On a sidewalk crowded with people moving at the pace of a typical New York day, nobody stands out.

Eventually a man appears in the back of the frame who gradually attracts our attention. There’s nothing extraordinary about him except he’s a bulky man, and he’s laboring more than anyone else in the summer heat.

He’s wearing a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, black vest and tsitsis, and our initial impression is of an overgrown child. It’s the perfect introduction to the character Menashe and the film “Menashe,” a Yiddish-language drama shot in secret in the Hasidic community.

We have the sense that writer-director Joshua Z. Weinstein’s camera could have followed any face in the crowd. That’s an unusual feeling to have in a fiction film, but there are 8 million stories in the naked city, after all.

The effect, though, is to imbue “Menashe” from the outset with the requisite naturalism for a riveting character study of a working-class Hasid on the margins of both his religious community and society at large.

The 82-minute film screened only once in the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival but will open Friday, Aug. 11 at the Landmark Embarcadero Center Cinema in San Francisco.

The motor of the film is Menashe’s ham-fisted determination to raise his adolescent son, Rieven, by himself in the months following his wife’s premature death. His tenacity is understandable, for the boy and Jewish songs and scripture are Menashe’s only interests.

The neighborhood rabbi, the ruv, while not unsympathetic, maintains that Rieven be raised in a “proper home” with a father and a mother. Given the unhappiness of his first, arranged marriage, Menashe (beautifully played by Menashe Lustig) is in no hurry to remarry.

So the boy lives with Menashe’s annoyingly self-assured brother-in-law Eizik (the excellent Yoel Weisshaus) and his family in a nice home instead of at Menashe’s no-frills walk-up apartment. Rieven doesn’t mind, but it’s a continuing affront to Menashe’s self-respect and sense of responsibility.

“Menashe” is the exception among the many films about Orthodox Jews in that it does not involve a tug-of-war between tradition and the modern world, or the conflict between secularism and faith.

The central dynamic in “Menashe” is class, which gives the viewer an unusual angle from which to view the ultra-Orthodox community. This film scarcely visits a yeshiva, and the Hasidim with the long, black coats are supporting characters — although it is plain that they are at the center of community life.

Menashe, for his part, can’t get any respect. He works in a grocery market, a job with no status (regardless of how exceedingly moral he is) and low pay.

There’s a picaresque scene where he’s enticed into having a 40-ouncer of cheap beer in the back of the store with a couple of Hispanic co-workers. Though the language barrier prevents Menashe from bonding with them past a certain point, he seems more comfortable in his own skin with them than he is with the Jews in his circle (and their judgments and expectations).

Our sympathies are with Menashe, of course, as they’d be with any single parent struggling to make ends meet and get a little bit ahead. But he’s far from perfect, and that smart move by Weinstein is what elevates the picture to the level of pathos.

Menashe is short-tempered, stubborn, perpetually late, fond of the occasional drink(s) and always playing catch-up. He’s the last to recognize that his character flaws along with his circumstances make him the biggest obstacle to establishing a stable life with Rieven.

“Menashe” is rife with the small truths of life — every father disappoints his son at some point, and vice versa — and the amusing, unexpected moments that occur every day. It’s a warm, generous film that doesn’t shy from sentimentality but doesn’t insult its audience, either.

Ultimately, it introduces us to a memorable character whose resilience is, in its way, inspiring. “Menashe” is a small film, but it’s a special one.

“Menashe” opens Friday, Aug. 11 at the Landmark Embarcadeo Center Cinema in S.F. (Rated PG. 82 minutes. In Yiddish with English subtitles)