Adolf the Jew Blog

Adolf the Jew: A Kaddish

This work shall set me free. I am the Son of Adolf the Jew. I hold in my hand his birth certificate. Bornamen und Familenname Adolf Alpern; 9 August 1930. Signed and sealed the eagle holds the swastika. As a young teenager, I bought a belt buckle at a garage sale with the same eagle and swastika. I was strangely drawn to these forbidden symbols, which my father never discussed. Adolf the Jew used Abraham in America, his Hebrew name. The State Department would not issue Abraham a Passport because his birth certificate says Adolf. The status of Abraham’s father Nathan is also unclear. In America he said he was from Poland to avoid the obvious question of why he stayed in Nazi Germany so late. Nathan was born in Berlin. My request for German citizenship has been denied on the grounds that Nathan was Polish. Citizenship flows from the blood of the father. So reasons the Fatherland to this day. Now I have no citizenship to renounce. I know enough to hate everything German. The only good news for my father Abraham is that he was a man without a nation. Considering the 20th Century will be remembered by future historians as “The Age of Barbarism” this is a blessing. I was born during the great snowstorm of December 1950, in Pittsfield Massachusetts. The hospital sits on the crest of a hill overlooking the farm where Herman Melville wrote Moby Dick. Being a Son of Adolf, who would have guessed that I would write my own white and black whale, The Final Age Testament? I labored for twenty five years on that tome, a literary lifetime. Call me Isaac. My Hebrew names are Elijah Aryeh Moshe, but I am also an Isaac. My father, like his namesake brought me up to be a Holokaustos on the altar of his silence. This explains everything about the life of Al e ya who Aryeh Moshe Isaac Alpern, Laurence Maurice in English, son of Adolf Abraham Alpern. Son of Adolph, I am a Rabbi. I replaced my father with the fathergod of Orthodox Judaism while at U.C.L.A. I was the first catch of Chabad Lubavitch, the Chassidic group, on campus. I went to New York to meet the Grand Rabbi who would be elevated to Messiah by his disciples. This adventure is described in part in the Final Age Testament. I may be remembered as the only Jew of the century more grandiose than the Lubavitcher’s Rebbe. His blessing to me was that I would be matzleacch (successful) in every endeavor. Why did I rewrite the Bible? Destiny. Father Abraham’s, mine, and my peoples. This fragment explains everything. My father placed me on the altar, as did his namesake his son. Every son hates his father at some point. Explaining the Tenth plague the Rabbi’s teach that the first born sons of Egypt, upon hearing they would be slain, took up the sword to slay their fathers. The Father is The Old, the Son the New. The Father binds the Son. Tradition. Mother watches. The Son turns on The Father and will make a meal of his flesh. I have no stomach for this. Abraham’s silence, Isaacs passivity, Gods complicity or any submission to the sacrifice I call into question. Enough already. Either we rewrite our myth or it will be the death of all of us. It is time that we learn how to read sacred texts, This, I began to learn in my Rabbinic training in Jerusalem. Midrash. Interpretation. The sand in the craw of consciousness produces the pearl. The beginning of wisdom is mastering the art of the question. We need not go blind from reading for Isaac to have the last laugh. Isaac lives! All of this is in my F.A.T. Leviathan rewrite of the Bible, a leap I am happy to be done with. The work did not make me free. Now I am able to seek my family roots. Just this week I made contact with members of Moshe Maurice’s family in France. Alperns all, we have skipped at least a generation of contact. We must give Adolf the Hitler no posthumous victories. We will be a family again. The Nazi patralineal blood descent must be confronted. I will return to Karlshrue and worship in the synagogue destroyed on Kristallnacht. I will retrace our escape into Switzerland and research my Uncles and Aunts who went to France and Belgium and Israel. I will receive and renounce German citizenship in the name of my father Abraham Adolf the Jew. I think I shall call this autobiography Son of Adolf, the Jew.