In a Philadelphia bar that is owned by the Barrstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy, customers who order FLESSService, adaptable letterboards they can ask, are offered employees to arrange with messages of their choice, such as “separate“Or”Go birds! “
But at least one customer, a student from Temple University who visited the bar on Saturday evening, asked employees to arrange the letters on his plate in an anti -Semitic message. According to Mr. Portnoy, the board had an expletive of four letters aimed at Jewish people.
Anti -Semitic episodes in the United States reached a record high in the period of 12 months from October 2023 to September 2024, According to figures from The Anti-Defamation League, an organization for civil rights.
The group identified more than 10,000 anti -Semitic incidents – triple the number that was recorded a year earlier in the same period – that were split into categories, including verbal or written intimidation, vandalism and physical attack. More than 8,000 of those episodes include cases of verbal or written intimidation, according to the figures.
It was not immediately clear how many customers were involved in the episode in Barstool Sansom Street, in the Center City in Philadelphia. The bar said in a statement that it was a customer whose actions were ‘regrettable’, but Mr. Portnoy said in a video on Instagram that two customers were involved.
The bar also blamed ‘misguided’ employees who ignored the training of the company and the ‘zero tolerance policy for discrimination and hatred’, and added that the employees had been examined and dismissed.
The President of Temple University, John Fry, announced the next day That a student believed that he had been involved in the incident and that the university was conducting an investigation. He added that “anti -Semitism is disgusting” and “has no place at Temple.” A student mentioned by Mr. Portnoy did not respond to a request for comments.
American universities have had to deal with accusations of anti -Semitism of the Trump government, which has drawn or threatened to attract billions of dollars in federal financing.
Mr. Portnoy, who was known as the founder of the sports news and pop culture publication Barrstool Sports and has become a division media personality, has opened bars in Philadelphia, Chicago, Nashville and Scottsdale, Ariz.
Mr. Portnoy, who is Jewish, expressed an indignation about the incident in his greasiness-ranking video on Instagram.
“I shaken, I’ve been so angry,” he said, and added various obscenities. “I’m going to make it my life mission to ruin these people, as if I am coming in front of your throat.”
A few hours later he posted another video in which he said he had reconsider his approach, and instead he had decided to send the young men on a Tour through Auschwitz, the Nazi Doodkamp in the south of Poland, true About 1.1 million peopleMost of them Jews were killed.
“Let’s try to like a horrible incident in perhaps a learning experience,” Mr. Portnoy said, adding that the range was “cliché and very different from me.”
Later that day he wrote that he had withdrawn the offer for a student who was involved in the episode, who, according to Mr. Portnoy, initially said “100 percent responsibility for his actions” but later “did an 180 and said he had nothing to do with it.” He posted a screenshot of what seemed to be a note of the student who claimed that he had not asked or paid the board.
Barrestool Sansom Street did not immediately respond to a request for comments.
Mr. Portnoy refused to comment and said in an e -mail that “I prefer to spend a pencil in my eye than giving you the time of the day.”
Mr. Portnoy has been the subject of criticism for what he has recognized, racist explanations, including the use of the N-word. He also has one history From making misogynistic comments.
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