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Salad Summit: Mississippi Restaurant Owner Apologizes For Kicking Out Rabbi

September 28, 2014

Jackson, Miss. restaurant owner John Ellis met with local Rabbi Ted Riter on Friday to apologize making anti-semitic comments and kicking the Rabbi out of his restaurant, Wraps, on Tuesday.

The Jackson Clarion-Ledger reported that after Riter ordered a salad on Tuesday, Ellis asked him "A full size or a Jewish size?"

Riter asked Ellis to clarify:

Riter said the man said, "It’s small. Jews are cheap and small. Everybody knows that."

Riter said he was incredulous, and that he thought perhaps he might have heard him wrong, so he said, "Did you really just say that?" and the man asked him if he was a Jew. When Riter said yes, he was told to leave the restaurant.

"Expletives, F-bombs, and since I’d never been the recipient of that before, I was in shock, so I didn’t register it until the second or third time he told me to leave," Riter said. "It was a bit surreal. So I left."

Ellis told WAPT News in Jackson that his restaurant serves both Greek and Jewish salads, a claim WAPT later proved to be false after examining the restaurant's menu.

Ellis met with Riter in what has been dubbed the "Salad Summit" to apologize for his remarks.

"We need to get past this place of distrust," Riter said. "It really has no reason for still existing in these modern times, and perhaps it never had reason to exist, but particularly now in these times."

Published under: Jewish Community