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Message: <br /><br /> If you are having trouble reading this email, you may view this article online at: http://www.jweekly.com/33760/full/33760/chabad-s-jon-stewart-a-hit-in-crown-heights/ <br /><br /> <b>Chabad’s Jon Stewart a hit in Crown Heights</b> <br /> Friday, November 9, 2007 | by <p>jessica freiman </p> <br /><br /><p>At this summer’s Brooklyn Best outdoor fashion show, organized by Borough President Marty Markowitz to feature the dress and culture of all of Brooklyn’s local ethnicities, nobody had volunteered to represent the Chassidim.<br /><br /> That is, until Mendy Pellin of the borough’s Crown Heights neighborhood came to offer his modeling services.<br /><br /> And sure enough, when the fashion show rolled around, Pellin was there, sashaying down the catwalk dressed in full Chabad garb — with black suit and hat — as if he’d just come back from Fashion Week in Paris.<br /><br /> “I was doing the real catwalk walk and posing like a supermodel, and the place was just going crazy. They totally didn’t expect that,” he said.<br /><br /> Lanky, with a goofy grin, glasses and bushy black beard, Pellin, 25, definitely looks the part of the average Crown Heights Lubavitcher.<br /><br /> But to fans around the world, he’s a celebrity star of the online comedy news show ChabadTube, which has been seen by 500,000 viewers from Crown Heights to Cairo.<br /><br /> The show, currently in production on its third season, is an assortment of news — both real and fake, Jewish and not — from Crown Heights, the U.S. and Israel, with a dollop of satire mixed in. One episode featured a tour of the new mikvah under construction in Crown Heights, in which Pellin kicks back in the empty pool with a six-pack of Budweiser beer.<br /><br /> The Budweiser stunt ruffled a few feathers among the top Crown Heights brass, and his supermodel stunt was likewise not received well by many in the community.<br /><br /> “I got tons of flak. Hundreds of people wrote in, asking me how I could do such a thing. Some people didn’t understand the whole concept of modeling — they said, you should have had a sefer [holy book] open, you should have been learning. Something to represent us accurately.”<br /><br /> But ChabadTube, like any fake news show, isn’t about accuracy — it was created with the aim of making people like him more personable to the outside world.<br /><br /> “Everyone stereotypes the Chassid as a smelly, sweaty, generously sized individual who tucks his shirt into his underwear, with lots of dandruff and yellow teeth,” Pellin said in an interview at Crown Heights’ Bunch O Bagels. “I wanted to give a human face to the Chassid, and show something other than the smelly part.”<br /><br /> The passion for news — fake or otherwise — was ignited in Pellin by his late grandmother, an activist in the Reform community.<br /><br /> “She subscribed us to Time magazine, and I always read it, cover to cover. Still do,” Pellin said.<br /><br /> “So because of her, news was always a part of me, even though I couldn’t really talk to most of my classmates about the news or politics. A lot of things they just didn’t know about.”<br /><br /> In a community where the secular media is frowned upon and most people don’t own televisions, Pellin said that his show, which equally mocks local, national and international current events, is actually a main source of news for his Crown Heights audience.<br /><br /> “I get emails from people responding to stories I’m mocking on my show now that are a couple of weeks old already, saying, ‘I can’t believe this happened!’ because they’re just finding out about it now, from me,” he said.<br /><br /> Although television isn’t accepted in Crown Heights, the Internet is, as long as you use a “kosher filter” that weeds out unsavory content. “My show makes it through the kosher filter for some reason. I beat the filter,” Pellin said, smiling triumphantly.<br /><br /> When Pellin filmed the first episode of ChabadTube, he didn’t think he would be doing it for very long. “I didn’t think people were actually going to watch it besides my friends,” he said. But before long, he had around 30,000 viewers per episode, and had become the darling of Crown Heights.<br /><br /> “I thought the Chabad establishment would be pretty much against the show when I started out because it pushes the envelope,” Pellin said. “I thought they would say, ‘You can’t put our dirty laundry in public.’ But they love it.”<br /><br /> “Even the big mohel of Crown Heights with his long white beard came over to me and said, ‘Nu, when’s your next show coming out?’ And I said, ‘You watch it, too?’ I didn’t think any of these people had a sense of humor, but apparently they do.”<br /><br /> As for his international fan base, Pellin likes to think that he represents the human side of Chabad. “People who aren’t from here don’t understand where we’re coming from. But when you get to know most of the people in this community, you’ll see that they’re very sensible people with many of the same desires of the outside, secular world.”<br /><br /> At this point, a fellow diner approached the table. “I just want to tell you I’m a really big fan,” he said.<br /><br /> “I’m not really that famous,” Pellin said, after the fan walked away. “I paid him to do that.”</p> <p> </p>

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