Gender-Bending on the Yiddish Stage
December 11, 2002
More than 50 years ago Isaac Bashevis Singer wrote the short story YentI the Yeshiva Boy, about the young maydl in Poland who dresses as a boy in order to study Torah. The tale still resonates. Until December 29, New York’s Folksbiene Theater presents Yentl’s tale In Yiddish (with English translation via headsets). The poignant plot explores triangular relationships, cross-dressing, the sometimes fluid boundaries of sexual desire, and the fate of a woman too besotted with love for Torah study to be a sock-darning wife to the man she loves.
