Mendy Pellin is a Hassidic comic with a web-based satirical news show called The Mendy Report.
Pellin was born to a Hassidic family in Denver, CO. He spent most of his childhood growing up in Crown Heights, NY, home of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement. At age 7, he was already learning the tricks of the trade at a local puppet theater, but quickly moved on to baffle crowds all around the globe.
With nothing like his show in the Jewish world and over 50,000 viewers per broadcast, Mendy blends Hassidic spirituality with out-of-the-box humor. He aims to overcome stereotypes commonly attributed to ultra-Orthodox Jews.
Mendy and his wife, Shulamit, married at the end of March 2007.
He has appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.
THE FORWARD REPORTS JAN. 15, 2008:
Mendy Pellin, a 25-year-old Lubavitch comedian and ordained rabbi, launched his online newscast and Web channel, ChabadTube.com, in November 2006. Since then, he’s built an international audience. Segments posted by fans on blogs and on video sites like YouTube and Google have drawn more than 500,000 views.
Collaborating with his friend Peretz Golding, the show’s co-writer and senior editor, Pellin produces episodes from a studio in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, where he resides with his wife, Shulamit. The show’s only correspondent, “Menachem” Pellin, bears a suspiciously uncanny resemblance to Mendy, but the host insists that “he’s no relation.” Featured segments include Chabad, Israel and world news, and “The Weekly Wink,” where Pellin explores such issues as “the secret to making the best latkes” (he uses frozen ones) and parking shortages (with a tape measure, he calculates that the 9,240 extra inches between cars equal 77 parking spots).
As the show enters its third season, Pellin will begin branching out into a new genre. In what he calls “a marriage of education and entertainment,” Pellin has partnered with the Jewish informational Web site askmoses.com and launched “AskMosesTV,” an online program featuring such educators as rabbis Simon Jacobson and Yosef Y. Jacobson, and segments like “Kabbalah Kitchen” and “Torah TV.” The show will debut February 18, coinciding with the season premiere of “The Mendy Report.”
