I think it’s pretty obvious that both The Jazz Singer and Hester Street revolve around crises of identity. However, these two crises are seemingly superficially opposite as one deals with a protagonist wanting to leave behind tradition to pursue the new, exciting, and rebellious while the other centers around the resistance to depart from tradition and embrace the ways of the “new world”. On a deeper level, however, I think that these two issues are actually very similar and work towards a common goal. Both Jakie and Gitl face a time when they have to make a decision about their faith and how it defines them. Both characters are forced to discover their identities and make difficult choices about retaining their identities and belief systems while shaping to the roles they are expected to conform to. Both characters end up staying true to their faith identity in some way.
Though Jakie’s departure from the traditions of the Jewish faith to pursue his dream of becoming a jazz singer seems to be complete, I believe that there remained a part of him that expressed a desire to return to his Jewish roots and please his father. These desires are clearly seen when Jakie is in the audience listening to the performance of the Kol Nidre. Jakie is obviously affected by the performance and has flashbacks to his father singing it. Jakie has similar flashbacks when he looks into the mirror in blackface. This crisis of identity was bound to be resolved in the way that it was, with Jakie fulfilling his father’s dying wish to hear him sing the Kol Nidre. Jakie’s life revolves around some kind of religious experience, whether it be the traditional Jewish faith practices he grew up with or a different kind of religion – the one he experiences while playing the role of a jazz singer.
These types of internal identity conflict are a common thread throughout the history of immigration, especially through the era of Ellis Island. People who wanted a better life for themselves and their families experienced relatively traumatic passages into the United States, as Nancy Foner describes in her piece. Among these people were my grandparents who immigrated separately in the mid 1950s from Italy. At Sunday dinner, conversation centered, rather ironically, around my grandfather’s experience with both immigration and assimilation. Knowing only his sponsor, Uncle Joe, my grandfather’s main concern was not whether or not “L’America” would treat him well, but how he would fit in. He worked tirelessly, much like Gitl did, to learn the English language and slowly adopted “American” ways while retaining the values and traditions of his homeland – values and traditions that are still a very large part of his, and consequently my own, life. This happy medium was not a quick or easy transition. It was a hard struggle, as was portrayed most accurately in Hester Street. I think that all three films that I watched this week depict this struggle in a way that Foner’s text does not really address. While providing a nice description of the physical process and the reasons why this kind of process could occur, I feel that a lot of what comes next in terms of incorporating “American-ness” into the identity of the individual immigrant is missing and glossed over.
