Jewish Deli Owner Sorry For Calling Las Vegas Massacre ‘Community Outreach’ For White People
Image by Google Maps
The owner of Chicago Jewish deli ignited controversy on Monday for posting a tweet in which he mocked the Las Vegas shooting victims for being white.
“Soon as I heard it was country music, I felt relief. White people shooting white people isn’t terror … it’s community outreach. #LasVegas,” he wrote on his personal account on Twitter Monday morning.
The co-owner of Max’s Deli, located in the Highland Park northern suburb, Morelli later apologized in a phone conversation with the Chicago Tribune. “It was a dumb joke and it didn’t work. I own it. It was stupid,” he said.
Morelli has courted outrage in the past, notably this August, when he posted “alt-right” and Nazi imagery on the Max’s Deli page in what he said was an attempt to mock President Trump and the white supremacists who caused unrest in Charlottesville, Virginia.
“I have a Jewish deli, I am a Jewish man,” he told the Tribune then. “I am the first person that’s going to get a brick through the window if this plague is not stopped immediately.”
Contact Daniel J. Solomon at [email protected] or on Twitter @DanielJSolomon
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover. All donations are being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
