Shannon Mullen

@MullenAPP

As a child growing up in a crowded tenement on New York's impoverished Lower East Side, Norman Alpert shared something deeply personal with the President of the United States.

Like Franklin D. Roosevelt, Alpert was stricken with polio, shortly before his 13th birthday.

The child of East European Jewish immigrants, he was too ill to go through with the bar mitzvah service he'd spent months preparing for. But on Saturday, 75 years later, he'll finally have that opportunity.

"What does it mean?" Alpert, 88, of Spring Lake Heights, said prior to the ceremony at Temple Beth Or in Brick. "It means I'm doing what everybody else is doing. I'm no longer an outcast."

Back in 1939, Alpert was confined to a hospital bed for weeks, the monotony of his convalescence broken only by painful spinal taps and visits from his parents, Sam and Pauline Alpert.

His father, then an unemployed cap maker, promised to take him to see the movie "The Wizard of Oz" if he got better, and he did. His parents were so overjoyed, they brought him home from the hospital in a taxi, a rare extravagance.

"That," he remembered with a smile, "was a red-letter day."

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Unlike FDR, Alpert regained his ability to walk, even run. Though the disease disqualified him from service in the military in World War II — a fact that still pains him — he went on to live an active, fulfilling life as an accountant, husband, and father of two children, and grandfather of three.

But all these decades later, the polio that had been little more than a searing memory has crept back in recent years, with a vengeance.

It's called "post-polio syndrome." Steadily, stealthily, it has bent him into a permanent right angle. X-rays of Alpert's spine look like a map of the Mississippi.

"Nobody understands it," said his son, Dr. Mitchel Alpert, 58, of Wall, a pediatric cardiologist. "It seems to be, if you live long enough, it comes back. His back is a disaster."

But that won't stop Alpert from presenting himself before the congregation at Temple Beth Or Saturday, when he will read a lengthy scripture passage, called a haftarah, in ancient Hebrew. He's been practicing for weeks.

It so happens that the Torah reading for Nov. 1 this year concerns Abraham, who, late in his life, was called by God to leave his homeland and do something totally unexpected. Alpert feels a bit like that about his bar mitzvah.

"I'm 88," he said, "not 13."

The idea of having the ceremony was suggested to him by another member of Temple Beth Or, a small congregation affiliated with the Conservative Judaism movement.

His rabbi, Rabbi Robert Rubin, said the service isn't really necessary.

Bar and bat mitzvah, he said, happens automatically when a Jewish boy (at age 13) or girl (at 12), with or without a special ceremony.

"Officially, bar mitzvah is coming of age. So we don't really have bar mitzvah, we become bar mitzvah," Rubin said. "It's a status — a person subject to the commandments and requirements of the community.

"So he's been a bar mitzvah for 75 years," he said.

It's not uncommon, Rubin said, for Jewish men to have another bar mitzvah ceremony when they turn 83, in observance of the 70th anniversary of their passage into religious adulthood. In the psalms, 70 years is cited as the span of a man's life.

Turning 88, as Alpert did earlier this month, is all the more reason for his family to celebrate.

Alpert's wife, Edith, died more than two years ago, just shy of their 60th wedding anniversary. After the roughly three-hour bar mitzvah service, the family will gather in a community room at the synagogue that was recently renovated in her honor, thanks to a contribution from Alpert.

"He's the most wonderful man I ever met — kind, friendly, caring, loving," said Alpert's daughter, Susan Lesser, 53, of Wall. "He would do anything for anyone."

Lesser said "The Wizard of Oz" has always had special significance to her family because of the ordeal her father went through when he battled polio.

"It motivated him to get well," she said.

Alpert, who has has a younger sister named Dorothy, said the story of a young girl and her dog swept off to a magical land fascinated him as a boy. When he and his father finally went to the theater and watched Judy Garland singing "Over the Rainbow" — a song Alpert was already familiar with from the radio —it was exactly the way he imagined the scene as he lay in his hospital bed, wondering if he'd ever walk again.

If you happen to be among those who aren't big fans of the film, especially the part with the flying monkeys, it might be best if you didn't mention that to Alpert.

"It's great," he insisted, "because it tells you — how does she say it? — there's no place like home."

Shannon Mullen: 732-643-4278; smullen@app.com

A dreaded disease

Until the development of a polio vaccine in 1955, the disease crippled approximately 35,000 Americans every year, making it one of the most feared diseases of the 20th century, according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. Though polioi is now virtually eradicated, there were 416 cases reported worldwide in 2013, mostly in Somalia, Nigeria and Pakistan, according to statistics from the Global Polio Eradication Initiative.