Mississippi Rabbi Kicked Out of Restaurant for Being Jewish

Photo Caption: Rabbi Ted Riter in an interview with WAPT News

Photo Credit: Screenshot

Hours before Jews this side of the Diaspora get ready to celebrate Rosh Hashanah with their friends and loved ones, a sad and unsettling story has emerged from Jackson, Mississippi, where a local rabbi was reportedly shunned from a restaurant due to his religion.

Rabbi Ted Riter of the Beth Israel Congregation claims that while dining at a local restaurant in Jackson, Wraps in Maywood Mart, on Tuesday, the man behind the register asked him if he wanted "a full size or Jewish size" after he ordered a Greek salad, reports local paper the Clarion-Ledger.

Confused, the rabbi asked what he meant entirely by his comments, to which he responded, "It's small. Jews are cheap and small. Everybody knows that."

Bewildered, the rabbi responded with "Did you really just say that?" The man then asked Rabbi Riter if he was Jewish, and, according to him, proceeded to hurl anti-Semitic slogans and offensive slurs his way, demanding that he 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."

The man, John Ellis, has since identified himself as the owner of Wraps, a Greek restaurant. According to an employee who was questioned, Ellis has "his own sense of humor" and has "no racial problems." According to Ellis, the rabbi disrespected his business and was "short" with him.

"He didn't know exactly what he wanted, and we offered him our services, and that's the extent of it. Like I said, I have no animosity. I have good Jewish friends," Ellis said.

"If he had said, 'Ugh, I'm sorry,' and laughed it off as, 'I shouldn't use that term' or something of that nature, if he had just intended it as an off-color joke, I wouldn't have appreciated it but I would have been fine," Riter offered in response. "But to turn around and tell me to get out of his restaurant... I can't even offer a guess as to what he was thinking."

According to WAPT News, witnesses inside the restaurant confirmed the rabbi's version of the story.