Hester Street

Hester Street tells the story of Jewish immigrants who come to the Lower East side of New York City in 1896 from Europe and who live on Hester Street in Manhattan. When Yekl first comes to the U.S., he quickly assimilates into American culture and becomes Jake. He also begins to have an affair with Mamie, a dancer. His wife, Gitl, who arrives later with their son, Yossele, cannot assimilate and tension arises in the marriage. Eventually, Jake and Gitle divorce, however in turn, Gitle takes all of Mamie’s money and marries Bernstein, a faithful traditionalist.

The film is noteworthy for its detailed reconstruction of Jewish immigrant life in New York at the turn of the century — much of the dialogue is delivered in Yiddish with English subtitles — and was part of the wave of films released in the late 1960s and through the 1970s which began explicitly to deal with the complexities of American Jewish identity. In addition, Carol Kane’s lead character posed a still-provocative synthesis as she discovers her own self-assertion on behalf of her right to maintain a traditional identity in an aggressively modern setting. —Wikipedia