Crown Heights, NY – Comedy Central, by Way of the Torah

Crown Heights, NY – AS usual, Mendy Pellin wore the traditional black coat and hat of a Hasid and sat on a high stool facing the camera. He read quickly through a page of notes, shook his head vigorously in the way of preparation, and signaled his readiness with a nod to his cameraman, Dovi Trappler. As the camera rolled, Mr. Pellin’s voice dropped to the confident baritone of an overeager news anchor.

Picture Stephen Colbert with a beard and a black hat, and you’ve got Mendy Pellin, above right, host of an irreverent Internet news broadcast.

Mr. Pellin, a garrulous 25-year-old, was beginning yet another segment as the host of “The Mendy Report,” an Internet news broadcast on the Web site ChabadTube.com. He runs the broadcast out of his childhood bedroom, now cluttered with production lights and videotape cassettes, in his family’s fourth-floor walk-up apartment on Kingston Avenue in a Hasidic enclave of Crown Heights, Brooklyn.

Standing 6 feet 2 inches and wearing a long, dark beard, Mr. Pellin is aware that his appearance may suggest, to those outside the Hasidic community, an intense humorlessness. “The Mendy Report” is his lighthearted attempt to prove otherwise by parodying local, national and international news, in a style that sometimes recalls Comedy Central staples like “The Daily Show” or “The Colbert Report.”

“There’s a certain stereotype of Hasidim, and I think this has been a big tool in breaking that stereotype,” Mr. Pellin said of his program, which, he said, has been viewed a half-million times since its debut last January. It was the subject of a recent article in The Jewish Sentinel, a local weekly newspaper.

“The Mendy Report” is also a looking glass for Mr. Pellin’s fellow Hasidim. Most Hasidic Jews in Crown Heights don’t own televisions, Mr. Pellin says, and despite its lighthearted tone, his online broadcast has emerged for some members of his community as a legitimate source of news. “We’re not really that exposed to the outside world,” he said, half-jokingly. Read extended article [NYTimes]