The following is a summary of thoughts on my father in Final Kabballah.
My mother taught me kindness and compassion by example. She was an orphan who knew nothing of tradition or authority. A Kabballah my secular survivor Father handed down to me he said he received from his Father:
Ans man lernt
Nicht an Tate
Waskst ear est
Wie in wald.
My father escaped the Nazi’s when he was a third grader, so I am uncertain of his spelling skills. I am sure of the ambiguity:
If one does not teach
His father
He grows up as one
Wild in the world.
Who is the he? Father or son?
Is wildness less desirable than domesticity?
What may one teach the Father they fear?
Rebellion.
I rebelled against my Fathers assimilation and became an orthodox Rabbi. When I understood that I had merely displaced my earthly father with one as demanding in heaven, I rebelled against Orthodox Judaism and became a Kabballahist.
I rebelled once again and renamed and proclaimed a Final Kabballah. In the wild of my wilderness I chose a final path, leading the people effortlessly to the top of the Mountain. We carry with us the Moses who was floating in suspended animation into our final promised land. The First and Final Tablets and the bones of Joseph and Franz and even Sigmund and Hermann we carry in our Ark. On the Mountains top we place this banner: Truth or Death.
The Final Age Testament orphans me from all the Fathers, and is my atonement.
I believe the Messiah will be a woman, the men having had their chance.
The only mystery that remains is the how.
I am, The Lord our God, is the author, not this Rabbi.
I tell my own story.
My Father found his voice in retirement and studied to be a Cantor. When the voices and visions of the Hitler youth smashing the skulls of the elderly came back he returned to the tournament poker circuit. He said he could not lead the community of Israel in prayer. Being merely a second class survivor I did not completely comprehend. I think he wanted to be a Cantor to please me. He wanted me to teach him, and in the end he became my teacher.
I hid my Final Age Testament from my Father, my wilderness of wildness. Near the end of his life I finally gave him a copy of Final Testament. He spent most of three days in the guest room reading.
He wrote his review in the form of a one word poem, the only one I know of him ever writing. A Kabballah
Dad
(I meditated on this concrete Kabballah for hours before breaking the code:Live in lion love )
