This Production of 'Yentl' Is Full of Evil Spirits and Dark Transgression

This Production of 'Yentl' Is Full of Evil Spirits and Dark Transgression

All due respect to Barbra Streisand, but what version of “Yentl” was I watching? This thought occurred to me recently as I read Isaac Bashevis Singer’s short story “Yentl, the Yeshiva Boy” for the first time. Like most people, perhaps, I had only ever encountered it through Streisand’s 1983 movie-musical adaption. There, the story of a young woman in turn of the 19th century Poland who so yearns to study ancient Jewish texts that she pretends to…