learn something from the growls of the mob-beast. He folded his arms. He listened like an officer to a bombardment, waiting for his moment to advance. Winslow doubted he could have stood up to it. No one had ever jeered his sermons. Better maybe if they had. God was maddening enough, what if rage in the pews were not as spiritually valid, as respectful of the truths underlying the universe as hymns, candles, and bowed heads?

I do not want to hate God, Jess Josephson said. But in the old religions this is the God we get. A distortion. A monster.

Siddown, siddown, siddown! The shout took on numbers and a rhythm. Soon the hall was shuddering with it. The speaker was forced to pause. A rain of torn paper fluttered down. But an opposing chant also sounded: Let him talk! Let him talk! LET HIM TALK! It came from a section of young people, students, offended perhaps by free speech under attack. Others joined the beat of encouragement, rhythmically applauding. Soon this racket overcame the other. On the dais Josephson waved and grinned. Everyone wasn’t against him, for sure.

This is why … he raised both hands, hear me out, folks … this is why the old religions can’t hold anymore. We need a realistic belief, something that makes sense. People may still go to church and synagogue, but there’s no nourishment for the mind there. Myth and mummery. Intellectual junk-food …

Shuddup! Siddown!

Let him talk! Let him talk!

Religion has become habit. Going through the motions. There’s no more thought to it than changing a tire.

Shuddup, ya creep!

Get the hell back to Pittsburgh!

… Or else a desperate piety, performing exact rituals and observing tabus to keep the monster happy. And this is a tragedy. Because … because there is a real God! Taken aback, the noise-beast hesitated. And I do not hate Him or fear Him.

Ah. Winslow sensed a collective sigh. How we want that God should be, he thought. Any definition of God, any amount of God – something! Not nothing.

Do you want a believable God? said Jess Josephson. I say, start with the world. Something set it here. Or else the atoms always were, and swam together by chance. But then, how did the atoms get here? I don’t care how far back you go, how finely you divide the dust of the universe, there had to be a spark. Logic demands it. Jess was being nothing but conventional here, reasoning from a First Cause. The dullest seminarian would know the drill by heart.

You might ask, what’s so new about that? said Josephson. I say, nothing. It’s the oldest proof of God there is, but still I think a pretty good one. All right then, what kind of God? A father figure, mother figure? Or some unpicturable Power, beyond form or personality? I confess to you, I don’t know. At that point my imagination, such as it is, runs out. Another sigh, this of disappointment, as Winslow gauged it. They’d like more, a personal encounter, a new Moses on Sinai. Too bad. Not this century.

But this much is clear to me, the speaker went on. Where work is accomplished there is purpose. The creation was not for nothing. It had a purpose. And what was God’s purpose? He floated the question and was rewarded with a pause in the noise. I can only guess.

And not be hooted down? thought Winslow. Will we turn the world over on a guess? Yet the audience allowed it. Something in Jess Josephson’s manner held them, maybe nothing more than a naïve candor: puzzling it out in public, claiming not one inch more of truth than could be grasped in full view of thousands. My guess, he said, is that the purpose of the universe was — the act of creation itself.

He gave this the interval of a breath. "God Who existed before us — before everything — must have needed purpose in His existence, as we do in ours. Eternity wasn’t enough for Him. Endless enjoyment of His own perfect thought? Not enough. He had to get doing, had to get His hands dirty. To make something. This. A sweep of the hand took in the hall, the world. And why? Why invent a universe? Only to exert power? To have petty creatures like us to push around? Surely not. How wrong of the religions to tell us that. They belittle God!"

To a chorus of gasps he insisted on this. "They force the Architect of the universe into our miserable pattern of kings, dictators, ordinary power seekers. No way! It’s too trivial. God is above all that, He has to be. His will was to make out of nothing everything. And right there, it seems to me, is our clue to a truer relationship with Him. We should take our purpose from His purpose — from God’s own example. And create."

Unitarianism in a fresh suit of clothes, Winslow heard someone near him say and he had to smile. Oh no, he thought, not one more ism, not that! A moment of quiet settled on the crowd. Attention or mystification? he wondered. Do they think he’s telling them to write books, paint pictures? And just then, taking advantage of the lull, a loudmouth bellowed: Your twenty minutes are up, Bub!

Winslow glanced at the clock overhead and cursed. It showed 8:22. Rhythmic clapping began. Just when he’s getting hot …

What we can all create is our lives, Josephson pushed on. "Life is the material put in our hands to work. We are what we must create!"

Whether it was the conviction in his voice or the oddity of the idea, for a moment he had them again. What a turn-on for the mind it would be, he said, for ordinary people whose view of life is stunted by the scare-God when the real God is there all the time. Someone in the student section shouted, Yeah, yeah! as if it really were an igniting idea. Winslow strode down an aisle clapping, hoping to keep enthusiasm alive. A better idea of God wouldn’t need official keepers of truth. No sacred dogmas you’d better believe or go to hell, Josephson said.

He was batting ideas out in the dark now, hoping they landed for hits. But seats were creaking. Thousands had got up. They wanted their twenty dollars. Many might not have listened to a word. Yet some were hushing for quiet. Here and there scuffles broke out. People will get physical over this, Winslow thought. Don’t kid yourself. This crowd may be our best behaved.

A proper religion wouldn’t ask for your money. That’s a dead giveaway, said Josephson. They’re selling you God the doer of favors, to support their organizations. But God is free! Send no checks or money orders! Bursts of cheers and laughter took on a rhythm, which he tried to feed into. No more church, no more synagogue! But this was talking too loosely. There were boos. I don’t advocate anything violent, he had to backtrack. Absolutely not. No violence, no damage. Just quit going. They’ll fall of their own weight.

The loudspeakers had less effect. Too many were on their feet, some standing on seats, waving arms, hats and scarves. People were with him or against him, already into their roles as public chorus. I don’t know … he said, holding up a hand, trying to retain the beast by eye contact with thousands. Shh! his partisans pleaded. Finding a gap in the noise, he threw some final words into it. I can’t truthfully say where this is going, but I hope we have made – miraculously in the strain to hear came one more hush – a beginning. The word echoed: beginning … beginning.

His hand went up. A photo flash caught it. Thanks, everybody. And he stepped back.

A cheer exploded. It seemed to surprise him. He stood grinning in bursts of light. Torn paper fluttered down. Still alive! thought Winslow. His shirt was soaked. He caught sight of the fat redhead down front. There were tears on her cheeks. Terrific, terrific! she was saying. The minister-on-leave looked at the high clock: 8:26. Not bad; a lot covered. Rework it … stir up less anger … But damned if people weren’t coming forward, applauding towards the dais. Above Winslow’s head Jess Josephson leaned into the microphone. Hey, folks, I forgot. The cash is all there. Cheers sounded. Guards will hand out envelopes as you leave. Don’t rush. Safe trip home.

Enthusiasts eddied below him. Somebody called out something about a talk show. Reporters held up microphones. He bent over the rail, shook hands, cupped his other hand around an ear to catch questions. Seven days? No, billions of years. Didn’t I make that clear? …

Then Winslow was astonished to hear the redhead, in a sweat beside him, trumpeting upward like a mare elephant – and who the hell was she anyway? They’ve got enough story for now, Jess. Call a press conference tomorrow. I can help.

3.

It was a cold gray morning in New York’s Union Square, and a gawky, underfed-looking man was asked: Excuse me, sir, are you a rabbi?

Judah Iskaritz turned, cringing to be so accosted. His untrimmed beard, his black hat and coat were indeed stereotypes, but couldn’t a Jew look like a Jew without being a rabbi? Should he be asked if he loaned money at usury, too? His eyes widened to find himself addressed by a Gentile clergyman, short, gray, and fierce-looking, the man’s chin thrust out above a neck too scrawny for his Roman collar.

Rabbi … yes, Iskaritz said, flustered to be explaining. "But without congregation. A journalist of sorts. Jewish Weekly Views."

Ah, welcome to the club,’ said the other, extending a hand. Jeremy Kirk. Hate to be called ‘Reverend.’ Editor of Christians All, an ecumenical newsletter – also weekly — from the Protestant side. Didn’t see you at yesterday’s press conference, did I?"

Unfortunately, a prior commitment …

Should’ve been there, the inquisitor snapped. He’ll give us a lot of trouble.

Us?

Christians and Jews both. We’re in this together – talk about ecumenical! I suspect this Josephson will be worse for you folks than for us, though, and I say it in friendly spirit. He’s one of yours, y’know. A fresh source of anti-Semitism, which, Lord knows, we don’t need. Iskaritz frowned at the admonition, yet had to admit a certain validity. If I were Jewish, the goy persisted, I would go all-out to dissuade him. Have one of your people break his legs – joke! A mirthless smile flashed. What he’s talking is pure rot, of course. Not the point. But the mischief, the damage. He clicked his tongue. A co-religionist might talk sense to him. He wouldn’t hear it from me yesterday.

No?

"You didn’t catch the wise-ass reply he gave me? The Times had it verbatim … Blast, I should’ve worn another sweater." The Rev. Mr. Kirk glared up at the throne of heaven, which promised more discomforts. The air was damp and wintry, with a chill that knifed equally into the coats of Christian and Jew. Clouds hung low and dirty in the sky, as if the Almighty, weary of the