To give you a notion of the special magic of “Yentl,” I’d like to start with the following complicated situation: Yentl, a young Jewish girl, wants to be a scholar. But girls are not permitted to study books. So she disguises herself as a boy, and is accepted by a community of scholars. He thinks she is a boy. The girl’s father will not let him marry her. So he convinces Yentl to marry his girlfriend, so that at least he can visit the two people he cares for most deeply. (The girlfriend, remember, thinks Yentl is a boy.) Yentl and the girl are wed. At first Yentl manages to disguise her true sex. But eventually she realizes that she must reveal the truth.
That is the central situation in “Yentl.” And when the critical moment came when Yentl had to decide what to do, I was quietly astonished to realize two things: (1) I did not have the slightest idea how this situation was going to turn out, and (2) I really cared about it. I was astonished because, quite frankly, I walked into “Yentl” expecting some kind of schmaltzy formula romance in which Yentl’s “secret identity” was sort of a running gag. You know, like one of those plot points they use for Broadway musicals where the audience is really there to hear the songs and see the costumes. Continue reading “She falls in love with one of them”