Arnon Grunberg

Past

America

More on assimilation. A friend said to me: “I never assimilated to America, even though I’ve been here for decades. What does it mean to assimilate, you said that it means becoming completely invisible?”
“Maye I should have written unrecognizable,” I answered.
“You Jews have such a string identity,” she replied.
“Some Jews,” I said. “In general, assimilation is also the realization that you can give up your identity voluntarily because nobody is going to attack you for that reason. Some would say that the Jewish-American identity is by and large a thing of the past.”
It was time to go. Whatever assimilation is, being unidentifiable is a form of freedom.

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