Plot

A Jewish girl disguises herself as a boy to enter religious training.

Eastern Europe, 1904. A Jewish woman, Yentl, has a thirst for knowledge but is prohibited from learning due to the restrictions of her religion. When her father dies, she sets off to increase her knowledge, posing as a man in order to gain admission to a Jewish religious school.—grantss

1904. Teenage Yentl lives in an Eastern European village with her widowed father, Reb Mendel. Rather than become a devoted wife to whoever her husband to be - her obligation under Jewish custom - Yentl would like to study the Talmud, a right reserved solely for men. She has no intention ever to be that subservient wife to any man. Her understanding father does oblige her wish to study the Talmud under his tutelage, but with the stipulation that it be done in secret so as not to raise the ire of the community in general. But when Reb Mendel passes away, Yentl, having had a taste of that knowledge, decides to leave her hometown so that she can don a disguise as a man - she calling herself Anschel - to continue her study of the Talmud. She is initially able to do so meeting and infiltrating a group of scholarly young men who are studying the Talmud under the direction of Reb Alter Vishkower. Beyond needing to avoid situations where her true identity as a female would be discovered, Yentl finds her life unexpectedly more complicated when she falls in love with one of her colleagues, Avigdor, who, in turn is already engaged to that devoted woman, Hadass. Through her friendship with Avigdor and by association Hadass, Yentl begins to understand something that she has been taught under the Talmud, that the Talmud is not an end unto itself, but rather a means to another end, namely life, as Yentl can see the love that exists between Avigdor and Hadass, and like Hadass would do anything for Avigdor, even what may seem the impossible, such as a request Avigdor asks of his male friend, Anschel.—Huggo

In an Ashkenazic shtetl in Poland, Yentl Mendel is the boyishly klutzy daughter and only child of long widowed Rebbe ("Talmud Teacher") Mendel, who teaches Talmud (a codification of Jewish Law) to local boys - and to Yentl, but secretly because girls were not allowed to learn the law in those days. When her father dies, Yentl is all alone in the world. She takes the momentous decision to leave the village and - disguised as a boy and calling herself by the name of her late brother, Anshel - seeks and gets admitted to a Yeshiva, to study the texts, traditions, subtleties and complexities of Torah, Talmud, etc. She befriends Avigdor who is engaged to Haddas, but her family discovers his brother committed suicide so they call off the wedding (in case Avigdor possesses the same madness). Anshel then finds "him"-self in the awkward position of being called into service as substitute bridegroom, so that the wedding can go ahead and Haddas will have a husband. It is a marriage that never gets consummated - apart from the more obvious reasons, because Haddas still wants Avigdor (though she eventually falls in love with Yentl, too). After numerous complications (including Avidor and Yentl falling in love with each other, briefly, after she reveals her secret to him, along with her bosom), the film ends with everybody getting what they always wanted - Haddas and Avigdor to live happily ever after with each other, while Anshel, now Yentl once again, goes off to America to pursue her dream of serious study in Yeshiva, where she will be able to study without needing to hide her identity as a woman.—Micheal McLoughlin