Arnon Grunberg

Will

Jid

Last night at Sushi Seki on 1st Avenue, a man came in, probably in his thirties. He sat next to me at the sushi bar.
"I needed to sober up," he said. "Thats why I parked my car here. I'm a responsible driver."
"Yes," I said.
"I had too much wine," he added.
Then he looked at me and he asked: "Are you an intellectual?'"
"I'm an author," I answered, usually I'm willing to engage in a conversation, but I wanted to read my book.
The man asked my name.
I told him my first name, then he said in Jiddisch: "Bist du a jid?"
'Yes," I answered.
"I'm Shalom," he said.
He told me that he was chabad, and that assimilation was just another Holocaust.
"You don't look like a chasid," I said.
"We chasidim are hippies," he said, "I'm a hippie, I just want to be a righteous man, but first I need to sober up."
He asked the waiter if there was shellfish in the miso soup. There was no shellfish in the miso soup, so he ordered one, after the soup arrived he went on about assimilation.
Other people at the sushi bar were listening to our conversation, I felt it was time to leave.
"Read my books," I told Shalom.
He answered: "We have free will, but if God wants us to meet again we will meet again. It wasn't for nothing that I parked my car in front of this sushi place, because I needed to sober up."

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