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Box office. $68.7 million. Yentl is a 1983 American romantic musical drama film directed, co-written, co-produced by, and starring American entertainer Barbra Streisand. It is based on Isaac Bashevis Singer 's short story "Yentl the Yeshiva Boy".
One of his most famous short stories, “Yentl, the Yeshiva Boy,” is also well-known because of its (loose) film adaptation Yentl, starring, co-written, and co-produced by Barbra Streisand in 1983. The story appeared in English translation in 1962, a year before it was published in the original Yiddish.
- Events in History at The Time The Short Story Takes Place
- The Short Story in Focus
- Events in History at The Time The Short Story Was Written
- For More Information
A tradition of learning
The primacy of education in Judaism has helped preserve Jewish culture throughout a history of heinous catastrophes. The Jewish scriptures are comprised of the Hebrew Bible, the Talmud, and the rabbinic codes based on the Talmud, which consists of the Mishnah and the Gemara. The Mishnah is the “oral law” said to have been communicated to Moses when he received the ten commandments on Mt. Sinai; the Gemara includes rabbinic interpretations and opinions of the oral law. Traditional education ce...
Hasidim and Mitnagdim
Not all religious Jews became preoccupied with the study of religious law. As far back as the 1200s there arose a movement of Jews who concentrated more on the mystical aspects of the religion than on the study of Jewish law. The mystics concerned themselves with attaining an immediate connection with God. Their movement, called Cabala, ultimately faded, but influenced a movement that surfaced in the 1700s among the Jews of Eastern Europe. Founded by Israel Ben Eliezer, or the Baal Shem Tov(w...
Jewish women
Traditional Jewish men recited a blessing thanking God, “who did not make me a woman” (Baker, p. 35). A contemporary prayer book adds a footnote alleging: While apologists insisted that women’s roles are different but equal, others have held that women in the nineteenth and earlier centuries were excluded from the two realms most esteemed by the Jewish community: prayer in the synagogue and the study of religious law. In traditional synagogues women sat separated from men, usually in an upper...
The plot
After her father’s death, a young Jewish girl, Yentl, is compelled to leave her small hometown of Yanev. Rather than rent out her father’s house or accept one of many marriage offers, she sells her home and flees Yanev disguised as a man. As a child Yentl had enjoyed the affection of her father, who during his many bedridden years had studied Torah with her. Proud of his daughter’s keen intelligence, he lamented “Yentl, you have the soul of a man” (Singer, “Yentl, the Yeshiva Boy,” p. 8). Som...
THE VIRGIN BRIDE
Widespread in Jewish communities was the custom of examining the bride’s linen after the first night of marriage to find the spot of blood that would prove her virginity. Her mother would often preserve the sheet in case she needed it to uphold the family’s honor with proof in some later dispute. Yentl disappears from Bechev and Hadass falls ill of consternation and grief. The town gossips invent a variety of explanations for Yentl’s disappearance. They are surprised that even Avigdor, Yentl’...
Yentl’s liberation
When Yentl’s father laments “Yentl, you have the soul of a man” (“Yentl, the Yeshiva Boy”, p. 8), he confirms her suspicion that “she had not been created for the noodle board and the pudding dish, for chattering with silly women and pushing for a place at the butcher’s block” (“Yentl, the Yeshiva Boy,” p. 8). With Avigdor she enters the world of men, studying Torah and tasting cigarettes and strong liquor. Yet when Avigdor comments “they’re trying to talk me into another match, but the girl...
Yentl and feminism
Singer fled Poland for New York in 1935, where he supervised the translation of his stories from Yiddish into English. A reemergent feminist movement in America was gaining ground when “Yentl, the Yeshiva Boy” was published. It would formally begin in 1963 with the publication of Betty Friedan’s book The Feminine Mystique, which revealed the emotional misery suffered by women who were unfulfilled by their roles as homemakers. Because Singer’s short story articulates some of the frustrations w...
Modern Judaism
After World War IIand the Holocaust, in which 6 million Jews were exterminated by the Germans, Jewish women suffered enormous pressure to bear children. The fear that the Jewish population was dying out plagued Holocaust survivors, who urged their daughters to marry and begin families. Women did gain new rights during this period. In the Jewish state of Israel created after the war, the Women’s Equal Rights Law of 1951 made women’s legal status equal to men’s, guaranteeing their rights to own...
Reception
“Yentl, the Yeshiva Boy” won acclaim from critics, with one commentator describing it as a tale that “deals with problems confronting Jewish women in the late nineteenth-century Polish shtetlach, problems that have not been re-solved” (Cohen, p. 208). The story’s popularity encouraged Singer to make it into a play. One critic of the play praised the “resemblances to traditional Yiddish theater … ingenious female disguise … compelling full length rituals performed in the original Hebrew and qu...
Baker, Adrienne. The Jewish Woman in Contemporary Society. New York: New York University Press, 1993. Cantor, Aviva. Jewish Women/Jewish Men. San Francisco: Harper, 1995. Cohen, Sarah Blacher. From Hester Street to Hollywood: The Jewish-American Stage and Screen.Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983. Farrell, Grace. Isaac Bashevis Singer: Con...
But the middle 100 minutes of the movie are charming and moving and surprisingly interesting. A lot of the charm comes from the cheerful high energy of the actors, not only Streisand (who gives her best performance) but also Mandy Patinkin, as her long-suffering roommate, and Amy Irving, as the girl Patinkin loves and Streisand marries.
Dec 18, 2020 · After being considered for the titular role, Streisand bought the screen rights to noted storytelling icon and philanderer Isaac Bashevis Singer’s story Yentl the Yeshiva Boy in 1967. And after 15 years of protestation that she would be too old, too inexperienced, too she, too Jewish to helm and star in a major motion picture, Streisand made her — by most accounts successful ...
Feb 27, 2003 · Terry Wells. Props. Jeff Werner. Post-Production Associate. Alan Whibley. Special Effects. Barbara Streisand stars in and directs Yentl (1983) based on Isaac Bashevis Singer's story of a Jewish girl who passes as a boy to study the Torah. Intro Aired: Aug 2018.
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Is Yentl based on a true story?
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Does Barbra Streisand really care about Yentl?
Oct 7, 1988 · When Barbra Streisand prepared for her role as the girl who pretends to be a yeshiva boy in the movie "Yentl," she consulted Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller.
