[2] The film incorporates music to tell the story of an Ashkenazi Jewish woman in Poland in 1904 who decides to disguise herself as a man so that she can receive an education in Talmudic law.

Yentl's father, Reb Mendel (“Papa”), secretly instructs her in the Talmud despite the proscription of such study by women according to the custom of her community.

After the death of her father, Yentl decides to cut her hair short, dress like a man, take her late brother's name, Anshel, and enter a Yeshiva, a Jewish religious school in Bychawa.

After reading Isaac Bashevis Singer's story "Yentl: The Yeshiva Boy" in 1968, Streisand sought to make it her next film after her completion of Funny Girl.

[7] By 1976, after completing A Star Is Born (1976), Streisand became convinced that she was, in fact, too old to play the part in Yentl, and would take up the film as director.

[10] Jon Peters attempted to persuade Streisand to drop the project and perform at Wembley Stadium in London instead, for an offer of $1 million.

[11] Another offer by Peters, which was to be in excess of $10 million for Streisand to perform in Las Vegas, was also promptly turned down in favor of pursuing the Yentl project.

[12] Her attitude regarding her age quickly changed after she disguised herself as a man, temporarily confusing Peters into thinking that a stranger had broken into the house.

[10] Peters, now convinced of her ability to play a male, agreed to sign a three-year production contract with Orion Pictures in March 1978.

Intrigued, Streisand complied with her brother when he suggested they contact a psychic to perform a seance, convinced that her father was beckoning them both from beyond the grave.

[18] Orion Pictures made the announcement that it had agreed to produce Yentl as Barbra Streisand's directorial debut in the late summer of 1980.

[20] Fifteen years after its original conception and 20 script variations later, Yentl's production finally began on April 14, 1982[21] in the Lee International Studios of London,[22] after United Artists merged with MGM and gained the new leadership of Freddie Fields and David Begelman—Streisand's former agent from the late 1960s.

[27] In Singer's story, this dual betrayal of nature and the divine plan dooms Yentl to a life of pain, alienation, and shameful dishonesty.

After her marriage ends in disaster, Yentl remains trapped forever in her disguise, unable to find redemption from her rejection of a normal life—a take on the legend of the Wandering Jew.

[28][29] In Streisand's film, Yentl's defiance of expectation and definition, a rejection of sexist gender roles, is treated as a virtue.

She does not conform to expectations from her surroundings or from her audience, neither remaining merely a woman hiding in men's clothing nor revealing herself to be neutered or firmly homosexual.

She remains assertive and defiant, daring to find or to create room for new self-definition and new possibility, without seeking simple or complete resolution to ongoing challenges in her constant thirst for more.

Streisand changed Singer's specific ending, in which Yentl wanders off, presumably to a different yeshiva, to continue her studies and her cross-dressing.

This idea symbolizes a refusal to conform to old-world Jewish standards and instead move "against the authority and authenticity of the Judaic past", which Streisand asserts has "propelled itself so far from the austerity of Talmudic study".

[35] Yentl blurs lines between male and female and its characters develop attractions that could be seen as homosexual, although the film upholds a heterosexual sensibility.

Yentl's desire is exclusively for her study partner, Avigdor, while her marriage to a woman remains unconsummated and at times is comical.

[36] While Yentl does not take its characters outside the realm of heterosexuality, the film critically questions the "appropriateness of gender roles" as determined by society.

The website's consensus reads: "Barbra Streisand takes on every conceivable role and acquits herself well in Yentl, a musical epic with a humdrum score that's given considerable lift from its writer-director-star's sheer force of will.

"[46] In their 1985 Film Quarterly review, Allison Fernley and Paula Maloof lauded Streisand for departing from genre expectations, namely upholding Yentl as a strong female and therefore potential feminist role model rather than an accomplice in a male-dominated romance, for defying the expectations of the musical genre by choosing to give all musical parts to Yentl alone, and the "subversion of the cross-dressing genre" by refusing to end the film with a "comfortable reassuring heterosexual union" between Yentl and Avigdor, demanding the audience consider more serious questions about the role of societal conventions.

[48] Gary Arnold of The Washington Post observed an "uninspired score and other shortcomings" of the film, but saw its "exceptional charm and sentimental potency" as its saving grace.

It was released on DVD by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (under 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment) on February 3, 2009 as a two-disc "Director's Extended Cut" in the widescreen format.

[citation needed] Despite Streisand's historic Golden Globe win, she was not nominated for an Academy Award, causing much controversy.

Irving is one of just three actors to be nominated for an Oscar and a Razzie for the same performance; the others are James Coco in Only When I Laugh and Glenn Close in Hillbilly Elegy.