A painting studio in Beverly Hills announced on Friday that an employee who targeted a Jewish woman earlier in the day is no longer with the company.
Leah Yebri, the wife of attorney and former Los Angeles City Council candidate Sam Yebri, posted on Instagram earlier in the day that she wore her “Jewish star necklace” when she walked into Color Me Mine Beverly Hills, a franchise in the paint-your-own ceramics chain; she claimed that one of the employees at the studio “stared at my Jewish star, and immediately went to the back and wrote ‘Viva Palestine’ on a shipping label and placed it on her apron.” Yebri alleged the employee subsequently placed another sticker on her apron with the scrawled message “Stop the Genocide” . “She stared angrily at me to a point where I couldn’t even finish what I was working on,” continued Yebri. “I just picked up and I left.”
The post concluded by calling out Color Me Mine “for tolerating antisemitism and bigotry in their business. We are veering towards Nazi Germany.”
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Fred Anderson, who owns the Color Me Mine Beverly Hills studio, said in a statement posted to the studio’s social media that Friday was the individual’s “last shift” with the company and that the then-employee was “acting retaliatory towards Color Me Mine, me, their co-workers, and the community … We in no way share their beliefs and are so sorry to those that this hurt,” Anderson said. “I spoke with the person that was targeted today and have expressed my deeply apologies. I expressed as clearly as I can that those views were not the views of me, my family, my staff or my business.” Yebri confirmed in her Instagram post that Anderson had apologized to her personally.
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Anderson told the Journal in a phone interview that he wasn’t at the studio at the time of the incident and that the former employee “would have been fired on the spot, had it been their first day, their last, whatever, had I been in the store and seen that… I have zero tolerance for antisemitism.” Anderson further claimed that when the company vetted the person’s social media prior to employment, there was nothing to suggest that the person harbored antisemitic views, nor were there any such incidents during the individual’s employment with the company until the Friday incident occurred. The individual “was already given their final warning and advised to seek employment elsewhere” prior to their last shift on Friday, added Anderson.
Beverly Hills Mayor Lili Bosse thanked Color Me Mine Beverly Hills in an Instagram comment “for immediately addressing this.”
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