Characters
- Chaimi (Jamie Elman)
- Leyzer (Eli Batalion)
Mayim Bialik featured in one episode. [11]
Yidlife Crisis is a webTV comedy series starring Jamie Elman and Eli Batalion and launched in 2014.
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] In 2023, the duo announced they were working on a show that explores the Arab-Israeli conflict. [6]
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. [7] The show evolves around the 21st century Jewish culture, and sometimes tackles topics such as antisemitism, [1] Jewish food, [2] Christmas versus Hanukkah [8] or marijuana [9] 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. [10] 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]
Mayim Bialik featured in one episode. [11]
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. [12] [13] The duo also performed in Krakow, Tel Aviv, Toronto, Montreal, Los Angeles and Birmingham (England). [11]
The word Yid, also known as the Y-word, is a Jewish ethnonym of Yiddish origin. It is used as an autonym within the Ashkenazi Jewish community, and also used as slang by European football fans, antisemites, and others. Its usage may be controversial in modern English language. It is not usually considered offensive when pronounced, the way Yiddish speakers say it, but some may deem the word offensive nonetheless. When pronounced by non-Jews, it is commonly intended as a pejorative term. It is used as a derogatory epithet by antisemites along with, and as an alternative to, the English word 'Jew'.
Blossom is an American sitcom that aired for five seasons on NBC. Debuting as a pilot preview on July 5, 1990, it premiered as a mid-season replacement on January 3, 1991, and aired until May 22, 1995. Don Reo created the series, which starred Mayim Bialik as Blossom Russo, a teenager who lived with her father and two elder brothers. It was produced by Reo's Impact Zone Productions and Witt/Thomas Productions in association with Touchstone Television.
Hayim Nahman Bialik was a Jewish poet who wrote primarily in Hebrew and Yiddish. Bialik is considered a pioneer of modern Hebrew poetry, part of the vanguard of Jewish thinkers who gave voice to a new spirit of his time, and recognized today as Israel's national poet. Being a noted essayist and story-teller, Bialik also translated major works from European languages.
Mayim Chaya Bialik is an American actress, author and former game show host. From 1991 to 1995, she played the title character of the NBC sitcom Blossom. From 2010 to 2019, she played neuroscientist Amy Farrah Fowler on the CBS sitcom The Big Bang Theory, for which she was nominated four times for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series and won the Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series in 2015 and 2017. Bialik shared hosting duties of Jeopardy! with Ken Jennings on a rotating basis between August 2021 and December 2023.
Lipa Schmeltzer is an American singer, entertainer, and composer. He is a headliner in Hasidic as well as modern Jewish communities worldwide and has been described as "the Lady Gaga of Hasidic music". As of 2022, Schmeltzer has released 18 solo albums.
Yiddish orthography is the writing system used for the Yiddish language. It includes Yiddish spelling rules and the Hebrew script, which is used as the basis of a full vocalic alphabet. Letters that are silent or represent glottal stops in the Hebrew language are used as vowels in Yiddish. Other letters that can serve as both vowels and consonants are either read as appropriate to the context in which they appear, or are differentiated by diacritical marks derived from Hebrew nikkud, commonly referred to as "nekudot" or "pintalach". Additional phonetic distinctions between letters that share the same base character are also indicated by either pointing or adjacent placement of otherwise silent base characters. Several Yiddish points are not commonly used in any latter-day Hebrew context; others are used in a manner that is specific to Yiddish orthography. There is significant variation in the way this is applied in literary practice. There are also several differing approaches to the disambiguation of characters that can be used as either vowels or consonants.
Jamie Elman is a Canadian American actor, best known for his leading roles of Cody Miller on YTV's Student Bodies, Luke Foley in NBC's American Dreams, and himself in Yidlife Crisis.
Molloy is an American sitcom television series that aired on Fox from July 25, 1990, until August 15, 1990. It starred Mayim Bialik as a carefree New York-native preteen girl, whose life is turned upside down when her mother dies and her divorced father moves her to Los Angeles to live with his new wife and step-children. The series was created by George Beckerman, and executive produced by Lee Rich. Chris Cluess and Stu Kreisman were also executive producers.
Der Keneder Adler was Canada's leading Yiddish newspaper from 1907 until 1977. Founded in Montreal by Hirsch Wolofsky, the Adler underpinned Yiddish cultural activity in the city for much of the 20th century.
The Maccabeats are an American Orthodox Jewish all-male a cappella group. Founded in 2007 at Yeshiva University, Manhattan, New York, the 14-member group specializes in covers and parodies of contemporary hits using Jewish-themed lyrics. Their breakout 2010 Hanukkah music video for "Candlelight", a parody of Mike Tompkins' a cappella music video for Taio Cruz's "Dynamite", logged more than two million hits in its first ten days; the video has been viewed more than 16 million times as of 2022. They have recorded three albums and one EP, and frequently release music videos in conjunction with Jewish holidays. They tour worldwide and have performed at the White House and the Knesset.
Zhyd and Zhydovka are terms for Jewish man and Jewish woman, respectively, in several Slavic languages. In Russian and Ukrainian languages, they are considered pejorative.
Eliyahu Noah "Eli" Staiman, professionally known as L.E. Doug Staiman or simply L.E. Staiman, is an American musician, actor, comedian, and filmmaker. He was the frontman and founder of the Jewish pop punk band The Groggers, which he formed with guitarist Ari Friedman in 2010. Outside of The Groggers, he has performed with artists including Aryeh Kunstler, Benny Friedman, and Dave Days, and released several solo singles, including with the short-lived duo 3 Day Yuntif. In addition to music he has pursued filmmaking, directing music videos and comedy sketches for various YouTubers and making his feature film directorial debut in 2022 with Love Virtually, starring Cheri Oteri, Stephen Tobolowsky, and Paul F. Tompkins.
The Jewish People's Schools and Peretz Schools, along with its secondary school Bialik High School, is a private co-educational Jewish day school system. It is located in Côte Saint-Luc, an on-island suburb of Montreal, Quebec.
Anthony Mordechai Tzvi Russell is an American singer and musician who performs in Yiddish. He is an African-American convert to Judaism.
Khayele Grober was a theatre actor and playwright.
Call Me Kat is an American television sitcom largely based on the British sitcom Miranda by Miranda Hart that aired on Fox from January 3, 2021, to May 4, 2023. The series stars Mayim Bialik as Kat, and includes Cheyenne Jackson, Kyla Pratt, Julian Gant, and Swoosie Kurtz. Leslie Jordan was also featured until his death on October 24, 2022. The series was developed by Darlene Hunt. In May 2023, the show was canceled after three seasons.
Eli Schechtman was a Yiddish writer. He defined the purpose of his work as follows: "My mission in Jewish literature was and still is ... to show to those who negate the power of the Galut, how mighty – spiritually and physically – were the generations who grew up in that Galut, even in the most godforsaken places."
As They Made Us is a 2022 American drama film written, directed and produced by Mayim Bialik, in her feature directorial debut. The film stars Dianna Agron, Simon Helberg, Candice Bergen, Dustin Hoffman, Julian Gant, Charlie Weber and Justin Chu Cary. The plot follows Abigail (Agron) and the last moments that she and her family spend with her dying father (Hoffman). It was released in theaters and on video on demand by Quiver Distribution on April 8, 2022. It received positive reviews from critics.
Israel Wachser was a Russian writer of Yiddish and Hebrew short stories and children's literature.
Vivian Felsen is a Canadian translator from French and Yiddish into English, and a visual artist of Jewish origin. She is the recipient of the Canadian Jewish Book Award (2001) and J. I. Segal Award for her translations dealing with Canadian Jewish history and Holocaust memoirs.
