Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Hobby Lobby’s ‘No Hanukkah’ Apology Accepted by Anti-Defamation League

The Anti-Defamation League accepted an apology from the retailer Hobby Lobby for an employee’s alleged comment that the store “doesn’t cater to you people.”

Hobby Lobby was mired in controversy after a blogger reported that the chain neglected to stock Hanukkah items. After calling a New Jersey Hobby Lobby store and inquiring about the Hannukah items, the blogger was reportedly told: “We don’t cater to you people here.”

In a statement published Oct. 3 on the ADL’s website, Hobby Lobby President Steve Green apologized for the alleged remark and indicated that his company has “deep respect for the Jewish faith.” The statement made clear that the owners “do not tolerate discrimination at the company or our stores.”

The ADL also issued a statement saying that the organization “has no reason to believe that Hobby Lobby has refused to stock Hanukkah items because of hostility to Jews or anti-Semitism.”

“A store choosing not to carry Hanukkah items does not violate anyone’s rights,” the organization added.

Read more: http://www.jta.org/2013/10/04/news-opinion/united-states/adl-accepts-hobby-lobby-apology#ixzz2gmNyvLCD

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.