Hester Street

Hester Street is named after one of the main streets of the Lower East Side of Manhattan, the biggest Jewish ghetto in the world at the turn of the 20th century. Gitl, a Jewish immigrant just arrived from Russia, joins her husband Yankel in the Land of Endless Opportunities, only to discover a different person. Yankel, who now goes as "Jake," dreams of becoming a full-fledged American and ridding himself of the old-world mentality. He is ashamed of Gitl's old-world ways. Gitl, for her part, feels hurt and betrayed, but most of all she misses her beloved of yore. The debut film by director Joan Micklin Silver (Crossing  Delancey) is a kind of souvenir album from the New York Jewish-immigrant experience of the beginning of the 20th century.