YidLife Crisis
is a comedy web series created by two Montreal Jews, Eli "Leizer" Batalion and Jamie "Chaimie" Elman. Offering a satirical look at modern Jewish life, the dialogue is almost entirely in (subtitled) Yiddish, with plenty of puns and Bilingual Bonuses.
Contains examples of the following tropes:
- As Himself: The guys play fictionalized versions of themselves with Yiddishized names.
- Bilingual Bonus: In "Sukkanabis", as Chaimie enters Leizer's sukkah, he says "Tabarnac!" (subtitled as "What the f—?"). Another name for a sukkah is also a tabernacle, but this is clearly also an example of Quebec French profanity, which is known for Catholic-related terms.
- Chubby Chaser: Chaimie's (unseen) girlfriend Rachel is apparently quite zaftig, which he likes.
- Content Warnings: Each episode starts with a warning: The following contains references to adult situations and coarse language. In Yiddish. Then there's a funny line or image, which changes with each episode.
- Creator Provincialism: It's set and filmed in Montreal, which makes sense since there's already a large Jewish population there, and they don't have to pretend to be living somewhere like New York.
- Everyone Has Standards: Leizer may be willing to break the Yom Kippur fast, but he refuses to put gravy on his poutine (so as not to mix milk and meat). He does eat the gravy separately with a spoon, though. This upsets Chaimie and the waitress, who see him as ruining the quintessential Quebecois dish.
- Fun with Subtitles: In the third episode, when Chaimie and Leizer imitate yeshiva bochurs, their subtitles are laid out on the screen like a page of The Talmud (and then the center part, usually a passage from The Torah, is given as "Passover-influenced gibberish"). It happens again soon after, with their conversation on bagels turning into the same thing.
- Jewish Smartass: The show runs on this. Mostly from Chaimie, but Leizer is more than capable of holding his own.
- Jews Love to Argue: Every episode features an argument (usually overlapping with Seinfeldian Conversation) between the secular Chaimie and the more religious Leizer (though they don't always argue about religion).
- Mistaken for Foreigner: Leizer assumes a Chinese waiter is a foreigner with poor English, but he turns out to be fluent in both English and Yiddish, and has been teaching his parents Yiddish while pretending it's English. (This parallels an old joke in which Jews dining at a Chinese restaurant are amazed by their waiter speaking flawless Yiddish. The owner shushes them: "He thinks we're teaching him English!".).
- Peking Duck Christmas: An entire episode about it.
- Sadly Mythtaken: Chaimie mentions the (probably wrong) theory that Jesus's story is based on Horus from Egyptian Mythology.
- Seinfeldian Conversation: Naturally, given that Seinfeld was also written by Jews. Each episode is basically a meandering conversation in Yiddish about whatever the topic du jour is.
- Serious Business: Usually food. The first episode is about poutine, the second is about Montreal smoked meat, the third is about bagels...
- Shout-Out: One episode is titled "Jews in Cars Getting Babka".
- What the Romans Have Done for Us: In Season 1, Episode 4 Chaimie asks what the Greeks in the Books of Maccabees were offering that was so bad, pointing out their contributions to math, philosophy, democracy, etc.
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Woolseyism: Many Yiddish terms are translated into something more familiar to English-speakers, often goyish English-speakers (which leads to the surreal experience of Yiddish being subtitled with Christian terms).- "Tabarnac"note is variously translated as "Jesus Christ" or "What the f—?"
- "Gott in himmel"note is given as "Sweet Jesus".
- You Need to Get Laid: Chaimie tells Leizer "You need to get a girlfriend" when his description of covering a bagel in cream cheese is a little too sensual.
