Elisheva Rishon, the woman who was denied service at a Staples store in Los Angeles’ Mid-Wilshire area, said in an interview with The Journal that she believes the Staples employees ambushed her.
Rishon, a Black Jewish Orthodox woman, had posted videos from her encounter at the Staples store on April 7 to her Instagram account “@therealeli7designs” in a story titled “staples incident”; the videos show a Staples employee named Ryatt claiming that he could not process her order for her postcards stating “Black Jewish Zionist Squad” and “Jewish Joy” because he found the use of “Zionist” in the cards to be racist. After Rishon argued with Ryatt, Ryatt’s manager Cynthia eventually stepped in and after a back-and-forth tells Rishon “we’re done” and a customer angrily told Rishon that he didn’t “want to hear you yell” to “leave them alone and shut the f— up.” “There are a lot of people here that need service,” the customer added. “Fix your wig and get the hell out of here.”
Speaking to The Journal over Zoom on April 11 alongside her attorney, Lawfare Project Senior Counsel Gerard Filitti, Rishon explained that she gives out the “Jewish Joy” cards to remind people “to center Jewish joy instead of the hate that we face because unfortunately most people, especially in America, have made the foundation of their Jewish identity antisemitism … so I always hand these out to people and I tell them to put it in their cars, in their rooms, on their refrigerators so they remember every day what it means to be Jewish.” As for the “Black Jewish Zionist Squad” cards, Rishon started the squad as “an innovative program” to “uplift Black Jewish Zionists in America in multifaceted ways. I create safe spaces for Black Jewish Zionists to find themselves and to be empowered with their identity, to be able to go to out to other communities, to create coalitions, to create meaningful dialogues, and because Black Jewish Americans are the bridge between the Black community and the Jewish community.” The squad also provides career resources, consultations and content creation. “Nothing about this is offensive or racist at all whatsoever,” Rishon said. “But this person decided that both of them were so offensive that he had to delete the entire order.”
In her Instagram story, Rishon said that Ryatt had called her to come into the store and pick up her order. Rishon elaborated to The Journal that on the evening of April 7, she was in her pajamas and called to check the status of her order and that Ryatt had “very enthusiastically” told her the order was ready to be picked up and that he couldn’t wait to see her soon. “I honestly didn’t feel like going to the store because I was tired, it’s Monday night, and I was also coming off a cold by the way, so I wasn’t feeling the best of my health,” Rishon said. “But he sounded so enthusiastic that I didn’t want to disappoint him, I thought he was this young, new employee. So I actually came because of the enthusiasm in his voice.”
When Rishon arrived at the store, she wanted to match Ryatt’s energy on the phone and was ready to start filming her getting the cards. Ryatt put Rishon’s name into the computer, and he appeared “confused”; initially, Rishon thought he was confused to see her Jewish name associated with someone who is Black. “It looked like he was going to go get a box, the way that he was behind the cashier, so I still didn’t realize what was about to happen, and then he said, ‘Actually I didn’t print out your order because it’s racist,’” Rishon said. “I was shocked to hear what he was saying and I was already opening my phone because I was going to film it.”
Ryatt then said he found the term “Zionist” to be racist; Rishon then asked him what his definition of Zionism, he put the question on her, she gave her definition that it’s “being able to return to your homeland after over 2,000 years.” Rishon said that the way that Ryatt tilted his head made it clear that he didn’t like the answer and that he viewed Zionism as “extermination” and that’s how he thinks the masses view it.
As she continued her back-and-forth with Ryatt, she “began to realize the severity of the situation.” “He had historical inaccuracies, he said things like, ‘I’m not antisemitic because I’m a semite,’” Rishon said. “The term ‘antisemitism’ only applies to Jews because it was created by someone who actually was an antisemite, but he wanted to refer to his Jew-hatred, or to Jew-hatred in general, in a more scholarly way … so I see this guy also doesn’t know this.”
Rishon proceeded to turn the focus of the conversation to her “Jewish Joy” cards, but “he also said it was Zionist.”
When Cynthia came to the situation, she initially claimed to not know what was going on, so Rishon said she explained what had happened to her and that Ryatt didn’t even print out the “Jewish Joy” cards that “had nothing at all about Zionism or Israel in it, and he denied it, you see him in the video denying it … and I kept insisting to her to go check the project … and then you see them looking at it, and I filmed her, and I’m like, ‘Ma’am do you see the cards… what do you see on the cards? It only says ‘Jewish Joy’… so he was lying about what the ‘Jewish Joy’ card said.
“And that’s when I realized something very significant happened: he was more so triggered by the ‘Jewish Joy’ cards than the BJZ Squad because he felt the need to lie about what it said,” she added. “So this is what really triggered him: the concept of Jews being happy.”
“So this is what really triggered him: the concept of Jews being happy.” – Elisheva Rishon
Rishon claimed that Cynthia then told her that when she was closing Ryatt’s register, he had told her that he was “uncomfortable with this order long before you came to this store, and I was like, ‘whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, so you had this conversation hours ago? You told me when you came out you didn’t know anything at all about what was going on.’ And I began to realize, yes this was a serious ambush. He lied to get me to the store to pick up an imaginary order, and the manager said she knew nothing about it and then admitted she knew everything about it long before it happened. This was a very hostile type of situation.”
Additionally, Rishon said that Cynthia kept saying “that’s it, that’s it” and “didn’t even want to have the dialogue anymore.”
She further claimed that when new customers came into the store — she says there were about three behind her in line — Ryatt told them that Rishon “just came here to argue she’s so performative … he made it look like I was some sort of crazy customer.” Rishon also said that the customer who cussed at her also called her a “dirty a— woman.”
Additionally, when that customer cussed her out, Rishon contended that on the video you can hear the employees saying to him “thank you for doing that” and that by “misleading the customers” to what had happened, the employees were encouraging harassment toward her..
“It was a horrible experience overall,” she said. “Many forms of discrimination were hit all at once.”
There is video purportedly of Ryatt giving his version of the incident from his Instagram account, which has since been deleted. In the since-deleted video, he contended that “my job has a policy against any type of racist messaging, which Zionism holds lots of racist ideologies towards Arab people and Islamophobic ideologies towards anyone who practices Islam.” Ryatt claimed that he didn’t see the “Jewish Joy” card and that “she wanted to focus on the fact that I didn’t print out the second cards that I didn’t really care to look at because I was just hit in the face with Zionistic messages and wanted to call me an antisemite.” He further claimed that he later offered to print the “Jewish Joy” cards for free but Rishon didn’t take him up on it. “She wanted to just keep arguing, keep filming and calling me an antisemite … it’s just so performative,” added Ryatt, who also said that his grandfather was Jewish and that he thinks that Judaism should be celebrated and that Judaism is not Zionism.
Rishon told The Journal that while Ryatt and Cynthia did at one point suggest printing the “Jewish Joy” cards for free, the manager did not want to have a discussion as to why the whole order was canceled in the first place and should have simply apologized and just printed the order for her. Rishon added that it seemed like they were trying to “halfway wiggle out of it” and only made the suggestion when customers began showing up behind her in line. Rishon said that she doesn’t like addressing the matter because she was still asking what was wrong with the order when the customer who cussed her out came up. “Why didn’t they print it?” Rishon asked.
Ryatt also claimed that there were seven people behind Rishon in line “rolling their eyes” at the situation. Rishon told The Journal that her videos that can be seen in her Instagram story speak for themselves and she didn’t feel the need to address Ryatt’s video. In her story, she contended that that he was lying in his video when he claimed she was being aggressive toward him.
Also in Rishon’s Instagram story is a slide stating that “the employee in his [Instagram] stories told his followers to reach out to him because he had personal information on me” and that he told the Internet to “do your thing.” “The situation was immediately brought to the attention of law enforcement on Thursday,” Rishon wrote in her story, adding that she “went into Shabbat & [the] chag with a larger amount of anxiety.” Filitti told The Journal that the “Internet do your thing” video amounted to “an apparent doxxing threat. So even the police is taking this behavior very seriously.”
Rishon also claimed that no one from Staples has reached out to her yet about the incident; on April 9, a spokesperson from Staples told The Journal: “Staples is aware of the recent interaction between a customer and associates at one of our stores in Los Angeles, California. Staples is currently investigating the circumstances involving this interaction. Staples remains committed to serving all customers, and we continue to work hard to ensure respectful and professional interactions in all situations.” Staples did not respond to The Journal’s request for comment following up on the matter.
On April 11, The Lawfare Project announced in a press release that it will be representing Rishon, stating that “the same employee that called her to pick up her order told her that he had refused to print the order and harassed her, targeting her identity as a Black Jewish woman and engaging in antisemitism, anti-Black racism, and colorism. The person purporting to be the store manager did nothing to prevent Elisheva’s civil rights from being violated, choosing instead to support the employee who was targeting Elisheva.”
Filitti told The Journal that a lawsuit is “one of the strong options that we are considering. … Seeing that Staples has not even bothered to reach out to Elisheva with regard to this incident, it looks increasingly likely that legal action may need to be taken. They’re not taking this incident seriously.” Filitti also claimed that Staples’ employees may have seemingly encouraged “a customer to menace Elisheva without providing her safety. What would have happened if that finger waved in her face turned into a fist or a shove or something else? … again, a failure on Staples’ part with regard to the conduct of their employees.”
He added: “No person, no customer should be forced to negotiate their identity in order to be served. That’s not what the law says. When you’re forcing a customer to say, ‘Well I’m Jewish but not Zionist or you can ignore part of my identity,’ that’s not acceptable … This was, pure and simple, illegal discrimination by Staples of a Black Orthodox Jewish female customer. And given that Staples has not responded with more than a perfunctory statement that says absolutely nothing, given that the video is very clear about what happened, and these employees have not been terminated, given that they’ve not even bothered reaching out, then I think the next step is to seriously consider the appropriate legal action. We’re seeing a broader societal pattern where the antisemitism that we’re seeing in schools is translating to antisemitism on the streets and in the workplace … this is a systemic problem.”
Rishon said she’s “extremely grateful for the support that I’ve gotten from multiple communities … Antisemitism has gotten so bad at this point in time in this country and of course around the world … you have to set a precedent that this is not where we’re headed. We can’t allow our country to go down this direction. I’m still processing everything right now, and I’m doing the best that I can to try to create meaningful dialogues around this incident because there has to be some sort of positive, progressive outcome from this whole thing.”.
