Yidlife Crisis is a webTV comedy series starring Jamie Elman and Eli Batalion and launched in 2014.

Background

The comedians of the show grew up together and studied Yiddish at Bialik High School in Côte Saint-Luc in the suburbs of Montreal.[1] Eli Batalion's elders spoke Yiddish at home.[2]

The show launched on YouTube in September 2014.[3] The duo decided to make this show in a move to do something related to their Judaism.[4] In April 2022, the show premiered its first episode in French.[5]

Description

Yidlife crisis consists of short comedy sketches about two 30-something Jewish friends. Most of the dialog is in Yiddish, which the two use as a secret language, but subtitles are provided in English and French.[6] The show evolves around the 21st century Jewish culture, and sometimes tackles topics such as antisemitism,[1] Jewish food,[2] Christmas versus Hanukkah[7] or marijuana[8] with a typical Yiddish satire.[1] The comedians were directly inspired by the sitcom Seinfeld.[2][4]

The slogan of the show is "Sex, Drugs, and Milk & Meat. In Yiddish".[4] The series is humorously rated Chai (18 and over)[2] and gathered 200,000 views on YouTube for its first season.[9] Originally, Jamie Elman does not speak Yiddish (he speaks Hebrew), but he learned the phonetics in four days to act as if he did.[4]

Characters

Jamie Elman

Mayim Bialik featured in one episode.[10]

Live performance

A live Yidlife crisis show was performed at Montreal's Segal Centre for Performing Arts for a week in January 2022 in front of an empty audience and broadcast online due to pandemic restrictions.[11][12] The duo also performed in Krakow, Tel Aviv, Toronto, Montreal, Los Angeles and Birmingham (England).[10]

Awards

  • 2015: Best comedy series at Toronto's WebFest[9]
  • 2016: Canadian Screen Award nomination[10]
  • 2016: Recipients of the Natan Fund ($40,000)[10][3]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 Jordan Kutzik (26 September 2019). "How 'YidLife Crisis' Tackled Anti-Semitism". Forward.com. Retrieved 25 March 2022.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Renee GHert-Zand (16 September 2014). "Jews on the verge of a 'YidLife Crisis'". Times of Israel. Retrieved 27 March 2022.
  3. 1 2 Carl Bindman (25 April 2017). "Yidlife Crisis Proves that Yiddish is Hardly a Dead Language". Thelinknewspaper.ca. Retrieved 28 March 2022.
  4. 1 2 3 4 Neta Alexander (7 January 2015). "YidLife Crisis: An Internet Series About Nothing and Everything - in Yiddish". Haaretz. Retrieved 11 April 2022.
  5. ↑ Mike Cohen (16 April 2022). "YidLife Crisis is inviting everyone to conclude Passover with them at a special nosh and premiere of French sub-titled episodes". Thesuburban.com. Retrieved 10 August 2022.
  6. ↑ "Irreverent Yiddish comedic web series back for season 'tsvey'". The Times of Israel. 25 September 2015. Retrieved 25 March 2022.
  7. ↑ Bagriela Geselowitz (13 December 2016). "Jewish on Christmas? Sing Along to 'Yingl Belz.'". Tabletmag.com. Retrieved 28 March 2022.
  8. ↑ "'YidLife Crisis' celebrates newly legalized species in 'Sukkannabis' episode". Times of Israel. 23 September 2018. Retrieved 27 March 2022.
  9. 1 2 Renee Ghert-Zand (25 September 2015). "Irreverent Yiddish comedic web series back for season 'tsvey'". Times of Israel. Retrieved 27 March 2022.
  10. 1 2 3 4 Jordan Kutzik (26 February 2016). "'Yidlife Crisis' Takes Off — With Assist From Mayim Bialik". Forward.com. Retrieved 25 March 2022.
  11. ↑ Bill Brownstein (27 January 2022). "Brownstein: It takes more than a pandemic to keep YidLife Crisis duo down". Montreal Gazette. Retrieved 11 April 2022.
  12. ↑ Mike Cohen (29 January 2022). "YidLife Crisis duo of Elman and Batalion score high with pre-recorded edition of Pandemic". Thesuburban.com. Retrieved 11 April 2022.
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