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KosherWorld apologise for storm in coffee cup
Three Rastas (two of them pictured) & The Star newspaper made what could well be called “a storm in a coffee cup” after claims of “racial profiling” occupied over half of the Star’s front page on Wednesday. KosherWorld’s management told the Jewish Report that they “feel very badly about the experience” and added that they “welcome everybody to our Centre”.
ANT KATZ
One of the three Rastafarians, Emma Young, told The Star that she had been having coffee at a KosherWorld coffee shop in Glenhazel and using the wifi with two companions when a security guard walked up to them and asked who they were.
“We were approached by a security guard, who asked, ‘Who are you? We don’t know you.’ I told him I’d lived here for six months and I’d had coffee here before,” Young told The Star.
RIGHT: KosherWorld enjoyed some unwanted publicity on the front page of The Star today
The security guard then asked the three for their names so he could tell the caller (whose name is unknown to KosherWorld or the Jewish Report) that they were all right. “I was shaking with anger. I felt like I’m not safe here and I’d better get out,” Young said.
Apologies from Kosher World management
As soon as The Star article appeared, KosherWorld issued a statement to JewishReport Online: “The front page of the Star newspaper today is about three of our customers having an understandably negative experience when purchasing coffee at our centre,” a KosherWorld director who asked not to be named told Jewish Report Online today.
LEFT: Mama Rootz, Baba Kenyaz and Emma Young walk away from a KosherWorld Centre coffee shop in this picture which was posed for The Star the day after the event in question.
nat cheiman
April 8, 2015 at 1:29 pm
‘Major catastrophe this is. It even overshadows slaughter of Palestinians and the hundreds of thousands of Syrians killed. It even eclipses the trashing and burning of statues by those idiotic people from EFF..
Of course these 3 persons have a huge claim for damages against the coffee shop. Will take up most of the High courts time.
My advice to these people is \”hey guys, get a life\”.
’
Black and Jewish
April 8, 2015 at 1:35 pm
‘Sadly this is an ongoing experience for people of colour who interact with the Jewish community in Joburg. I am in the process of finishing the Orthodox conversion process and I have had numerous experiences of being refused entry to shuils and shiurim.
At Sinai Indaba last year I was humiliated and made to cry in front of everyone entering the venue simply for being black and attending a Jewish event. I will think twice about spending another cent at kosher World’
Kev
April 8, 2015 at 2:30 pm
‘Quick – Wendy Kahn – organise a mass coffee drinking and shopping experience at Kosher World. No time to waste. Oh, and be sure to have the photographers on stand-by.’
Darren
April 8, 2015 at 2:34 pm
‘The call to CAP didn’t come from Kosherworld, it came from the \”frum\” patrons – you know those women in their long skirts and designer wigs and men in their white shirts and designer strings – the ones who said all kinds of platitudes at their seders last week, but who didn’t mean a word of it. The ones who live behind their electric fences and high walls and cry out \”all who are hungry, let them come and eat (drink?)\”.’
abu mamzer
April 8, 2015 at 4:40 pm
‘Then there’s the old joke about 3 afra-American youths who lost their way in a Jewish neighbourhood,found themselves being stalked by 3 Jewish accountants,with tsitsit…..says the one to the other OMG we’re about to be attacked !!!
Profiling? a necessary evil.It makes us all a little paranoid.
even when flying El Al.
The real reason they were asked to leave was cos they asked for the weed on the menu,which unfortunately is not KLP….’
Choni
April 9, 2015 at 8:48 am
‘Darren, Yasher Koach. And don’t forget the biggest ‘lie’ of all. \”Next year in Jerusalem\”‘