Being Jewish in America - Hester Street (1975)

From the Lower East Side to today, Jews in America seek to find a balance between tradition and modernity. The film Hester Street (1975) offers three perspectives on this question.
• Hester Street
CHAPTERS
0:00 - Hester Street
0:27 - Lower East Side
3:26 - Greenhorn
6:21 - Being a Yankee
8:52 - No Sheitels, No Tichels
12:33 - A Pox on Columbus
15:06 - Appearances
16:10 - Jake and Gittel's Marriage
17:52 - Jews in America Today

[@yudakrelin6461]

"Watching 'Hester Street (1975)' reminded me of the timeless challenge many face: balancing tradition and modern life. Set in the Lower East Side, the film offers different viewpoints on this struggle, making it relatable and thought-provoking. A classic worth revisiting!"

[@_yiddishkeit]

Definitely worth revisiting!

[@jonathanfarrell2378]

This film is special. It has faint similarities to “Fiddler on The Roof” and “Yentl.” Yet, this movie focuses on the impact that modernity had upon traditional societies. And the obstacles that immigrants had to face and survive. Thanks for posting this! 😊

[@_yiddishkeit]

Exactly! Stay tuned for a Fiddler on the Roof episode soon...

[@Allergictocatstoo]

Just discovered your channel! Love it! My father was first generation American, Yiddish was his first language, he grew up on the lower east side, the whole bit! He would take us for clothes, down to Orchard Dr. I would say, it’s where we bought clothes by the pound. My dad would haggle, like it was the 1850s. When my dad would switch over to English, the merchant hated the sound of it and so, to shut my father up, he would give him his price. The movie, Hester Street has always given me a lifeline to my world before I was born. Thank you so much for your important and meaningful look back.

[@_yiddishkeit]

My family immigrated from Soviet Union but I still have a nostalgia for this era tooooo. Glad to have given you a chance to reconnect :)

[@My20GUNS]

Great video. I'd never heard of Hester Street before your film club video, but I watched it last night and it was great. Good acting, great drama, and a wonderful microcosm of life as an immigrant. It's also informative on alot of Jewish tradition that I'm unfamiliar with, which is much appreciated. I loved how flawed everyone was, especially Jake. I liked that I wasn't always rooting for him. I loved how authentic the immigrant struggle is portrayed and I could see the merits of either path someone could take. When Jake was mourning his father, I saw it as another rejection of tradition. He finishes too quickly, almost like he reconnected with his old self, thought of his family, and wanted to get them out of the backwards/backwoods village to become "civilized" Americans (or maybe just more respectable/"educated" people.) And I really liked Gitl's arch. She came over very timid and conservative, but really metamorphosized into a strong independent woman. (Not fully abandoning all traditions, but no longer being shackled by having to hide parts of herself. She's Jewish, but she can be a loud/proud Jewish-American who dresses as she wants, raises her kid(s), and runs the family store while her new Hubby studies.)

[@_yiddishkeit]

Sooo glad you watched it! It is JAM PACKED with stuff and its a very authentic film. I also can see the connection you made between the mourning scene and ellis island.

[@viggosimonsen]

Beautiful review. If you haven't done it yet, you should definitely review A Serious Man by the Cohen brothers - their most underrated masterpiece, in my view. It has many similar themes running through it

[@_yiddishkeit]

Love that movie! Its def on my list for a future week. Thanks for watching :)

[@cynthiabellack7994]

Excellent movie!

[@Sad_bumper_sticker.]

Thank you for this video, fascinating that the topic of Get. As a cultural-film studies major from Poland we had a few classes dedicated to Yiddish Cinema in pre1939 Poland. I wish this movie was available online.

[@_yiddishkeit]

Glad you enjoyed :) The movie is available on KZbin! I'll put it in the description.

[@lyndawilliams4570]

I also loved this movie! Jake pissed me off but I loved Gitl and Bernstein. I’m not Jewish but grew up in NY 😊

[@_yiddishkeit]

Glad you love the movie

[@alexcarter8807]

I actually came across this movie years ago and found it quite good. I resonated with Bernstein more because I dunno how it was in the past but these days in the US you can work hard, you can work very hard, and it's still not guaranteed that you'll get ahead financially. But if you stick to your traditions, those don't cost too much to keep, and you have something that's yours. BTW my mother was firmly in the tichel/sheitel club and this was in the 1970s.

[@melodymacken9788]

Brilliant conversation. Rotorua, New Zealand 🇳🇿

[@leamilgraum7294]

I’m clearly with Gittel. It’s not just “tradition “, it’s all the values of the Torah that she carries in her heart that are very precious that she stands for.

[@AdmanMadDog]

Y'shkaiach for doing this ❤

[@_yiddishkeit]

😊

[@shmujew4791]

my grandparents all resonated more with jake but their parents who they brought over wore traditional dress

[@_yiddishkeit]

Wow! thanks for sharing :)

[@naomiburn8386]

To answer your question at the end, I resonated with Gittel's attitude because she is comfortable in what she knows.

[@jeanneamato8278]

You did a lovely job. I resonate with Gitl. I will be converting to Judaism. I adore this movie. Gitl was treat shabbily.

[@_yiddishkeit]

Congrats 💛

[@stevenkarras3490]

Thanks for making this. It's a film worthy of attention, even after nearly fifty years. Stephen Keats was a terrific actor who sadly took his own life.

[@WorldNewsandComment]

Wonderful! Thank you!

[@andrewsilverstein6186]

Thanks. I also liked the movie when I saw it many years ago

[@johnfinbarr1160]

The theme you point out of reconciling tradition with modernity transcends to all humanity. For me the great work of identity or struggling with identity is what is the greatest novel in the English language- James Joyce’s “Ulysses”. As its experimental form puts people off, they give up on it, but if you persist, Leopold Bloom, the novel’s subject, is a Jew struggling with identity on religious, national and moral levels. His Jewishness alienates him by default in Catholic/Christian Dublin and by the end of the book the reader embraces this identification of alienation for all of humanity in oneself in a resounding affirmation of life with Molly’s “Yes”. The book is contemporaneous to Hester St, but spins the narrative of an Irish Jew at the beginning of the 19th century. Well worth persisting here for Jew and gentile alike.

[@_yiddishkeit]

Woah, will have to check it out. Thanks :)

[@christopherphillips7985]

Excellent drosh!

[@_yiddishkeit]

Thank you 😊

[@phillyburbs2002]

I watched this years ago one late night when I couldn't sleep. I loved it. I remember every scene you brought up. I'm not Jewish. Now I want to watch it again. I loved it.

[@_yiddishkeit]

relatable 💛

[@williampawson5476]

Loved this movie when it came out... have only seen it twice... probably 40 years ago or more..... EARLY Carol Kane...

[@_yiddishkeit]

Woah... respect! Thanks for being here 💛

[@seattlebeard]

I have to agree with you. It's my favorite too, and I'm not even Jewish. Thanks for making this video and bringing the film to people who may have never seen it.

[@_yiddishkeit]

💛💛💛

[@taramaclaird9633]

Like your video very much. I will watch this movie.

[@_yiddishkeit]

Tysm, I'm sooo glad you're gonna watch it :)

[@RobertaFierro-mc1ub]

MyBeloved white German Shepard, Layla, was born in Vinnie Hum's tiny apartment on Hester Street that very same year!

[@jeromemckenna7102]

Jacob Riis's last name is pronounced 'Reece', his name means rice in Danish.

[@primrosebloom]

I’m curious to watch this movie now. I resonate more with Gittel.

[@_yiddishkeit]

You def should! Check description

[@ChanaSterna]

Where can you watch this movie?

[@_yiddishkeit]

Check the video description. Def worth a watch! (Try also searching on yt, there are some free versions)

[@cohenlabe1]

Is there a connection with the Hebrew definition of the word 'Hester' and the theam of the movie

[@_yiddishkeit]

Good point! Not directly, Hester Street is a real street in the LES but there are theories... One I heard is that it was changed to a female name to refer to the change from Jake being the main character in the book, to Gitl have a much larger role in the movie.

[@cohenlabe1]

@@_yiddishkeit yes but of all the street names Hester means hidden in Hebrew perhaps someone working the film knew that

[@lilyofthevalley9819]

I LOVE this film as well. The question the characters pose (speak English 2 the exclusion of Yiddish, ) is the same Latinos find nowadays. But there S a stitch of more tolerance) th😊nks

[@_yiddishkeit]

glad you're here! So true that this story applies nowadays

[@milascave2]

Jake reminds me of people who see Muslim women with head covering and yell. "Take that off! You're in America now" And, contrarily to stereotype, there are cases where it is the husband who wants their wives to take off the head covering to look more Western, and the wife who does not want to.

[@_yiddishkeit]

I guess it is cross cultural

[@lohikarhu734]

The photos of the lower East side kind of make one wonder what convinced people to leave Europe for what looks like a slum... Must have been quite a struggle for all of the immigrants at that time. Supporting 🇵🇸 but not hating you, regular people of the Jewish faith. Good movie for me to track down...

[@Sad_bumper_sticker.]

Google XIX century and pre-WW2 Pogroms on Jewish people in Eastern Europe and Russia, e.g. how many thousands of Jewish people were murdered in Pogroms in e.g. pre-WW2 Ukraine. And after WW2 broke out many Eastern European countries took part in German Nazi holocaust crimes e.g. locals participated in the murder of hundreds of thousands Jews in Babi Yar. There are countless such examples. The antisemitic violence and pogroms were behind why so many Jewish people from Eastern Europe and Russia migrated to the US in the XIX centrury and early XX century, then from the 1930s Hitler targeted Jewish people in Germany, so those who were fortunate to have money migrated from Hitler’s Germany before 1939. Also, it is an antisemitic myth that most Jews living in XIX and early XX century Europe and Russia were rich, the Jewish population was never homogenic, many Jewish people were Hasidic and lived in wooden Shtetls in very modest conditions. The community poverty was such, that pre-WW2 Jewish traffickers would travel to Eastern Europe to trick poor Shtetl Jewish prople into giving them their preteen and teen daughters „to work as servants in South America”, this was a mass precedent. The victimised women were then trafficked for decades. So America was safe for Jewish pre-WW2 migrants. And they worked hard to escape poverty.

[@_yiddishkeit]

Despite the terrible conditions, the promise of america seemed like a better deal than staying in the Russian empire.

[@janetmacarthur2130]

Check out what they endured during the pogroms.

[@bluebee5266]

If you knew some history you would know that these people were fleeing for their lives and survival as a people (the May Laws, etc.). Then with history knowledge in general you might also stop "supporting Palestine" too.

[@TerryMcKennaFineArt]

Not Jewish, but enjoyed. BTW my mother's family were from Lithuania - came here 1911 and my mother's 2 oldest sisters were born over there. So there was some assimilation even for Catholics. Even overlapping foods with Jews - so Kishka (ours had blood) and borscht. My mother's family worked in garment factories as well. And one aunt who could not tolerate lint (she sneezed) became a maid.

[@_yiddishkeit]

Wow - it really does cross cultures, and one day I have to do something on Jewish food.

[@bevklayman4158]

This really made me kvell! I was in my twenties when Hester Street came out, and I was quite ignorant about my Jewish roots, but it resonated strongly with me in ways I didn't fully understand. It is a classic. Seeing your clips now, at a time when worldwide emigration is the norm, the evil of right-wing hatred is on the rise, Gaza is an international shame, Israel is in shambles, and anti-semitism is both on the rise and very misunderstood, brought so much mixed emotion out in me. I want to recommend you cover another lesser known classic from the 70s, "The Frisco Kid" with Gene Wilder. Lighter, for sure, and hilarious.

[@_yiddishkeit]

Thanks for watching :) I love Frisco Kid, its def on the list!

[@neilgoodman2885]

>>They all resonate with me, IN HARMONY, shmendrich! >>Respectfully Serene, NHG. >>PS: (I think you're just a little too young for this job, no?)

[@EndingSimple]

First, you're interested in surviving. Then, you want to why?

[@omg-bh4pg]

הסתר פנים

[@_yiddishkeit]

נכון

[@philipgolding3672]

My Great grand Mother was Jewish immigrating to New Zealand in 1860's from England. However converting to Christianity after marrying in 1880's to an Anglican. So this tradition of Jewishness' is thrown out the door' in NZ because you are A New Zealander"!!! (KIWI). As my Grandfather married a Prespretyian Scot'.

[@_yiddishkeit]

thanks for sharing your story

[@sheikowi]

Where'd you get the comedian for the narrative. Disrespectful. Get your "keit" together.

[@jamilabagash149]

Being Muslim in Israel. A more befitting investigation for journalists..