Yentl: Gender Studies Comes to the Yeshiva

4,772 words

Finally I got around to watching a classic blockbuster from my misspent youth. No, I’m not a Star Wars late adopter. I’ll have you know that I saw that one on the big screen. I don’t care what George Lucas says these days; Han shot first! I was there; I know how it went down in the cantina, dammit!

Instead, this is none other than Yentl from 1983, starring Barbra Streisand in the title role. I was rather apprehensive about watching another one of her movies. I saw The Prince of Tides in 1992, and the big flashback squicked me out so much that I was a wreck for the rest of the day. Also, normally I’m not one much for musicals, and I’m generally allergic to chick flicks. I’m happy to report that I survived a Streisand movie with my wits still intact.

I’ll have to hand it to Babs; even though she’s not exactly my type, she was quite cute at 41 when the film came out, and looking plausibly half her age. (Even now at double that age, Barbra Streisand is much better looking than Barbara Spectre.) Best of all, she can sing, and the film features lots of her soulful solos expressing the character’s inner thoughts. In all seriousness, I must say they’re pretty touching. Although Taylor Swift is better, I’ll have to give credit where due. Babs also directed the picture, and was one of the two screenwriters as well as one of the producers. The basic plot originated with the prolific writer Isaac Bashevis Singer, adapted into a Broadway feature, but otherwise it’s creatively very much her film.

Shver tsu zein a froy – Bonus Points if You Catch the Reference

Before there were Amazon delivery trucks – or, of course, Little Free Libraries.

The opening scene, filmed in the heartland of Bohunkia, is set in “Eastern Europe 1904” – that is to say, a shtetl somewhere in the Pale of Settlement region then under imperial Russian domination. Specifically, Yentl’s hometown is Janev. (There are several Polish communities named Janów, and I figure this was probably Janów Lubelski approximately south of metropolitan Lublin.) We see a thriving and idyllic town, rustic but with an astonishing quaint charm.

A klezmer band warms up their clarinets. Men stroll into their cozy synagogue. Pushcart vendors hawk veggies and flowers in an open-air market, and a charming fishwife offers a carp “so beautiful it will cook itself!” (Hey, good one!) A bagel vendor walks up with tasty toroidal treats. Ladies wash the laundry in a nearby river. Kids skip along in their traditional tasseled outfits. Remarkably, the gutter in the middle of the dirt road is a pure rivulet, even though these guys – ahem – didn’t have indoor plumbing yet. The rose-tinted Judeo-nostalgia is off the charts! Overlooking the grim details about the geopolitically rough neighborhood, these were the good old days for the Red Sea Pedestrians. The matzo scent practically wafts off the screen!

Throughout the scene, a book vendor rolls in with the jingle, “Story books for women, sacred books for men! Picture books for women, sacred books for men!” For benefit of the audience, this introduces the theme that wamen were barred from scholarship. (If you’ve seen Disney’s anachronistically feminist take on Beauty and the Beast, you get the picture.) Then enter Babs, who of course is playing the title role of Yentl. The vendor refuses to sell her a book whamen shouldn’t have, until she says it’s for her father. In Yiddish, “yenta” means either a gossipy busybody or a matchmaker. Ironically then, Yentl is the target of local scuttlebutt for not being married yet. She’s 18 in the original story, though Babs was envisioning her character as 28. Back in those days, being single as a young adult was nearing “old maid” territory.

The next scene is back home. Her father, a rabbi, turns out to be unusually enlightened. Although wamen weren’t supposed to study the Talmud, he encourages her intellectual pursuits. Sadly, his health is fragile. Later, he stumbles at the synagogue. Fearing the worst, Yentl calls out to him from the balcony, a breach of etiquette. For benefit of the audience, this shows that the wamen had to remain separate and be silent throughout the services. Poor whamen! Eventually it’s the end of the trail for the father. Yentl is allowed at the gravesite, but the rest of the whamen have to stay at the cemetery gate.

Coming Out as Trans

With the belongings of the house being emptied out, including her father’s impressive book collection, Yentl begins her gender transition from female to male. First she chops off her hair. (Strangely, it went from blonde to red earlier, and now she’s gone brunette.) Apparently she’s improvised a chest binder, but it doesn’t look like she’s wearing a packer. (For benefit of the audience, I’ll clarify that those are floppy dildos which FTM transsexuals use to produce a crotch bulge.) She ditches the dress, puts on men’s clothing, and hits the trail. Oh crap – am I using the wrong pronouns? I’ll cut that out right away. Please don’t cancel me! Trans men are men, trans women are women, and gender is only a social construct! I believe!

In case you don’t know Polish, this means “Kosher tavern.”

Yentl tries to pay for a wagon ride, but he gets cheated. A small pig is on board with the passengers, emphasizing for benefit of the audience that these are goyim. Or is that associative conditioning? (Polacks gypped a yid – oy veh! Bad Polacks; no pierogi for you!) Yentl will have to sleep cowboy-style under the stars. Fortunately the sky is clear and it looks like early summer; winter weather in Poland is no joke! Before retiring, he sings one of the iconic Streisand solos before a candle, ending in a tear rolling down the dutiful son’s cheek in memory of his dearly departed father.

Back on the trail the next morning, he cheers himself up with philosophical quotes, beginning “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?” Hey, I can get on board with that one! For benefit of the audience, I’ll add that it’s by Hillel the Elder, in case you’re rusty with your rabbinical one-liners.

Happily, Yentl arrives at a river, and the next town beckons. Luckily, a ferry is ready to depart; his Qabalah mojo isn’t advanced enough yet to pull off a Moses shtick and part the waters. He drops by the local Israelite inn. Yentl – who sheds his deadname and is now Anshel – immediately finds himself ensconced amidst vibrant Jewish cultural life. (Did I finally use the word “vibrant” unironically at Counter-Currents for once?) Again, the matzo smell wafts headily from the screen. As for his new gender identity, he passes flawlessly. Although he was assigned female at birth, everyone takes him for a beardless youth. Soon he’s aboard an omnibus wagon, bound for the yeshiva with other hopeful students.

Hebrew Hogwarts

Upon arriving in the next town, our female-to-male protagonist stays with his new friend Avigdor. Anshel has passed as male so far while being surrounded by beardos, but Avigdor’s mother has some suspicions about his gender identity. (She doesn’t say anything, but the initial double-take and noticing his smooth cheek is one of many “somebody’s been to film school” moments in the movie.) They have to sleep in the same bed, since no others are available. If he were still female, of course it would be a major cultural no-no, though it’s nonetheless rather uncomfortable.

Since Anshel is still struggling to overcome the aftereffects of rapid onset gender dysphoria, he could’ve just slept on the floor. At least he’s indoors this time, surely an improvement over roughing it the prior night. It’s all rather odd, given the nature of the scholarship he’s been studying since he was still a girl. Much of the Talmud’s endless mumbo-jumbo involves handling dilemmas, be they common, rare, hypothetical, or (to put it very mildly) profoundly weird. Why does it take a dumb blond from flyover country like me to think of sleeping on the floor?

Next up at Hebrew Hogwarts is the entrance exam, which the students have been dreading. Anshel engages in a rabbinical quote spar-a-thon with one of the academy’s learned elders. Throughout, he asks a lot of questions; it turns out that was a good strategy. (After all, these guys are well-known for answering a question with a question.) He happily finds that he’s been admitted to the yeshiva, and Avigdor will be his study partner. If that’s all the entrance exam was, fortunately it wasn’t as rigorous as imperial China’s qualification test for scholar-officials! It’s a joyful moment, a fulfilment of his life’s dreams ever since he was still a she. Not only has the former Yentl transitioned into his true self, forever done with hiding who he really is, one day he’ll have a cabinet nomination stapled to his diploma!

This begins a happy solo as he immerses himself in scholarship among the crowd of beardos at Hebrew Hogwarts. Naturally, the female-to-male prodigy is an outstanding student. During the montage, not only does the smell of matzo thoroughly permeate the room, I’m jonesing for gefilte fish, and can someone please pass the bagels? Oh yeah, and let’s not forget the cream cheese, lox, and capers!

In the next scene, Anshel dines with the family of Avigdor’s fiancée Hadass, who throughout is profoundly smitten with the dashing young beardo. (She’s quite a peach, played by the stunning Amy Irving, and a great cook too.) It looks like the family has money. The fine china and silverware are laid out on the table, and for a moment, I imagined the dishes themselves might jump up and start singing and dancing. After the banquet, Anshel asks Avigdor about an inconsistency regarding his brother’s cause of death, but he changes the subject. Well, now – what’s up with that one?

A Budding Bromance

Soon after, there’s some homoerotic subtextual chemistry sparking up between the guys. Somebody’s been to film school all right! After a friendly tussle – Avigdor gets grabby a lot throughout their bromance – they prance through the woods. They argue about a minor contextual point in the Book of Genesis: was Eve formed from Adam’s rib, or Adam’s side? There’s not too much going on with it, though bringing up this sexually charged part of scripture, of course, pings my Freudian spidey-sense. The dose of sunshine and fresh air – a rare luxury for Talmud scholars – leads to the skinny dipping scene. Exposure to water is all well and good too; those types had a reputation for being hygiene-challenged back then.

Speaking of exposure, despite tremendous peer pressure, Anshel doesn’t ditch his duds and dive in. They were rather provincial in 1904 and wouldn’t have accepted his true gender identity. After all, although of course he was no longer a woman called Yentl, he hadn’t had top surgery yet. One look at those bare chestfeeding modules, and regrettably they would’ve made the terrible error of assuming gender. Reality is only whatever we think it is, or want it to be according to whatever feels the most fun and rewarding at the moment. However, they didn’t understand that objective truth is plain nonsense. Therefore, they would’ve drawn the woefully mistaken conclusion that being assigned female at birth means you just – yanno – stay that way. Quelle horreur! Che orrore! Co za koszmar!

“Oh Bella!” “Oh Edward!” Oops, wrong movie.

Although there aren’t any explicit pickle shots throughout the skinny dipping scene, the cinematographic meta-usage of male gaze implies that Anshel does get quite an eyeful of clip-tipped Hebrew National sausage. So it turns out that he’s gay, and surely that seems like quite a succulent buffet! That leaves our transgendered Talmud scholar quite bedazzled, leading to another solo.

My, everything is becoming quite complicated! For one matter, how long will it keep rolling along smoothly in Hebrew Hogwarts? Anshel is still in stealth mode, but what will they say when facial fuzz forever fails to flourish? Although he’s managing to pass so far, he’s kind of sticking out among the beardos as it is. Despite being male now, Birthing Person Nature isn’t being too cooperative for Streisand’s character. Had he known who to ask, though, Magnus Hirschfeld was a miracle worker at all that. Wilhelm Reich, not far away in Bukovina, could’ve given him some tips too. Although little Willy was seven years old at the time, he was remarkably sexually precocious, practically the prodigy of polymorphous perversity, to borrow a term from the illustrious Herbert Marcuse. Other than that, the Ottoman Empire was still kicking around at the time, and their masses of eunuchs were a living testament to Turkish excellence in gender affirming care.

Other than that, Anshel hasn’t officially come out as gay, but it seems a foregone conclusion at this point. It’s likely some Oscars parties might be in store for the future! Unfortunately for him, it looks like he’s going to be in the Friend Zone with his study partner. He’s engaged to Hadass, so that’s just not going to work. Anshel might not have too many alternative lifestyle alternatives, though; there probably isn’t a bathhouse scene near Hebrew Hogwarts, and it’s obviously too early to get a GRINDR account.

Shields Up, Sulu! Plot Complication Approaching Dead Ahead At Warp Factor Six!

In a tragic twist, Avigdor’s almost-in-laws call off the wedding. They find out that his brother didn’t die of some lung condition or another; rather, he committed suicide. Not only is it an ill omen, it suggests the possibility of hereditary insanity. Eugenically speaking, they do have a point; though it’s unclear what the circumstances were leading up to it. (Maybe someone called his brother a girl, leaving the poor fellow no choice but to end it all after being misgendered.) Following the revelation, everyone is pretty devastated.

Once more, Anshel dines chez Hadass, though without Avigdor. He tries to plead his friend’s case with the maiden’s parents. Besides, whamen should be able to make up their own minds, right? Throughout, Hadass is trying her best to hold it together. Her father concludes that his daughter will just have to marry someone else. As he does so, he glances meaningfully to Anshel. Oh yeah, someone’s been to film school all right!

Somehow this reminds me of Sophia Loren checking out Jayne Mansfield’s nip slip.

So then, the possibility of mattoid genetics in the family tree is a disqualifier. It seems odd, though, that the next candidate for a son-in-law that crosses his mind is someone who – unaware of Anshel’s trans identity – surely appears as effeminate, scrawnier than the usual Talmud scholar, and afflicted with a protracted case of delayed puberty. Her mother seems to approve too, despite her earlier and much-mistaken suspicion that he wasn’t a real man.

Did I mention that shit gets complicated? Of course, a guy getting involved with his best friend’s ex right after a broken engagement would be an egregious violation of the Bro Code. Even so, this is exactly what Avigdor himself proposes. Huh??? He justifies this using a Scriptural injunction that a childless widow must marry her brother-in-law. Although this ancient custom has been deprecated for the last two thousand years (this bit of Holy Writ was amended with a Talmudic escape clause), and his analogy is way overstretched, it’s also true that pilpul is as pliable as postmodernism.

Besides, he reasons, it’s better that Anshel marry Hadass than wait for her parents to pick some other dude who she doesn’t even like. Finally, we’re making a little sense – except that there’s the transsexuality thing. Anshel is, of course, unquestionably male simply by the manifest fact of his gender identification. As all enlightened people know, a few unimportant body parts have nothing to do with whether someone is male or female, full stop, QED, end of story, and you’d better not question this or else. After transitioning from Yentl to Anshel, happily he no longer was burdened with having to live a lie. Still, in practical terms, things could get a smidge complicated if he gets married and his bride is unaware that he was assigned female at birth. It’s not entirely impossible, though; there was a scene like that in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, but the solution required divine intervention. Moreover, Anshel is gay and experiencing homoerotic attraction to Avigdor. He flat-out refuses.

In the very next scene, Anshel is courting Hadass. There does seem to be a bit of chemistry, though he chickens out. Avigdor has second thoughts about putting his friend up to the plan, and comes within a hair’s breadth of leaving town for Lublin. Soon enough, Anshel is getting fitted for a wedding outfit, but he’s plagued with second thoughts about it too. He’s as jumpy with the tailors as if he were getting a cavity search. He soothes his spirits with a solo, reasoning that it will blossom into a fulfilling polyamorous alternative lifestyle arrangement.

Wedding Bells Are Ringing

And so it came to pass that after the much-abbreviated courtship, Anshel and Hadass get the holy handcuffs. At the ceremony, Avigdor has a private word with his friend. He recites some wedding night advice by the sage Moses ben Nachman. (I mentioned the dude briefly in my thrilling epic The Final Falafel. He’s also called Nachmanides, though better known in the rabbinical literature biz as Ramban, not to be confused with the porn star Dick Rambone.) The text reads:

Converse with her to put her mind at ease. Speak words which arouse her to love, desire, and passion, and words of reverence for G‑d. Never force her. Her mood must be as yours. Win her with graciousness and seductiveness. Be patient until her passion is aroused. Begin with love. And when her mood is ready, let her desire be satisfied first. Her delight is what matters.

At risk of damning with faint praise, it’s certainly sweeter than Philip Roth’s usual. Still, it’s rather strange for Avigdor to give tips on how to bang his ex, and he seems a little too enthusiastic about it. Anshel, on the other hand, is rather overwhelmed because all this is contrary to his orientation. Moreover, the physiological technicalities of plucking his bride’s cherry blossom of innocence surely will challenge his gender identity at an entirely new level. Still, maybe his jitters are unfounded. Things aren’t entirely so unusual. After all, the relationship worked in Beauty and the Beast, and Belle was into furries, for G‑d’s sake.

Soon it’s time to make it official, if you know what I mean. As the young couple heads to the bridal bedchamber, Anshel’s new father-in-law tells them he hopes for a grandson in nine months. Uh, no pressure there, huh? That might be a bit difficult, since (if we really must let so-called reality intrude) both the bride and groom are birthing persons, and therefore will have difficulty with fusing their genetic proteins. It’s about damn time, of course, that socially constructed knowledge finally progresses sufficiently to rewrite a certain ugly essentialist detail out of biology. Until then, conception necessary involves a person of penis. What else can be done? A star in the east could arise, but that’s a different religion.

As for the wedding night, there’s no strap-on scene, no pearl diving, no bump-and-grind, or even a handjob. The clothes stay on. With some fast talk, Anshel convinces his wife that nookie would be inappropriate – sinful even – since she still has feelings for Avigdor. (Now that’s some quick thinking!) The scene becomes a literal pillow fight.

The Finale

Friday evening rolls around, and Hadass is feeling fairly frisky. So far, they haven’t gotten around to the cherry bye-bye thing yet. (For benefit of the audience, I’ll add that the Talmud indeed recommends the Sabbath as an auspicious day for consummation, but the reason why is hardly romantic. In general, the book of Ketubot gets remarkably twisted and might leave you permanently scarred – you’ve been warned. No wonder they don’t want their whamen reading this stuff!) He keeps delaying until she’s too drowsy to deploy the hole in the sheet. Soon enough, she starts to get concerned. By this time, why isn’t he as ready to pounce as the Nookie Monster? The problem, of course, is that Anshel is gay and was rushed into a heterosexual marriage. Hadass has no idea about her husband’s personal lifestyle choices, so the smoking hot redhead is beginning to doubt herself.

Around this time, Avigdor asks his friend for the blow-by-blow recap of the wedding night. (Really, dude? Way too much information! This is one of the places I was wondering if there was some weird troilism dynamic afoot, or what kids these days would call a cuck fetish.) Anshel makes up a very brief story. Although he’s transitioned into his authentic self as a man, freed of the crushing burden of having to hide his true gender identity from everyone, tragically he’s still in the closet about his orientation.

Hadass is emotionally drifting toward her husband and away from Avigdor, so the excuse from the wedding night no longer works. (It’s to be expected; polyamorous relationships can be tough to navigate, especially for beginners. Ask the Prophet, Seer, and Revelator Joseph Smith Jun. about that one!) Another wrinkle is that Hadass has begun to read the Talmud – Anshel encouraged it, since he’s just as committed to whamen’s rights as when he was a girl – and there’s an injunction that husbands must put out for their wives upon demand. The scene, of course, becomes another solo.

Anshel and Avigdor take off for a road trip to Lublin. Discussing the complex relational dynamics of the polyamorous triad, the transgendered prodigy says, “Things aren’t always what they seem.” (Uh, ya think?) After arriving in the opulent regional capital, he loosens up with a shot of slivovitz and finally comes out as trans. At long last, the jig is up. Oops – can I still say “jig” these days?

Avigdor doesn’t believe it, until Anshel (who unfortunately still hasn’t had the opportunity to get top surgery) removes the chest binder and flashes him with a pair of chestfeeding modules. This begins quite a tumultuous scene, alternating between Avigdor tussling with him and then screaming “Don’t touch me!” During the heat of the moment, Anshel levels up his LGBTTIQQ2SAv.32bis abilities and becomes genderfluid, enabling him to transition back to being a woman. Now she’s Yentl as before. Her hair is verging on dark blonde. After Avigdor finally stops flipping and tripping in a problematic fit of transphobia, he comes out as bisexual. (That wasn’t such a surprise after all those grabby moments during their bromance.) He confesses to suffering from internalized homophobia about his attraction to Yentl while she was still a man.

Well, now that everyone has come out of the closet at last – what’s next? Hadass can get an annulment, and her old boyfriend will have another chance with her. (After Yentl’s detransition, her relationship becomes a same-sex marriage, just the way things were meant to be since Adam and Steve in the Gay Bar of Eden. Still, they have an easy way out on the grounds of non-consummation.) Apparently this works out for Avigdor and Hadass. Luckily, the new husband is also hep to whamen’s rights and his little wifey-poo can continue her Talmudic scholarship. It’s not revealed what happened when she found out her first husband was gay and trans, but I imagine it involved turning sixteen shades of purple along with uttering uncharacteristically unladylike language.

Yentl remains female, at least for now. She boards a steamer, undoubtedly bound for Ellis Island. (It looks like she skipped out on some interesting times ahead.) The scene is reminiscent of Titanic, though without the Hollywood hunk Leonardo DiCaprio or the huge hunk of floating ice. I must wonder, though – as she stands alone at the controls, where the hell’s the helmsman? She sings a final solo as the ship sails on to the land of freedom where things are different, you can practice your religion as you please, and the opinion of provincial beardos is no barrier to pursuing her studies. It’s quite a nice touch – Barbra Streisand showed a genuine appreciation for America, so woefully lacking in Hollywood types these days. For this early graceful gesture, I’ll forgive her much more recent bout of Trump Derangement Syndrome, about which I recommended to “put a cork in her big yap and start singing.”

It’s a Wrap!

Yentl opens with an engaging tale of belle époque shtetl life, during which the protagonist undergoes a gender transition. Becoming who he truly is also has the added benefit of allowing him to pursue his preferred career path. The story, rich in cross-cultural discourse and subtexual nuance, also is remarkable for closing the gap between second wave feminism and nascent radical gender theory. Although these socially constructed paradigmatic eigenvectors are often askew in the intersectional Cartesian spectrum of liberatory thought, Yentl demonstrates that the dimensional variance isn’t inescapably an unbridgeable hiatus of notional null space in the customarily scalar prismatic topology of the ideological realm. It should be recalled that – as Baudrillard says – “Sexual identity is intrinsically impossible.” To be precise about it, the essence of sexual identity unfolds not as an object of reality, but as a simulacrum – a signifier adrift in the hyper-reality of desire, rendered intrinsically unattainable, eclipsed by the labyrinth of signs that signify nothing yet everything. Moreover, in a sense, Lacan uses the term cultural pretextual theory to denote a semioticist reality. Sartre promotes the use of dialectic sublimation to challenge hierarchy. Thus, if neocultural theory holds, we have to choose between cultural pretextual theory and neodialectic discourse. Dialectic sublimation implies that narrative must come from communication. The answer, of course, is a gallon jar of kosher pickles.

The only thing that doesn’t quite fit is that the idyllic setting in real life was in a troubled region that was about to get a lot worse. Here we don’t see Cossacks riding up to swing truncheons or crack whips. Much less are there any Jews poisoning peasants with booze. There’s no indication that the Pale of Settlement was a seething cauldron of ethnic and political tension already beginning to boil over, ultimately bringing tremendously far-reaching repercussions. Nobody knows apocalyptic times are around the corner: the Bolshevik Revolution, Leon “General Buttnaked” Trotsky’s invasion of Poland, two World Wars, the sprawling medium-security prison in Auschwitz, and decades of Communist misrule. Still, I can’t fault Babs for rose-tinted nostalgia untouched by historical hardships; after all, we wouldn’t nit-pick Beauty and the Beast for not portraying medieval hygiene realistically.

Other than that, somebody’s been to film school for sure, and I think it was Babs! For one thing, it’s remarkable how well she synchronizes the solos with the action. The lyrics tell of beautiful dishes, just as Anshel handles the fine china. Babs metaphorically sings of a door (of opportunity) opening, and a real door opens on screen. The solo after being accepted to Hebrew Hogwarts mentions a window, just as Anshel walks by a window. Then the bottom of Barbra’s breathtaking beak becomes brilliant as the translucent septum makes the nostril glow like a cigarette ember, and then the lyrics speak of light shining through. Really, it’s such a joyful moment and the solo is so moving that I feel like a momser for mentioning the Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer shtick. (Well, maybe not; it had me cackling like Kamala.) Anyway, Catholics have a thing about holy stigmata. Perhaps for the Red Sea Pedestrians then, a special sign of divine blessing is enlightenment so intense that it comes out of the schnozzle.

You could even say it glows!

More seriously, although I’ve been hardly reverent with my write-up, I’ve got to say that Babs knocked it out of the ballpark. Yentl was a cinematic love letter to her community. That seems quite appropriate, even as troublesome as this community is capable of behaving. Granted, the saga of Hebrew Hogwarts will be much too matzo-flavored for most Counter-Currents readers to endure. As for me, I much prefer seeing ordinary Jews enjoying their traditions than tricky Zionists getting up to the usual sneaky, subversive stuff. (If they’d just stop doing that, we could all be getting along so much better!) Finally, if you’re sick of crap like Deliverance, Inglourious Basterds, and Django Unchained, then you’ll be happy to know that enduring classics like Yentl prove that Hollywood is indeed quite capable of portraying cultures with the utmost respect and sensitivity.