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The first time I entered Yonah Schimmel’s Knish Bakery on Houston Street, I was greeted, across from the signs selling cherry-flavored cream cheese knishes and egg creams, by the poster for Joan Micklin Silver’s
Hester Street (1975). I’d just moved from Los Angeles to New York City, unsure of where to go or what to do for paid work, and was spending a lot of hours milling about the Lower East Side, browsing bookshops. On the walls of Yonah Schimmel’s I would pore over the strips of yellowed newspaper clippings, which told stories of the local Yiddish theater players who’d come there in the ’20s to unwind over a knish after a night of performances, and who would stay talking into the next morning. When I finally sat down with a black-and-white egg cream, I made sure to face that
Born to Russian Jewish parents in Omaha, Nebraska, Joan Micklin Silver launched her feature film career in 1975 with
Hester Street, a film based on a short story by Abraham Cahan. She wrote the screenplay as well as directing the film that portrays the Jewish-American immigrant experience and which served as a tribute to her parents and heritage.
Initially a music teacher and freelance writer in Cleveland, Ohio, Micklin Silver was inspired to work in film when she saw Satyajit Ray’s
Pather Panchali (1955). When her family moved to New York City in 1967, she seized this opportunity and began her filmmaking career as a screenwriter for educational film companies. Commissioned by the Learning Corporation of America, Micklin Silver wrote and directed the short
Everett
The pioneering writer-director fought to bring Jewish stories to the silver screen at a time when some of her projects were considered an ethnic oddity, she has said.
Joan Micklin Silver, the pioneering independent female director behind
Hester Street and
Crossing Delancey, among many other titles, who fought to bring Jewish stories to the silver screen, has died. She was 85.
Silver died on Thursday at her home in Manhattan of vascular dementia, Silver s daughter, Claudia, told
Born and raised in Omaha, Nebraska to Russian Jewish parents, Silver left home to attend Sarah Lawrence College in New York. Not long after her graduation in 1956, Silver married the son of a Cleveland-based Zionist rabbi, Raphael D. Silver, and the couple settled in Cleveland, where Silver taught music classes and wrote plays as she worked to raise three children.