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The First Yiddish Movie

It seems Yiddish movies are back after being off of the silver screen for more than half of a century. Two Orthodox Jews, wearing the traditional black garb, have entered the movie scene, have made an action-packed drama about a religious school flunky run amok. This interesting film will definitely get people talking.

This 90-minute film was produced by Kosher Entertainment Productions. `A Gesheft` is the brainchild of two brothers, Yakov and Mendy Kirsh, a bookkeeper and a real estate agent respectively, who have no prior filmmaking experience. `We decided that religious Jews needed their own movies far from the dangerous influence of Hollywood,` comments Mendy Kirsh. `There`s no treyf (things that are non-kosher) in this movie!`

`A Gesheft` in English means `The Deal.` Peretz, the main character is a wheeler-dealer who finds himself straddling his Orthodox Jewish background and what he calls, `the real world.` Peretz`s color and flamboyance, in this film is what gets him in trouble and makes him so appealing. His bold threat (to his creator perhaps?), `Nobody messes with Peretz Grossberg!` may be the beginning of his downfall. The film is full of colorful images of Orthodox Jews in their own environment, speaking their own language. The entire film is in Yiddish. The Yiddish spoken in the film is a deeply accented, religious Yiddish sometimes called Hyemish. This is a world of insiders where everyone speaks Yiddish. The ambulance driver, the doctor, the construction worker, and the gangster all speak Yiddish. Even when an African-American police officer calls in on his radio, his English spoken lines are subtitled in Yiddish!