Allegedly Hasidic man sued McDonald's for refusing to hire him over his beard. But why would Hasidic Jew work at non-Kosher establishment?

A Hasidic Jew who tried working at a non-kosher McDonald’s restaurant?

A story which broke last week regarding a lawsuit filed by an allegedly Hasidic man from Florida who charged the McDonald’s fast-food chain with religious discrimination for not hiring him raised eyebrows, given that every branch of the iconic burger joint in North America is not kosher.

Nevertheless, it was reported that Morton Javadi, described by a number of mainstream news outlets as being Hasidic, had filed a lawsuit against McDonald’s, claiming that the fast-food restaurant’s refusal to hire him over his beard constituted religious discrimination.

Allegedly, management told him that he would have to shave his long beard if he wanted the job. According to his suit, McDonald’s policy requires all male employees to be clean-shaven.

But as first noted by the blog DansDeals, there is ample evidence readily available that Javadi is clearly not a member of the Hasidic community, but in fact appears to be either a Messianic Jew or a non-Jewish missionary presenting himself as Jewish.

Javadi and his wife, who refer to themselves as “Rabbi Mort and Rabisa Summer”, run the Missouri-based “Mahi Ministries”.

While the Mahi Ministries website features pictures of “Rabbi Mort” wearing a large knitted kippah, tefillin (phylacteries), and a Jewish prayer shawl, glaring mistakes in the site regarding terms and concepts in Judaism.

For example, the site claims that the word “Pharisees” refers to Persian Jews, and comes from the word “Farsi”. In fact, Pharisees comes from the Hebrew word “Perushim”, meaning “separated” or “set aside”.

Mahi Ministries also claims that the use of the word “korban”, or sacrificial offering, in the Talmud is a loan word from Farsi, based on the Persian word “gorban”. In fact, the Hebrew word “korban” appears in the Hebrew Bible, and its usage in the Talmud is not based on Farsi.

The ministry’s videos provide more explicit evidence that “Rabbi” Mort and “Rabisa” Summer are missionaries posing as observant Jews, with numerous references to and citations of the New Testament, claims that Muhammad “was a Hebrew”, prayers appearing to mix Hebrew with Farsi, and an attempt to reconcile apparently conflicting claims by Jesus and John the Baptist in the New Testatement.

On a GoFundMe page, the Ministry tried to raise $5,000 for “Middle Eastern Missionary Work”, and linked to fundraising projects run by Christian missionary groups abroad.