Allison Hufford
Professor Greenblatt
08/26/2019
The Question of Queerness: What Yentl Reveals about Orthodox Judaism’s Relationship to Gender Identity and Sexuality
Orthodox Judaism is one of the most traditional branches of modern Judaism, and has historically been the slowest to break from conventional gender roles. Barbra Streisand’s movie
Yentl, and Issac Singer’s short story “Yentl the Yestiva Boy” which it is based on, explore
Orthodox Judaism’s relationship to queerness through the story of a Jewish woman, Yentl, who disguises herself as a man, Anshel, in order to study Torah. Whereas the short story can easily be read as a transgender narrative, the movie erases much of this gender-queerness by taking on more of a feminist approach. Both interpretations, however, represent, explore, and then ultimately abandon queerness as incompatible with Orthodox Jewish identity. Nevertheless, it is through this exploration of gender and sexual fluidity that the story of Yentl reveals the queerness inherent in Jewish culture, suggesting that each is not so disparate from the other as they may seem.
Although the phrases ‘transgender,’ ‘non-binary,’ or even ‘queer’ are never explicitly written in the text, “Yentl the Yeshiva Boy” has been interpreted by many not as the story of a cross-dressing woman but as a trans-man inside a female body. This interpretation is not altogether unsupported, beginning with Yentl’s father telling his daughter that she has “the soul of a man” and that her female body is a “mistake” (Singer 8). Before she becomes Anshel, Yentl also frequently cross-dresses in front of a mirror—something that has no obvious purpose other than the presumed pleasure it provides her with. In one scene, Singer even writes, “In her dream
[Yentl] had been at the same time a man and a woman, wearing both a woman’s bodice and a man’s fringed garment… Only now did Yentl grasp the meaning of the Torah’s prohibition against wearing the clothes of the other sex. By doing so one deceived not only others but also oneself. Even the soul was perplexed, finding itself incarnate in a strange body” (Singer 22). In this dream, Singer uses male and female garb on the physical body to reflect the internal struggle of the ‘soul’ between dual genders. The description of the ‘strange body’ even seems to hint at the experience of body dysphoria. Doubtlessly, these are themes that transgender individuals might find reflective of their own lives.
Conversely, in the film Yentl directed and starred by Barbra Streisand, this confliction of gender identity is nowhere to be seen. Rather, Streisand replaces it by questioning not Yentl’s individual identity but Jewish Orthodox gender roles as a whole. Though Yentl expresses an interest in Torah study and other masculine pursuits—often failing at more feminine tasks, such as cooking—there is no indication that she considers herself a man. The first time she cross- dresses is after the death of her father, when her only other option is to marry a man and confine herself to a life without study, and beforehand her complaints are not about why she was born a woman so much as why women themselves are not allowed access to the Torah. In one scene,
Yentl sings, “If not to hunger for the meaning of it all, then tell me what a soul is for?” (Streisand
11:28 – 34) and later, “If I were only meant to tend the nest, then why does my imagination sail?” (Streisand 12:34 – 40). Unlike Singer’s version, there is no distinction between a male and female soul—for, in Yentl’s view, all human souls hunger for knowledge. It’s only the expectation of others that women ‘tend the nest’ that prevents them from expressing it.
In many ways, Streisand’s feminist take on the story can be read as a direct response to, what some call, “the antifeminist polemic” (Salberg 194) of Singer’s version. Paradoxically, though “Yentl the Yeshiva Boy” tells the story of a woman who strives to learn, it is full of demeaning rhetoric that criticizes women and their womanhood. Yentl, in striving to escape her femininity, consistently puts other women down. She believes she is above “chattering with silly women” (Singer 8) and often insults the romantic interests of the man she loves, calling his wife
Peshe “a cow with a pair of eyes” (Singer 18), “a monkey” (Singer 23), and “an eyesore, a shrew, a miser” (Singer 34). In many ways, the very concept behind the story contains tendrils of sexism, for the only reason that Yentl is told she has the ‘soul of a man’ is because she excels at
Torah study; the concept of womanhood and study are considered so widely disparate from each other that they cannot possibly exist in tangent. As Stephen Whitfield explains it, “Normative
Judaism exhibited its patriarchal character by granting to men a virtual monopoly over learning, which is why—whatever Singer’s own interpretive assertions—Streisand’s feminist version hardly appears strained or ahistorical” (Whitfield 15).
Streisand flips Singer’s misogynistic narrative by making Yentl into a woman who fights her gender role rather than her gender, and even fights for other women rather than against them—for instance, she tutors another woman, Hadass, in studying Torah. In making Yentl’s story a feminist one, however, there is also something lost: as Joel West writes, “Her awareness of her own gender makes Streisand’s Yentl, in essence, a drag king, a woman who is always woman who performs an idealized version of man. Because of this rigidity, Streisand’s Yentl lacks the ambiguity and humor of action, voice and meaning which are so very important and telling in Singer’s original version of the story” (West 11). In pushing feminism into Yentl,
Streisand erases not just the story’s original connotations but the queerness that exists at the story’s center and drives its narrative. Yentl becomes a “binary, single gendered women” (West
11), and so much of the inherent complexity of her character is lost. Nevertheless, queerness can be found in more than just gender fluidity—even in an interpretation of Yentl that entirely regards her as a woman, it’s difficult to overlook the homosexual, bisexual, and even polyamorous themes that pervade the narrative. This can be seen specifically in the relationships that Yentl has with Avigdor, the man she loves, and Hadass, the woman she marries. In the short story, it’s fairly clear that Avigdor and Yentl, as her male alter- ego Anshel, have an intense emotional connection. As Avigdor even tells her, “Why can’t a woman be like a man? … Why couldn’t Hadass be just like you?” (Singer 16). As this quotation indicates, the kind of connection and intimacy that Avigdor wants from his romantic relationships is something that he largely already gets from his—as far as he knows—male-male friendship with Anshel. In fact, the way he phrases this, it’s almost as if the only thing that stands in the way of their intimate friendship becoming romantic is the social barrier of them both being of the same gender. Later, this is proven true when Yentl admits her secret to Avigdor, and he responds, “If you had only told me earlier, we could…” (Singer 44)—the obvious implication being that he means to finish his sentence with: ‘we could have gotten married.’ Minutes before,
Avigdor had thought Yentl was a man, and yet suddenly he wishes to marry her—it’s clear these romantic feelings didn’t appear out of nowhere. Transferring the intimacy of the study-partner relationship into a marriage-partner relationship is strikingly easy for him, suggesting how little difference there is between them.
The un-platonic connotations of Avigdor’s and Anshel’s relationship is made even more clear in the movie, not only in all the intimate moments of eye-contact and playful touching that can be witnessed between them, but in what Avidor admits following Anshel’s reveal as a woman. After screaming at Yentl for her sin, they collapse and cry into each other’s arms, and
Avigdor says, “All those times I looked at you and I touched you, I couldn’t understand why… I thought there was something wrong with me… Yentl, I loved you too” (Streisand 1:55:58 –
57:23). With these words, it’s undeniable that Avigdor felt romantic affections and even physical attraction towards Anshel, even when he thought she was a man. He had no way of knowing otherwise, and thus even Yentl’s secret womanhood doesn’t cancel out the fact that Avigdor felt homosexual love towards his Torah study partner.
On the other end of the spectrum, there’s also much to be said about Yentl’s relationship to the other woman in Avigdor’s life, Hadass. In the beginning, Hadass is a source of comparison and even envy for Yentl—the ‘ideal’ feminine woman whom Avigdor wants and whom
Orthodox Jewish society accepts, unlike masculine Yentl and her Torah-study habits. However, the longer Yentl stays disguised as Anshel and gets to know Hadass, the more this changes. In the short story, Singer writes how, “Anshel looked at [Hadass] as she stood there—tall, blond, with a long neck, hollow cheeks, and blue eyes… A pity I’m not a man, Anshel thought” (Singer
20). Alone, the listing off of Hadass’ characteristics in such great detail comes across as some kind of attraction, but when Anshel then follows this by wishing she were a man, it has the same connotation as Avigdor wishing ‘a woman could be like a man’. If not the emotional intimacy she experiences with Avidgor, Yentl certainly feels a physical draw towards Hadass, to the point where the only thing that’s stopping a romantic entanglement from forming is that she and
Hadass are both women, and thus it’s considered by Jewish society to be a moral wrong.
This moment between them is also mimicked in the movie during one particular song sequence. In the original rendition of the song, Yentl laments on how Hadass meets the ‘ideals’ of Jewish femininity and that is why Avigdor loves her and will never love Yentl; however, in the later reprise of the song, Avigdor is not present, and Yentl simply describes all of Hadass’ virtues. As she sings, “No wonder he loves her. No wonder to me. With ribbons and laces, in all the right places… the smell of lilacs and roses… her silky hair and milky complexion… Her softness. Her sweetness. How could he resist her? And why would he try? No wonder he wants her. He needs her. He loves her... So would I.” (Streisand 1:11:11 – 14:05). Like in the story,
Yentl goes into such great detail about Hadass’ physical appearance that it comes across like attraction, and it isn’t just what she sings that creates this connotation either. Yentl spends this confrontation with Hadass visibly uncomfortable, often staring at Hadass and clearly captivated by her. When Hadass asks whether Yentl wants milk or sugar in her tea, Yentl even says ‘milky,’ distracted by Hadass’s ‘milky skin.’ It seems as if the ‘he’ that Yentl sings of isn’t Avigdor so much as Anshel, her male alter-ego. It is Anshel who ‘can’t resist her,’ and at the end of the song
Yentl even admits as much. If she were only a man, free from the social limitations of her society, she knows without doubt that she would love Hadass the way Avidgor does—because, even as a woman, she’s already starting to. When the song has its second reprise, it is much later in the film, and Anshel is leaving Hadass for the last time. She kisses Hadass’ head and sings,
“She’s loving, she’s tender, she’s woman. So am I.” (Streisand1:47:40-58), which serves as her final reminder to herself that no matter what she feels, she cannot act on these feelings; in the end, they are both women, and the social barrier is too much to overcome. The same way this barrier prevents Avigdor from acting on his feelings for Anshel, it prevents Yentl from fully giving in to her feelings for Hadass.
This barrier, however, is apparently not quite strong enough, and at one point in the movie Anshel actually does end up marrying Hadass. Whether or not Hadass and the wider
Jewish community think it’s a heterosexual marriage, that does not erase the fact that this is a marriage between two biological women, nor the fact that “[Hadass] was already deeply in love with Anshel” (Singer 36) by their wedding night. In fact, especially as seen in the movie, it’s many of Anshel’s more feminine qualities that seem to attract Hadass in the first place—her kindness, her respectfulness, and her belief in the potential of Hadass’ mind. Therefore, the love between them feels very much like the love between two women, rather than that between man and wife. There’s even a physical aspect to their relationship: in the movie, Hadass on multiple occasions attempts to sleep with Anshel, and even kisses her. In the short story, however, Anshel goes so far as to “deflower the bride” (Singer 36) in order to consummate the marriage. Even if
Hadass may believe it to be so, they clearly cannot have heterosexual intercourse, and thus engage in lesbian sexual relations.
The gender-fluid and homoerotic themes of Yentl are themselves plenty proof of the queerness of Yentl’s tale, but there’s also an interesting element of polyamory within the story’s core relationships. Unlike a love triangle—which usually implies two rival individuals competing over the same person—what Avigdor, Hadass, and Yentl have seems to be romantic on all sides. Avigdor and Hadass were fiancés who doubtlessly loved each other, yet when Yentl comes between them Avigdor and Hadass both separately fall in love with her, and it’s very easy to interpret the story as Yentl also having fallen in love with both of them. In the movie, the last thing Yentl says to either of them is in a letter, where she writes, “I will love you both. Always”
(Streisand 2:03:37 – 40). Yentl does not distinguish between the love she feels for Avigdor and
Hadass, she does not claim one is platonic and the other romantic—the love she feels for both of them is equated, made one in the same, and if she feels romantically towards one of them, it’s an easy assumption that she must feel the same towards the other.
Furthermore, when Singer writes about the wedding between Avigdor and Hadass, he claims, “Only one thing was lacking: joy” (Singer 58). Even though they are both fulfilling their dream by finally consummating their love together, it’s almost as if—without Yentl—this love is incomplete. She has become an essential part of their relationship, and without her their love is missing something, which might explain why their first-born son gets the name ‘Anshel.’
Though polyamory is not considered as blatantly queer as other sexualities, it’s clear that this polyamorous triad is a direct threat to the heterosexual, monogamous relationship expected by the Orthodox Jewish community, to the point where it irreversibly impacts what otherwise could have been a happy ‘straight’ marriage.
Moreover, even if Yentl and her contemporaries had not expressed such clear homosexual and polyamorous desires, the queerness of the story could still not entirely be avoided. As Naomi Seidman explains it, “Drag allow[s] for heterosexual desire stripped of
European heterosexual choreographies, or (to put it otherwise) [makes] homosocial pleasures available to heterosexuals… it is less sexually than culturally “queer,” promiscuously decoupling heterosexual desire from their European frameworks and resituating it in places from which it had always been excluded” (Seidman 52). One could read Yentl as both a cisgender and heterosexual woman, but the mere fact of her being a Jewish individual who cross-dresses in order to defy her culture’s gender expectations—and the fact that “Yentl the Yeshiva Boy” exists to tell this story, opening it up to analysis on gender roles within Jewish society—makes it an inherently ‘queer’ story. It’s less blatant, but there’s no erasing queerness from Yentl’s narrative.
In many ways, the written and cinematic versions of Yentl follow the same storyline, but it’s in the story’s end that they diverge—in “Yentl the Yeshiva Boy,” Anshel abandons Hadass and Avigdor to study in another Yeshiva, whereas in Yentl she instead takes a boat to America, abandoning her ‘Anshel’ identity to return to her womanhood. On the surface, these endings differ in order to encapsulate the differing themes of each interpretation—Yentl continuing to study as Anshel indefinitely further pushes the transgender narrative of “Yentl the Yeshiva Boy,” whereas her taking off her masculine disguise to study as a woman fits with the feminist theme of Yentl. Despite these differences, both the written and movie version do share one important similarity: they either punish or abandon their story’s queerness.
In Singer’s case, in order to continue her studies Yentl must abandon the two people she loves, isolate herself from her community, and continue living the ‘lie’ of her biological maleness for potentially the remainder of her life. As Steven Whitfield suggests, “Singer’s ending is bleak and inexorable, and it forecloses any attractive options” (Whitfield 7). Because of this, it’s almost as if Yentl is being punished for her subversion of conventional gender roles. Jill
Salberg expands on this idea by explaining how, “Yentl, as the embodiment of transgressive gender and homosexual or lesbian sexuality, must and will disappear” and, “It’s as if the story’s ending suggests, ‘No good could come from subverting the heavenly order—from women trying to be like men” (Salberg 194). Even for those that Yentl leaves behind, there’s still a high degree of trauma. Singer details the pain experienced by Avigdor and Hadass following Yentl’s disappearance, describing Avigdor’s “slumping shoulders and lifeless eyes” (Singer 53) and
Hadass being “ill from sorrow” (Singer 56). It’s almost as if they, too, are being punished for the queerness ‘inflicted’ on them by their non-heterosexual attraction to the non-binary Yentl.
On the other end of the spectrum, the end of Yentl the movie is rather positive—yes,
Yentl does abandon Avigdor and Hadass, but the tone surrounding this abandonment is much more optimistic. One of the last scenes shows Avigdor and Hadass smiling together as they read
Yentl’s letter, and Yentl herself is seen smiling at the bow of a ship, dressed in women’s clothes and finally having escaped her deception. There’s a suggestion of hope and renewal, as Yentl sails off to a place where she might finally be free. Yet, it’s this very ‘happy ending’ which takes the queerness of Yentl’s character and erases it. First, like the story, it separates her from Hadass and Avigdor, allowing a monogamous, heterosexual couple to form without the queer interference of Yentl promoting homosexual and polyamorous attraction. Secondly, by sailing off to America, Streisand’s Yentl is doing what Singer’s Yentl never did: entirely abandoning her Orthodox Jewish community. In the United States, where she’s headed, her deviation from these Orthodox gender roles are more expected and ordinary—therefore, by joining that community and abandoning her old one, Yentl loses the essential queerness of her character. The only way to avoid the punishment that comes from queerness as seen in “Yentl the Yeshiva Boy” is to completely detach from her Jewish roots and therefore erase what makes her queer to begin with. Essentially, the story of Yentl seems to argue that Judaism and queerness are inherently at odds. To be Jewish and queer, one must either escape Jewish society entirely or else suffer the consequences.
This argument—that Orthodox Judaism and queerness are mutually exclusive—is perhaps the most obvious conclusion to come to when examining the gender-inequality present in both the Torah and traditional Judaic culture. However, such a conclusion is also incredibly simplistic, ignoring the complexities of Jewish culture and all the ways in which queerness is, in fact, inherent to it. Yentl reveals this truth simply through its exploration of Orthodox Judaism in combination with the Yiddish theatrical trope of cross-dressing. For one thing, as Daniel Boyarin writes, “The fact that [Yentl] is indistinguishable as a girl dressed as a boy owes something to the effeminate or cross-dressed nature of the boys vis-à-vis European norms of manliness in the
Yeshiva as well” (Boyarin 143). Barbara Streisand, Yentl’s actress, by no means looks like a man, yet by simply cutting her hair and dressing appropriately she can pass as one. She is short and thin, without a beard or any visible muscle, and doesn’t even attempt to change her feminine voice, yet faces absolutely no questioning regarding her gender at all. This can partially be explained by the fact that, in comparison to all the other men in the Yeshiva, Yentl doesn’t stand out; many, like her, are smaller, less muscular, and even beardless. This points to the idea that, in
Judaism, masculinity is defined differently than it is in other cultures, and is in many ways actually much closer to the notion of femininity. As Boyarin writes, “The Talmud imagines an alternative to phallic, aggressive, machismo as a definition of manliness” (Boyarin 127), and
“Certain textual/ideological strands… were at pains to construct their ideal male figures as androgynes or as femminized men” (Boyarin 130). Next to these figures, Anshel fits right in.
Next to the typical ‘gentile’ masculine figure, however, Anshel and all other men of
Jewish masculinity are obvious outliers. For instance, in Roman society, “Violence, brutality, and domination were, to a great extent, the ‘public’ meanings of maleness” (Boyarin 141), and these connotations have largely transferred across cultures. Therefore, to many of these cultures,
Jewish men have often been viewed as barely men at all. This perspective can be seen in the text
Sex & Character, published in 1903 by a formerly Jewish anti-Semite. As he writes, “Judaism is saturated with femininity, with precisely those qualities the essence of which I have shown to be in the strongest opposition to the male nature… the Jew is more saturated with femininity than the Aryan, to such an extent that the most manly Jew is more feminine than the least manly
Aryan” (Weininger 304). In the same way that Weininger uses this claim to explain his anti-
Semitism, this assumption that Judaism is somehow anti-masculinity has been used as evidence for the Jews’ supposed ‘inferiority’ for decades. Clearly, Judaism itself has often been considered a threat to the wider definition of maleness, blurring the boundaries between the qualifications of each gender to the point where the stereotypical ‘Jewish man’ might qualify as culturally, if not sexually, queer. The way Judaism challenges gender doesn’t end there. In fact, in the movie, Yentl even references a common Jewish argument of gender non-conformity often made regarding the biblical story of man’s creation. As she says, “You’re wrong, Avigdor, it’s a mistranslation. The
Hebrew word never meant rib, it meant side… Since Adam was created both male and female…
And if God took one side of Adam and not his rib and created women, that means they’re the same. We all are” (Streisand 48:36 – 54). Though Yentl uses this re-interpretation of Adam and
Eve’s formation as a feminist argument, there’s something to be said regarding the existence of the first human being not as a man or woman but as a bi-gendered or even non-binary entity. At the very least, it recognizes the existence of a third alternative to simply being ‘male’ or
‘female,’ and even suggests a naturalness about it. Furthermore, since the original human is said to have been created in the image of God, there’s the implication that God, too, is non-binary, and even that there is something divine about gender ambiguity itself.
As Gwynn Kessler argues, “The image of God not only includes both male and female undivided, it also opens a space beyond binary gender constructions… to embody and translate gender into some sort of ‘unfinished matter,’ [which] holds out the possibility of embracing- indeed sanctifying-gender as a process, a movement, unfolding and continuing” (Kessler 406). If gender is a ‘process’ rather than a definitive state, Yentl’s transition to Anshel is not only understandable but perhaps even unavoidable. Additionally, if the first human was a bi-gendered individual who encompassed both Adam and Eve, a comparison can be drawn between them and the female Yentl and male Anshel who also inhabit one body. As Salberg puts it, “Anshel has been an internal self-state of Yentl… But if Anshel is the boy inside of Yentl, it is not a stretch to then imagine Yentl as the girl within the boy” (Salberg 194 – 195). In other words, like the first human, Anshel/Yentl can be said to inhabit both a male and female personage, and are therefore themselves a “divinely subversive” being (Kessler 394).
It’s not just gender-queerness that inhabits Judaism, either—there’s also the inevitable existence of queerness in sexuality. On a more basic level, one could say that because of the feminization of Jewish men, all Jewish marriages are thereby ‘queer’ in their legal and sexual union of two feminine or women-like individuals. This can be seen especially in Yentl, as
Anshel’s marriage to Hadass—while seemingly straight to those of the Jewish community—is literally a same-sex marriage between two Jewish women. However, Orthodox Judaism itself appears to fight this assumption through its insistence on the strict gender roles imposed on
Jewish husbands and wives. Neither may fit the public qualification of ‘masculine,’ but there is a clear distinction drawn between the man and the woman of the house.
A more interesting take-away from the story of Yentl would be an examination of the ways it represents the emotionally intimate and even homoerotic nature of the relationships between Jewish men. This can be seen especially when Anshel and Avigdor’s relationship is compared to that between Rabbi Yohanan and Reish Lakish, two individuals seen in a Rabbinic
Tale referenced in Daniel Boyarin’s work. In many ways, Anshel and Avigdor’s relationship can be seen as immediate reflections of Yohanan and Lakish’s, for like Avigdor believes Anshel to be a man up until her reveal as a woman, Lakish believes Yohanan to be a woman upon first seeing him, and only realizes otherwise once he approaches. In both relationships, there is a misunderstanding of gender, though in one case it is an assumption of womanhood that occurs at the beginning of their relationship, whereas in the other it is an assumption of maleness that lasts until the end. There is also, therefore, a reflection regarding the nature of the relationship: when
Lakish sees Yohanan and believes him to be a woman, he feels an immediate attraction, and approaches with the intention of seducing or even raping him. Conversely, when Yentl admits she is a woman to Avigdor, it takes only minutes for Avigdor to admit romantic feelings and essentially ask to marry her. In the Rabbinical text, there’s the implication that these sexual and romantic feelings that Lakish feels for Yohanan only exist when he believes the other is a woman, and disappear once he discovers otherwise. Likewise, the romantic feelings Avidgor feels for Yentl are—at least in the short story—limited only to the moment he discovers her womanhood, with the implication that it was Yentl’s ‘transition’ from man to woman that sparked their sudden appearance. The attraction is strictly heterosexual, even in relationships that are otherwise ‘homosocial.’
The reflections of these two relationships are so significant because, in actuality, we know that Yentl is a woman, and that she has clear sexual and romantic feelings for her study partner, Avigdor. The movie Yentl is also particularly important in that it even demonstrates that
Avigdor also has feelings for Anshel, even before he knows she is a woman. Therefore, all the moments between them, which essentially define the homosocial relationship between two
Jewish men who act as study partners—their ‘platonic’ touching, the bed sharing, the naked swimming in the lake—take on heavily erotic undertones. These undertones don’t exist because
Yentl is a woman so much as they are emphasized by that fact, with Yentl able to openly proclaim her love for and attraction to Avigdor in her musical numbers. Every moment between them becomes hyper-charged with eroticism as Yentl narrates her own budding feelings, to the point where the study-partner relationship itself seems to take on a romantic nature.
Even if not blatantly homosexual, the dynamic between Avigdor and Anshel certainty makes clear the emotional significance of the study-partner relationship in Orthodox Jewish culture, to the point of irreplaceability. For instance, in the short story Singer writes, “[After Avigdor left] the head of the yeshiva asked Anshel to choose another study partner, but weeks went by and still Anshel studied alone. There was no one in the yeshiva who could take
Avigdor’s place” (Singer 21). Similarly, after Reish Lakish’s death the Rabbis try to assign
Yohanan another study partner, but Yohanan rejects him, crying out “Son of Lakish, where are you?” (Boyarin 128) until he himself dies from grief. In both cases, there’s the implication that the Jewish study-partnership is a highly special relationship between two people and two people only—a sort of monogamy, much like a marriage. This may partially be because the act of Torah study is itself such a profoundly intimate experience: as Singer writes, “It seemed strange at first to Avigdor to be disputing holy writ with a woman, yet before long the Torah had reunited them.
Though their bodies were different, their souls were of one kind” (Singer 48). In many ways, this description is almost reminiscent of popular descriptions for the act of sexual intercourse, in which two different bodies unite and ‘combine’ the souls.
As Singer continues, “In the heat of an argument, [Yentl] even seized Avigdor by the lapel and called him stupid. A great love for Anshel took hold of Avigdor, mixed with shame, remorse, anxiety” (Singer 48). There is the implication here that much of the intimacy of Torah study comes from conflict, which is also echoed in Rabbinical texts. As Rabbi Yohanan tells his replacement study-partner: “The son of Lakish used to raise twenty-four objections to every point that I made, and I used to supply twenty-four refutations, until the matter became completely clear. Don’t I already know that I say good things?” (Boyarin 128). As Singer makes clear, the ‘great love’ between study partners, as well as their understanding of the Torah, comes from this verbal sparring. Furthermore, as Boyarin writes about Rabbinical texts, “The valor of war-making is replaced by the valor of Torah study, metaphorically realized as a sort of battle.
The dialectics of the Rabbis are frequently referred to with metaphors of gladiatorial combat or battle” (Boyarin 135). There’s a sense of irony in the fact that Torah study—which evokes affections for one’s metaphorical ‘combatant’—is a replacement of literal combat, which often evokes real hatred alongside the physical violence. However, it’s this replacement of male-male violence with male-male affection that defines the Jewish homosocial relationship, and makes it so overwhelmingly queer. The fact that the most ‘masculine’ aspect of Orthodox Jewish society is the place where the most homoerotic relations arise demonstrates how entrenched this queerness really is in Judaism.
Ultimately, there is much that the short story “Yentl the Yeshiva Boy” and the movie
Yentl reveal about queerness in Orthodox Jewish society, though not necessarily in the ways which were likely intended. Though both represent gender-based and sexual queerness, they also punish and erase this queerness in ways that seem to suggest its incompatibility with the Jewish
Orthodox religion—however, in their very exploration of these LGBTQ+ themes in a Jewish
Orthodox setting, they actually prove the opposite: that queerness is not so much a threat to
Judaism as it is an integral part of it. Judaism is queer in the ways that it redefines masculinity, alters the nature of male-male relationships, and toys with the idea of gender fluidity and ambiguity. Recently, when college Hillel students used bread crust on the Passover Seder plate to honor Jewish gays and lesbians, Dartmouth professor Susanna Heschel replaced it with an orange as a reminder that LGBTQ+ Jews are not incompatible with Judaism—not now and not ever, no matter the sect. Yentl’s story may have ended in a Jewish rejection of queerness, but whether transgender, homosexual, polyamorous, or just a gender non-conforming straight woman, one thing is clear—Yentl is an Orthodox Jew, and she is no more queer within her culture than her culture is within the outer world. The orange not only belongs on the Seder plate, but—in a way—completes it. Works Cited
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