Yiddish film scholar will introduce 'Letter to Mother'

Cornell Cinema will host Yiddish film and theater scholar and ethnomusicologist Rita Ottens on Saturday, March 26, at 7:30 p.m. in Willard Straight Theatre, where she will introduce the classic Yiddish film "A Letter to Mother."

This tale of family disintegration and poverty serves as a metaphor for the displacements facing European Jews in 1939. One of the last Yiddish films made in Poland before the Nazi invasion, the film tells the story of a mother's persistent efforts to support her family. While her husband lives in America, Dobrish struggles to care for her three children in pre-World War I Polish Ukraine. After her family is pulled apart by severe poverty and the turmoil of war, Dobrish and her family make their way to New York and turn to the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) in search of a brighter future.

Released on Sept. 14, 1939, two weeks after the German blitzkrieg over Poland, this film opened to packed audiences at the Belmont Theater in New York. Hailed by The New York Times as one of the best Yiddish films to reach America, "A Letter to Mother" was the highest-grossing Yiddish film of its time. "The film has great music and singing and a great performance by Lucy Gehrman as the quintessential Jewish mother," said Ottens.

The film is in Yiddish with English subtitles. The event is co-sponsored with the Program of Jewish Studies, Temple Beth-El, Cornell Hillel and Congregation Tikkun v'Or.