Hester Street

A Segal Centre presentation of a Dora Wasserman Yiddish Theatre production A Play with Music by Sharyn Rothstein With Original Music and Songs by Joel Waggoner Based on the film by Joan Micklin Silver and the novella Yekl by Abraham Cahan

A love story caught between tradition and reinvention Based on the landmark film Hester Street, this Dora Wasserman Yiddish Theatre production plunges us into the Jewish immigrant experience on New York’s Lower East Side in the 1890s, where survival, ambition, and identity collide inside the smallest of homes.

When Gitl arrives from Europe to join her husband, she expects the man she married. Instead, she finds a stranger who has reinvented himself, ashamed of his roots and hungry for acceptance in a new world. Trapped between tradition and reinvention, their marriage becomes a test of loyalty, desire, and endurance.

Praised as “even deeper than the beloved 1975 movie version” by The Washington Post, this powerful stage adaptation brings urgency, intimacy, and emotional force to a story about assimilation that still resonates today.

How much of yourself would you give up to belong? Find out, on Hester Street.

LISA'S NOTE

“Hester Street feels incredibly timely, even decades after it was first written. It’s funny, emotional, deeply human, and experiencing it in Yiddish makes it even more powerful.”

Audience Advisory

Includes intense verbal arguments, emotionally charged scenes involving gender power imbalances, moments of physical intimidation, and an extramarital affair.

Includes discussions of violent anti-Jewish pogroms in Europe and themes of survival, which may be intense for some viewers.

Some mature language (mild profanity, historical insults, and derogatory terms accurate to the era).

Recommended for ages 13+

Please note that babes in arms or children under the age of two (2) are not permitted in the theatre unless expressed permission is given by the theatre.

150 minutes including a 15-minute intermission