Word: jakes
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Problems arise when Jake's wife and son arrive from Russia. From the moment that they peer at each other through the immigration fence at Ellis Island, it is evident that Gitl (Carol Kane) and Yossele (Paul Freedman) will have trouble adjusting to Jake's foreign lifestyle. Jake, whose name was formerly Yaakov, now insists that they change their son's name from Yossele to Joey. He objects to his wife's wig as a vestige of the old country and insists that she wear her hair naturally...
Hester Street is the story of a Jewish family that cannot hold together under the strains of reunion in America. Jake Pakovnik has arrived in America before his wife and young son, and has had time to affect the trappings of his adopted country. Although he works in a sweatshop, Jake sports a three-piece suit and keeps a girlfriend on the side...
Gitl makes a valiant effort, but cannot conform to her husband's new ways. With his American values, Jake claims that he is twice as good a man as their boarder, Bernstein, because he makes twice as much money. Perhaps the sweatshop boss best summarizes the differences between the Old and New Worlds when he observes that in America, "the peddler becomes the boss and the Yeshiva student sits at the sewing machine." At one point, as her neighbor Mrs. Kavarsky is squeezing a groaning Gitl into a corset for that sleek American look, she tells her, "You wanna...
...script, adapted from a period novel called Yekl by Abraham Cahan, concerns a small group of transplanted Jews painfully adjusting to the promised city. Yekl (Steven Keats) now calls himself Jake, works in a sweatshop and courts Mamie (Dorrie Kavanaugh, an actress of spirited sensuality). He takes in a boarder, a subdued former Yeshiva student named Bernstein (Mel Howard), and prepares for the coming of his wife Gitl (Carol Kane) and infant son from the old country. Jake is not exhilarated by their arrival. They remind him of an older life now past; more important, he cannot break Mamie...
...Jake's story that the trials and compromises of assimilation are most easily perceived. But Writer-Director Silver gives as much attention to Bernstein and Gitl, even to Mamie, and so loses her central conflict. Most crucially, she is unable to resolve the basic emotional dilemma of Jake's confusion. It cannot simply be the new country and Jake's urgency to be part of it that turns him away from his wife and from tradition. Yet that is all the motivation Silver supplies him. It is just this short sightedness,this emotional skimpiness, that makes Hester...