No work will set me free
My father Adolf the Jew really was a Hitler. He broke my nose when I talked back to him. He wanted me to go to Vietnam, his patriotic offering to the American eagle.
I refuse to be an Isaac. I want nothing to do with Moriah. I think I will grow a toothbrush mustache so I can tell people I am a Son of Adolf.
I do not want to be a citizen of any country.
I renounce my Judaism. I am a Rube. My religion is Reubenism, after Jacobs’s firstborn. This makes literal sense.
I renounce Freud as a fraud, another final testamentor, another patriarch who confuses myth and fiction with science. Jung the anti- Semite was worse. May their bones be ground to dust.
I renounce Satan as a concept.
I renounce the fear of death. My life’s work is complete. I will be planted in the earth, another am ha aretz.
On second thought I will be cremated and my ashes will be spread over Germany and Poland.
Who dare call me wicked? My own son is marginal to the modern Jewish community. Who can blame him? What have they done for him lately?
The telling story of the Exodus is touching but it is not history. Our retelling is our greatest ritual and the Haggaddah begs to be rewritten for the son with a doctorate in history.
I admit to being wicked in my inclusion of Christians in the telling of the story. We are all Israelites, descendents of Jacob and Reuben and Simon and Levi, and their wives; who are wickedly not mentioned by every patriarchal chronicler.
Every patriarch is an Adolf Abraham. Enough already. Every Adolf is an Abraham Isaac. The Father wants to offer up the son on his altar of reality.
In Rabbinic literature the story of the Exodus from Egypt is also the odyssey of every individual. The story is our own personal story. The Pharaoh within oppresses and inspires plagues ending with the death of the first born sons. Yes this is my story. The Pharaoh in my family drama is also my Father who found the Pharaoh and Adolf within and without. We often speak of the spark of the messiah within each individual. Let us remember and never forget the Adolf within.
As in The Exodus Midrash , The son murders the father before the father murders the son. The mothers and daughters look on, speechless.
My Father was not the only Adolf the Jew. Many Jews were named Adolf Alpern (also known as Abraham) I have also found many Adolf Isadors who were Abraham Isaac Alperns like my father.
I have been told that no Jew today would name his son Adolf.
I will if I have another son.
I will call this book “My Son, Adolf the Jew”. In memory of my father.
What is in a name, anyway?
This will set their teeth on edge.
