Jamie Elman is an actor, piano player, singer, writer, director, producer. In spring 2026 he will join the cast of Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish as Mordkhe. We caught up with him and asked about performing in Yiddish, his favourite Fiddler song, YidLife Crisis, and his views on bagels.
Kultura Collective: Hi Jamie! Can you please tell us a bit about you and your creative practice?
Jamie Elman: Hi Kultura Blog! It’s a koved to be asked to be part of this series, shkoyakh. OK, a “bit” about me? In summary, I’ll have to succumb to describing myself as a performer and entertainer. I don’t love either label, but after a lifetime of working in film, tv, theatre, music and, for the last decade+, edJewtainment™,that’s the tachles.
I began my professional acting career when I was 15, working in film and TV in Montreal on YTV shows like “Are You Afraid of the Dark”, “My Hometown” and, a bit later, a teen sitcom called “Student Bodies”. Working on that show solidified my desire to join the perpetual circus that is the entertainment business and when it ended I moved to LA, where I’ve been ever since. My ‘creative practice’ over the decades has included being an actor, piano player, singer, writer, director, producer. I led the house band at a cocktail bar, the Varnish in downtown LA, for 15 years, and have jammed with lots of great musicians there and in other combos over the years. I still play at various bars around town. And while I have done live theatre and acted on camera occasionally over the last decade, most of the last 10 years has been devoted to my Yiddish-ish passion project, YidLife Crisis (more on that below).
KC: Yiddish language and culture inspire your work. Can you tell us how that interest began?
JE: I learned ‘beginner Yiddish’, somewhat amazingly, in high school in Montreal – alongside Hebrew and French. I was never able to speak it, but could read and understand a bisl. But growing up in Jewish Montreal, I was surrounded by Yiddish and yiddishkayt: there’s the Jewish Public Library with its huge collection of Yiddish literature, and the great Dora Wasserman (z”l) and her Yiddish theatre at the Sayde Bronfman (now Segal) Centre. Of course there was and still is plenty of Yiddish in the Hasidic neighborhoods, like Outremont and Mile End. Oh, and… the bagels. And smoked meat. I went to Jewish day schools and summer camps and, while I may not have recognized it as such at the time, it was all imbued with a tam, a flavour, of yiddishkayt which is part of the DNA of the city itself.
KC: In spring 2026 you will return to Toronto and join the cast of Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish as Mordkhe. Tell us about this role and what you are excited to bring to the stage.
JE: Back in 2018, I heard that Joel Grey (?!) was directing Fiddler in Yiddish in NYC and I just HAD to see it, so I flew out there and, predictably, it blew me away. I thought it was a beautiful and moving production. I was already doing YidLife by then and felt a closeness to the Yiddish language and culture, and vaguely remember dreaming that it would be amazing to be involved with this, somehow, some day… but I’m truly amazed that this is happening now, in Toronto, and that I’m in it.
I’m playing Mordkhe the Innkeeper (and also Nakhum the Beggar), and am very excited to get to play this part. I get some claaaaaassic Jewish joke lines, and a couple of iconic Yiddish curses, too, and sing many of the famous songs in the show as one of the Anatevkans. Mordkhe is the badkhn at the wedding, a sort of jester/entertainer/MC in the Ashkenazi tradition – and it’s kind of perfect for me. I used to sing in a synagogue choir back in Montreal, and have missed group singing and harmonizing, and now I’ll be getting to sing with some of Canada’s best singers and enjoy this music that I’ve known my whole life in a new way. And it’s a fun role in a pretty heavy story (something people sometimes forget…), but I don’t have to carry the show in any way, which is a relief, because this is the first musical I’m doing since high school…
KC: Fiddler is such a beloved show. How do you think the audience will react to it in Yiddish?
JE: Look, I’m just gonna say it: The show is BETTER in Yiddish. I mean it! Because, of course, these characters were speaking Yiddish in the shtetl. They were invented in Yiddish, by one of the greatest of them all, Sholem Aleichem. And the language itself is so rich and colourful and idiomatic and expressive in a way that English truly does not fully convey.
I know that most of the audiences that will see the show will not understand fluent Yiddish, and also that some people will catch some things. Many will miss some hilarious lines that, in English supertitles, are still good, but not as nuanced and, well, Jewish. BUT – the musicality of the language, the cadence, the way that Yiddish makes one gesticulate in certain ways (really, one can’t help it – trust me) will all come across. So, tukhes oyfn tish… the audiences are gonna love it.
KC: The Fiddler story is based in Imperial Russia at the turn of the 20th century, and the musical was first performed in the early 1960’s. What is it about this story that has kept audiences coming back to the theatre for over sixty years?
JE: Plenty of smarter people than I have tried to understand the timelessness and universality of this story. One famous anecdote about the Japanese production of the show in Tokyo, the first of many times its played there over 50 years, has the Japanese producer asking the writer of the (English) book, Joseph Stein, if Americans are able to understand such a Japanese story… I guess it comes down to its humanity, the idea that every culture and people face a conflict of generations, of preserving traditions in an ever-changing world, of love between fathers and daughters and families sticking together through joys and hardships. And also – the music! I mean, come on, there are some bangers in there.
KC: What’s your favourite Fiddler song and why?
JE: That’s tough. Tradition, probably, because – what a way to start a show. It has it all, the whole story is in there, and the jokes, and introducing the characters and tone – it’s a masterpiece. But there are so many… Sabbath Prayer, L’chaim, and one that breaks my heart every time, Far From the Home I Love.
KC: Folks may recognize you from your web series and performances with YidLife Crisis. (Or from Jewish Futures Arts and Culture Salon 2025 where you were a speaker) How did that project begin?
JE: My buddy Eli Batalion and I had been fans of each others’ work for a while (in particular, I loved a hip hop comedy duo he was half of, and saw him do an amazing show called JOB: The Hip Hopera when it came to LA, and he was a fan of a web series I co-created and acted in with his JOB partner called crazy/sexy/awkward – which is NSFW, you’ve been warned). So we had been thinking about how we could do a project together when he called me to say that the Jewish Community Foundation in Montreal was putting out calls for grants to Jewish artists and he applied for us and we got it. We pitched the idea of a Jewish comedy web series, but had no idea what we’d do. Our initial idea was to translate Seinfeld scenes into Yiddish – which we had both learned in high school, though neither of us could actually speak it – and I’d play Jerry and he’d play George and we’d do diner scenes. But then we saw that 1 – someone had already done a Yiddish voiceover of Seinfeld scenes on YouTube and B – as we started discussing it, we realized that we actually had things to say. Like, things about Judaism and Jewishness that we wanted to get off our (hairy Ashkenazic) chests. About being in our midlife and discovering that things we had been taught didn’t work for us anymore, or about questioning faith and religion, or about our (ahem) TRADITIONS, and questions that we found ourselves and our peer group asking about how and why to be Jewish in the modern world and at this stage of life. And so we started writing what would become the first four ‘epes-odes’ of our web series, a love letter to Yiddish and the yiddishkayt we grew up with, to Montreal and it’s multiculturalism and neighborhoods and its bagels and smoked meat and treyf that we love, to the Quebecois culture that surrounded us as Anglophones and as Jews, and to the Jewish comedy that we were reared on (Seinfeld, of course, and Mel Brooks and Jackie Mason and Joan Rivers and Larry David and Rob Reiner and Lenny Bruce and … it’s a long list…).
KC: Yiddish, in Sweden? Tell us more about the Swedishkayt project?
JE: One of the first times we ever hit the road was to perform and present our work at Limmud (a huge Jewish gathering/academic conference/party) in the UK, back in December 2014. A gentleman approached us and said, ‘Hey, it’s you Yids! I show all your videos in my Yiddish class’. We were flattered and asked where he teaches, and he – Professor Jan Schwarz— said “At Lund University”, to which we said… “where’s that?” and were shocked to find out that it’s in Sweden. This was our first inkling that Yiddish was having a moment there, and over the years were amazed to hear about the Yiddish coming out of Shvedn, the music, the theatre, the books being published, actual TV shows – fully in Yiddish and – wait for it – funded by the Swedish government?! So when we eventually got invited to perform there, we got in touch with the national broadcaster, SVT, and pitched them on letting us produce a documentary film about our visit, discovering the Jewish community in Stockholm and the incredible yiddishkayt that we found in that small but mighty place, and, luckily for us, they didn’t Google us, and gave us the green light. So we went over and shot Swedishkayt: YidLife Crisis in Stockholm, part docu-travelogue film, part comedy special (we performed our live show over there and you see parts of this in the film as we reflect their community back at them through our ‘gefilte fish out of water’ eyes), and put it out on SVT, as well as creating a longer ‘feature’ cut which we’ve been touring all over the world (including in Toronto, where we did our full Swedishkayt: Live! presentation, ie live comedy shtik before screening the film and a live concert after, with Eli on guitar, me on piano, and we do stuff like singing ABBA… in Yiddish, avadeh.)
KC: What’s next for the “Yids”?
JE: We have a bunch of live appearances coming up later this year (including Swedishkayt: Live! And our variety show YidLive! and some some academic talks at universities, etc) but the one we’re most excited about is that we are the MCs at the annual New York Sings Yiddish concert on the SummerStage in Central Park on June 22. It’s a huge free show and sing-a-long, thousands of people show up and there are some fantastic singers and musicians on the bill, and we’re looking forward to doing some shtik and jamming with a few of them.
KC: What other (Jewish) creatives should we know about?
JE: Miriam Anzovin (her ‘Daf Reactions’ Talmud videos are genius), Zusha (Brooklyn-based Hassidic duo whose music stirs the soul), Eitan the Goalie (he’s funny in general and level-headed when talking about Israel)
KC: What’s inspiring you Jewish-ly lately?
JE: Long Story Short, the animated Netflix series from Raphael Bob-Waksberg (creator of Bojack Horseman) is one of the most Jewish and beautiful and truthful shows ever.
KC: Lightning round question!
- Applesauce vs sour cream? Applesauce
- Poppy vs sesame seed bagels? Either as long as they’re from Montreal
- Latke vs sufganiyot? Latkes all the way, and not only during Hanukah, those are year round, baby! (But, full disclosure – I’d prefer a knish or a nice piece of kugel)
- Rugelach vs bureka? If the ruggelach are from Marzipan at Machane Yehuda in Jerusalem, ruggelach. Otherwise, burekas.
- Shawarma vs falafel? Yes.
- Larry David vs Jerry Seinfeld? This is like McCartney vs Lennon (i.e. I refuse to answer and you can’t make me)
- New York vs Montreal bagels? Is this a joke?
Jamie Elman is an actor, writer, director and musician whose television and film credits include Mad Men, Curb Your Enthusiasm, House M.D., Student Bodies, California Dreamin’ (Cannes winner), When Nietzsche Wept, and Disney’s Frozen and Wreck-It Ralph. He last appeared on a Toronto stage in Bad Jews (Segal Centre/HGJT). Jamie is half of the award-winning Jewish comedy duo YidLife Crisis, creators of the hit Yiddish web series, documentary films and live show that tours worldwide. A native Montrealer, Jamie is a pianist and singer who performs regularly in his adopted hometown of LA, where he led the house band at The Varnish cocktail bar for 15 years.
Find @JamieElman on IG and FB, @yidlifecrisis on IG and FB and YouTube channel, YidLifeCrisis.com
Fiddler on the Roof In Yiddish
May 25 to June 7, The Elgin Theatre
THE NATIONAL YIDDISH THEATRE FOLKSBIENE AWARD-WINNING PRODUCTION
Performed in Yiddish presented with English supertitles.
In 2018, New York audiences fell in love with this truly authentic version of Fiddler for the very first time. Don’t miss the Drama Desk Award-winning production of one of the greatest musicals ever written, presented in Yiddish with English supertitles. Laugh, cry, and feel the love at this powerful and universal testament to the strength and resilience of Jewish community.
