Hester Street In Silver Spring
Among the many cultural events in the Washington, D.C. area is an annual Jewish Film Festival. This year marked the 25th annual festival, and it featured as a "centerpiece evening" the 1975 film "Hester Street" shown at the American Film Institute in Silver Spring, Maryland. The film received the festival's "Annual Visionary Award" which "recognizes creativity and insight in presenting the full diversity of the Jewish experience through the moving image." The director of the film, Jean Micklin Silver, and the leading actress, Carol Kane, received the award. Carol Kane was present at the screening and gave a presentation.
Set in 1896 in New York City's Lower East Side, Hester Street tells a story of immigrant Jewish experience. The film was based on a short novel by Abraham Cahan (1860 -- 1951), an immigrant writer and activist and publisher of the Yiddish newspaper the "Jewish Daily Forward". The film explores the difficulties of coming to a new country and different culture and the tension between maintaining traditional ways and assimilation.
A young man, Yankl, comes to America from Russia five years before his wife and small son. Yankl takes the name "Jake" and works towards assimilating into American life, including taking an Americanized lady friend. When his wife Gitl and their son Jossele arrive, the couple have already grown apart. Gitl wants to maintain her traditional religious Jewish identity while her husband pushes her often boorishly, towards Americanization. The couple have as a boarder a young scholar, Bernstein. Gitl gradually learns to assert her independence. When the marriage breaks down, she and Bernstein begin a relationship as Jake begins a new, and seemingly less promising life, with his Americanized lady.
The movie is poignant and the story well told with echoes of the choices still faced by American Jews and other immigrant groups. The film is in black and white and captures the clutter and liveliness of the turn of the century Lower East Side with its crowded rooming houses, lively push-cart filled streets, and sweatshops. The film uses a mix of English and subtitled Yiddish with idiomatic speech patterns. The music score of American ragtime and dance music is a delight.
In 2011, the Library of Congress deemed "Hester Street" "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant" and selected the film for inclusion in the National Film Registry. The movie richly deserves this honor as well as the visionary award it received at the Washington Jewish Film Festival. I was glad to have the opportunity to see and to remember this excellent film.
Robin Friedman