East and West features  classic scenes of Molly Picon lifting weights and boxing, teaching young villagers to shimmy and stealing away from services to gorge herself before sundown on Yom Kippur. Underlying these hijinks is veteran filmmaker Sidney Goldin's affectionate appreciation of differences, for good-natured comedy shapes his portrayal of worldly Jews encountering traditional shtetl (small town) life. Morris Brown, a New Yorker better acquainted with his checkbook than his prayerbook, returns to Galicia for a family wedding. The bride, daughter of his traditionally observant brother, and Morris' Mollie, whose exuberant antics fill the film, could not be more different. But Mollie unexpectedly meets her match, an engaging young yeshiva scholar who forsakes tradition and joins the secular world to win her heart.
-- The National Center for Jewish Film