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Yentl the Yeshiva boy

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Regarding the debate here about whether Yentl was a feminist or a transsexual, I weigh in on the transgender side -- for all the reasons other reviewers have already listed here, and which I have also discussed on my Hasidism FAQ website. So I won't reinvent the wheel in this review. I agree that the movie was definitely a feminist statement, but the book, well, that's another story altogether.

We should remember that before the movie, there was the stage play. It followed the book pretty closely, (which the movie did not!) and was very popular in lesbian and avant garde theaters. When I saw the play performed in the 1970s, Yentl was played as the Jewish version of a "butch" lesbian. (In terms of social roles, not machismo. The ideal Jewish male in the timeframe of this story was a scholar, not a redneck.) In the play, like in the book, Yentl remains living as the man Anshel in Eastern Europe. In the movie, Streisand changed this very important point and had Yentl revert to wearing women's clothes and then going to America.

So nu, what was the relationship between Yentl/Anshel and Avigdor? They were study partners -- chaverim in Hebrew -- a relationship that doesn't seem to exist outside of the Orthodox Jewish community, so here's some background. The Talmud is written in dialogue mode with different rabbis agreeing and disagreeing on various points of Jewish law and theology. Talmud is traditionally studied out loud, by two people hotly debating, going point-by-point over the discussions on the page together. In the traditional yeshiva world -- even today -- the schools are not co-ed. So naturally, your study partner is going to be the same sex as yourself. And very often, your study partner is also your very best friend. You not only sit together in school, you confide in each other, hang out together, encourage each other in life's struggles, etc. And this can be a very close relationship. But it's not sexual. It's male bonding. If Anshel had joined the army, then he and Avigdor would have been "buddies" who fought battles together.

Anshel loves Avigdor, yes. But as a study partner, not a lover. What Anshel misses in Avigdor when he changes study halls is not sexual attraction, it's their learning together. Nobody else in the yeshiva is as serious or as brilliant a student as Avigdor. Nobody else is an intellectual match for Anshel -- and so, he studies alone.

When Anshel reveals to Avigdor that s/he is really the woman Yentl, Avigdor suggests that they could get married and still study together -- but Yentl/Anshel says no. S/he tells him that s/he is "neither one [sex] nor the other" and that s/he has "the soul of a man in the body of a woman." This teaches us that Yentl DID INDEED have a gender identity crisis. If she had just wanted to study Talmud, if she were in love with Avigdor, she could have married him and that would be that. But she chose instead to remain living as Anshel for the rest of her life, even without Avigdor. In other words, she chose loneliness and loss of friendship over going back to living as a woman -- a choice that many a real transsexual has also made.

Now, one issue that has not come up yet in the debate here is this: What exactly did I.B. Singer mean by "the SOUL of a man in the body of a woman?" Is this used figuratively, i.e., with "soul" meaning interests, ideas, disposition? Or did Singer mean it literally -- that the eternal soul of Yentl was male, trapped in a female body? If it was figurative, then why does Yentl's father explain it by telling her "even heaven makes mistakes?" I think it is meant literally -- that a male soul has incarnated in the female body named Yentl. Perhaps it was reincarnation (Singer did believe in that.) This was/is one explanation in kabbalah (Jewish mysticm) for what we now call, in scientific terms, "gender dysphoria."

When Singer was writing in the 1960s, "gender dysphoria" was assumed to be caused by a mismatch of social roles, such as a girl being raised as a tomboy. And that's how Singer portrayed Yentl, with her father teaching her "male" things. But even today, when women are free (in Western countries at least) to openly pursue any type of studies or career or lifestyle they want, there are STILL female-to-male (FTM) transsexuals who claim to have male souls trapped in female bodies. Many of them were NOT raised as tomboys, either. The issue for them is not social roles, it's gender identity.

Recent research seems to indicate that this inner conflict is caused by a difference in brain structure. (Nature, not nurture.) Apparently, there is a part of the brain that is hard-wired to "feel" male or female -- and if this is out of sync with the rest of the body, you have a transgendered person. Had Singer known this in his day, he might have focused less on Yentl's dislike of sewing and cooking (the so-called "women's work"), and more on her inner identity crisis about feeling male. But he was a man of his times and he used the literary devices available then. When he wrote this story in 1962, DNA had not even been discovered, and there were no MRI machines to map the activities of the living brain. He assumed (wrongly) that a Yentl became what s/he was because of how she was raised. 21st-century readers need to keep this in mind when they read this story.

I first read this story way back when it first came out -- long before Streisand turned it into a third-wave feminist polemic. (Which, by the way, upset the author, I.B. Singer, so much that he tries to stop production. Unfortunately, he did not have artistic control over the film rights to his story, and so this travesty of his work was produced and lives on in infamy.) Upon re-reading it, I still think it is about a transgender person, not a feminist.

The reviewer here who said that another reviewer "should be shot" (such violent intolerance!) for claiming that Yentl was transgender by making a reference to "even heaven makes mistakes" obviously did not read the book -- because that's word-for-word what Yentl's father tells her on page 8. The story also clearly states that Yentl has "the soul of a man." (page 8 also). So, I suggest ignoring those PC polemicists who are talking about the movie only, which is VERY DIFFERENT from the book, and has ITS OWN PAGE for reviews! (If you haven't read the book, why are you reviewing here in the first place?)

Singer was writing in the 1960s. He wrote respectfully of Jewish culture in this story. He did not mock it the way Streisand later did in her movie. The book has no barkers shouting "Story books for women, holy books for men," and as far as I know, nobody even did that in real life. The line is anti-Hasidic propaganda, as is much of the movie. Streisand's film is a comedy. Singer's story is serious drama.

In the book, When Yentl says, "I wasn't created for plucking feathers and chattering with females," (page 47) is she really speaking like a radical 20th-century feminist about social roles -- or is she speaking literally, on a mystical spiritual level? If she were merely objecting to "plucking feathers" (woman's work) why does she also object to "chattering with females" -- and why use the word "females," as if to stress this is about GENDER? I think she means that she was not created to be a woman, period, regardless of roles. She certainly does not object when her father tells her that she has a man's soul and that "even heaven makes mistakes."

She reaffirms this transgender identity on page 49, where Avigdor asks her, "Tell me the truth, are you a heretic?" Yentl answers, "God forbid!" Clearly, she believes in Orthodox Judaism and respects it, IN SPITE OF her personal dilemma. As their discussion continues: "... All Anshel's [Yentl's] explanations seemed to point to one thing: she had the soul of a man in a woman's body." How much plainer can you get?

But today, in the 2000s, being a female-to-male transgender person is no longer politically correct in the feminist movement. Since the days when Singer wrote this story, the radical feminists have trashed and reviled female-to-male (FTM) transgender people for being "politically incorrect" to the point that they (the feminists) simply cannot stomach the idea that THIS IS WHAT SINGER WAS WRITING ABOUT!!!!!

Yentl doesn't act like a feminist in the book. She doesn't go out campaigning for women's rights. On the other hand, she does enjoy cross-dressing: "On Sabbath afternoons, when her father slept, she would dress up in his trousers, his fringed garment, his silk coat, his skullcap, his velvet hat, and study her reflection in the mirror." (page 8) She also secretly smoked her father's pipe. These are not feminist behaviors, they are transvestite / transgender behaviors.

Yes, there were restrictions against women in the 1850s (which, by the way, is the time frame for this story. Keep in mind that gentile universities didn't accept women back then, either.) But that is NOT the reason that Yentl crosses over to live as a man. If she were merely a disgruntled woman wanting "male privilege," why did she choose to live as a man even after divorcing Hadass? In the Streisand movie she goes back to dressing as a woman and takes a ship to America where, presumably, she will be "free." But that scene IS NOT IN THE BOOK! In the book, she lives out her life as the man, Anshel. Exactly as an FTM transgender person would do.

There's quite a debate going on in these reviews, so let me return to the main point of these reviews and state that this is an excellent story and well worth reading. As others have pointed out, in adapting the book to a movie, Barbra STreisand made substantive changes in the story, changes that Singer himself did not approve of. It's definitely worth going back to the original text and reading the story as written.

The story is not only a moving tale of the bind a Jewish woman of late 19th or early 20th century Poland puts herself into in order to fulfill her need to study and learn, but a rich portrayal of both the joys and strictures of that society that is now gone (as are so many of Singer's stories). It helps to know something of Judaism to understand many of the references in the story but it is not critical to the reader's empathy with Yentl/Anshel's position.

And yes, the character as portrayed in the book is undoubtedly portrayed as what we would now call transgendered. It is not simply that Yentl wants to study Torah, because if that were the case she could marry Avigdor and continue to study with him; Avigdor offers her this option. She herself says she is not one or the other. I also love Singer's implied explanation for transgender identity as being that of a soul of one sex incarnated in the body of the other. It makes a deep kind of sense to me in both a spiritual and experiential way, and adds another dimension to this story.

This book is very short, really a novella, and is illustrated with interesting woodcuts that portray both moments from the story, and various Jewish ritual objects like spice boxes and the pointers used to read Torah scrolls. Do seek this book and other works of Singer's out, you won't regret it!

The IBS short story (but not the movie) certainly IS about a transsexual. Tha character, Yentle/Anshel, is a woman who wants to be a man, and the study of Talmud is a major part of it only because Singer used 19th-early Eastern Europe as a setting. While Yentl is briliant and enjoys studying the Talmud this is not why she gets into her situation. Rather it's a literary mechanism. Singer clearly describes Yentl as a man inside a woman's body, and the reason why Talmud is emphasized is because of the setting in an eastern european jewish community. That is what the most respected men did in that culture; in modern Israel, it would be piloting an F-16 in the air force.

Although Yentl had studied secretly with her father, there were things that she had been hiding even from him: while he slept on shabbat afternoons she would dress up in his clothing, and smoke his pipe. She had not one female friend, then on the morning after the night when Anshel had married Haddass, the parents of Haddass held of the bed sheet and saw the blood. Singer writes that "Anshel had found a way to deflower Haddass", and that Haddass being so innocent and in love with Anshel hadn't realized that what was supposed to happen had not happened. IN OTHER WORDS...something happened SEXUALLY between Yentl/Anshel and Haddass, such that Haddass' hymen ruptured. Singer leaves the precise mechanism to the imagination, but it stands to reason that it was not the spilling of wine on the sheet as occured in the movie. It the short story it is actual blood. It seems hard to imagine but keep in mind that it is a culture wherein young women might never be told much if anything about sex before their marriage, the expectation being that they would find out from their husbands. Moreover the marriage goes on for several months with Haddass believing that her marriage is within a standard deviation of the norm.

It's just not conceivable that Yentl/Anshel is doing this -being intimate with Haddass via petting or whatever for several months - because of a heterosexual attraction to Avigdor. Then finally when she reveals herself to him and he suggest that they (Avigdor and Yentl) marry she says it wouldn't be good and that she's "neither one [gender] nor the other". And so she continues dressing as a man. She does not take a ship to another country as in the movie which would have been the right thing to do had she wanted to live as a woman and study the Talmud. She could have done that in western europe or america, but in the book she didn't and went on living as a man.

The movie does attack the issues of feminism - albeit somewhat unrealistically. Yes, as one reviewer put, there are many restrictions on Chasidic women (and men!), but not necessarily in an oppressive manner. The laws of Judaism are really quite complex (and no I am not orthodox). Nevertheless, I believe the book is a story about s transsexual, Yentl (Anshel) who felt as though she were a man in a woman's body. Incidentally, she was brilliant and capable of the complex studies of the Talmud, but the book has very little to do with feminism or oppression of women.
Nevertheless, it is an excellent read, highly recommended. For the period on which it was written, Singer was very much ahead of his time in tackling such an issue.

Anybody who sees the Barbara Streisand movie should also read this, the original I.B. Singer story. On page one it is made clear that Yentl has "the soul of a man in a woman's body" because "even Heaven makes mistakes." So I think the story is about a female-to-male transexual, not a lesbian or a feminist. I even read somewhere that this originally came out in the same year that Chrisitne Jorgensen had a sex change. (But the other way -- Jorgensen was a man who became a woman.) So I would guess that Singer was trying to explore gender identity with this story.

The focus of the story is not on homoerotic love between two women, but on a person who is born female but feels herself to be male inside, and decides to act out that feeling by dressing and living as a man. An important difference between this story and the Streisand movie is that in the story, Yentl keeps living as a man in the end, saying that "I must remain as I am."

I thought the story was very good in how it dealt with the subject in a very open way. That was surprising for something that was written over 30 years ago.

This movie and book is not about lesbian or transexual. Rather how women were treated in Judiasm. More about feminism. I suggest you go on jewish websites on woman and jewish society. A woman could not study with men, men can't touch women and that still happens today in different orthodox sects,hassidic,or labavitch. Women dont study with men only with women, but that is new, women are still separated by a curtain because this will distract men with their prayers. etc

There is a review on this site, dreamed up by some idiot who saw this movie and book, as being about a transsexual. Said something about mistakes that God made, etc. That person should be shot ! The story is about how women were oppressed, not allowed to study, only to read "picture books". It told of a courageous who knew his daughter had a thirst for knowledge and taught her in secret. When he passed away, she had no choice, she had to get an education....she was a beautiful, intelligent woman, not content to JUST cook and clean house. She wanted, needed to learn. She is to be applauded, not called a transsexual. She was always a woman...never was that in doubt. Meeting her learning partner, falling in love with him, afraid to tell him the truth, that she was a woman, made for an incredible and moving story. YENTL is my second favourite movie of all time. I have seen it 132 times, and know the lyrics to all the songs...and all the dialogue. (I give it more than 5 stars)

As I said, I haven't read the book. However, I saw the movie and knew nothing of what the book version had to say. It never ocurred to me that she,Yentl, had any identity crisis of any kind. She was a woman ahead of her time who just wanted to study the bible with the same freedom that Men had and still have. I am not Jewish, but Christian, and I could well identify with her thirst for knowledge. I don't KNOW what IBS had in mind but I think we all pretty much have to draw our own conclusions.