Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #171 (9/14/2021): How to Fast on Yom Kippur

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RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #171 (9/14/2021): How to Fast on Yom Kippur

(Rabbi Sol Solomon’s Rabbinical Reflections air on the long-running podcast Dave’s Gone By. youtube: https://youtu.be/ZGFcUunDz38)

Shalom, Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for Yom Kippur, 2021. 

Even non-observant Jews, who wouldn’t know a Torah from a tuba, remember that they’re Jewish on Yom Kippur. It’s the one holiday on the Hebrew calendar where everyone agrees to be depressed. We think about our sins, we promise to do better, and we hope God doesn’t hold us to that promise because, let’s face it, we’re human.

So people ask me, “Rabbi, how do I get through the day? How do I observe the Yom Kippur fast?” 

Okay, so on Erev Yom Kippur, you have dinner in the evening. And when the sun goes down, you stop eating. Then, an hour later, keep not eating. 

By nine, ten o’clock, when you usually have a snack. Don’t.

Sixty to 120 more minutes will pass. During those minutes, do not eat. 

Then, time to go to sleep. Unless you’re narcoleptic elephant, you don’t eat when you sleep, so you’re fine. If you get up in the middle of the night to pee, don’t pee-eat. Save that for Shavuis. Go back to sleep.

Wake up in the morning. Pee again. Brush your teeth. This is great because if you’re thirsty, you get a little water, a minty bissel flavor — but it doesn’t count as food because it’s a health thing. You can even gargle, but no fair gargling with a Starbucks latte. 

Now, the fun thing about Yom Kippur is you can’t work. So lie on the couch, read a book, make up a song. And continue not eating.

Eventually, noon will roll around, and you’ll think it’s time to eat. Guess what? It’s not. Keep reading and singing. 

Now it’s early afternoon and you’re getting hungry. Too bad. Don’t eat.

By three o’clock you should have a minor but persistent headache. This is all a natural part of Jewish suffering. However, it’s also a fantastic opportunity because you can take a Tylenol — and have more water. That’s two food-groups with one ailment.

Now it’s 3:30 and you’re exhausted. Go back to sleep. Try not to dream about food. Or naked women. Or anything else you’d want to eat. 

After your nap, dusk should be approaching — homestretch! Just another hour, and you can stuff your face. But not yet; a little more torture never hurt anyone.

I will say, the most messed-up thing about Yom Kippur in America is that it doesn’t go 24 hours; it goes 25! The chassids invented this custom to make up for the inexactitude of when the sun officially rises and sets. They add an extra hour to be safe.

Good for them. The rest of us can look at a Timex. When you hit 24 hours and one second, the bagel can go here (points to his mouth). 

Please note that if you are pregnant, or sick, or sick of being pregnant — do not fast. That’s just common sense — which you don’t find often in religion. But Rabbis agree: if you’re feeling crummy, don’t be a dummy: feed your tummy! 

However, if you’re okay, you’re in the mood to detoxify, and you want to jump on the scale and see how much weight you lost just before you gain it all back, this is your chance.

It is recommended that you break the fast gently. Don’t be eating a chopped liver with sour pickles and a corned-beef chaser. Have a little soup, juice, vegetables, noodle pudding, clams casino – just kidding. Pace yourself; portion control. After a fast, your eyes are bigger than your stomach. Which will scare the hell out of your optometrist. 

To sum up, if you’re fasting on Yom Kippur, the important thing is: don’t eat. You might want to write that down if starvation makes you forgetful.

Otherwise, have a meaningful Yom Kippur and a fast fast.

This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York, giving you plenty of food . . . for thought. 

—> https://youtu.be/ZGFcUunDz38

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Dave’s Gone By Skit: Rabbi Sol Solomon’s Rabbinical Reflection #170 (7/24/21): BEN & JERRY’S

(This Rabbinical Reflection first aired July 24, 2021 on the Dave’s Gone By video podcast. youtube link: https://youtu.be/2l4v4oXw2Xc)

Rabbi Sol Solomon offers his Rabbinical Reflection on a cream-curdling decision by Ben & Jerry’s.

Rabbi Sol’s Rabbinical Reflections are heard on the long-running Dave’s Gone By radio/podcast program (davesgoneby.com) and then archived as text and audio on the Rebbe’s blog, Shalomdammit.com, where a transcript of this Reflection may be read. 

Rabbi Sol is also the creator of the stage show, “Shalom Dammit! An Evening with Rabbi Sol Solomon,” which played in NYC in Nov. 2011 and Aug. 2012.

© 2021 TotalTheater Productions. All Rights Reserved.

TRANSCRIPT:

Shalom, Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for July 24, 2021. 

I scream, you scream, we all scream — at Ben and Jerry’s!

Back in the late 1970s, a couple of underachieving Jewish slobs, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, raised $12,000 to open an ice-cream store. Combining their very different skills and sensibilities — did you know Ben Cohen has no sense of smell? Finally, someone who can sit next to old men at the synagogue on Yom Kippur. But in a couple of years, Ben & Jerry’s became a serious brand and, eventually, a world-famous hoo-ha.

To their credit, these nice boychiks always tried to be socially conscious. They donated to oodles of charities and non-profits. They made their packaging more eco-friendly and objected to using growth hormones in their cows. For a while they had a policy that nobody at their company could make more than five times what the lowest-paid worker made. That didn’t last. But Ben & Jerry’s stood as a model for visionary capitalists who could create something people want, be funny and hip about it, improve the world, and still make a bundle. The most conservative, right-wing neo-fascist could sneer at Cherry Garcia and Chunky Monkey — but they still ate it and had to marvel at the company’s success.

Messrs. Cohen and Greenfield sold Ben & Jerry’s to Unilever two decades ago. it is said that they have no connection to the company beyond their first names still being on the buckets. So the horrible things I’m about to say are, I assume, not directed at them. But they certainly are to current CEO, Matthew McCarthy. Well, he can kiss the blarney stone’s tuchas for his leftist, radical, stupid decision-making. He wants gender equity in the workplace? Fantastic. He wants to give black people reparations for slavery? He’s welcome to write a check. But his decision to stop selling ice cream in East Jerusalem and the settlements in the West Bank is more “half-baked” than their most popular flavor.

In a statement last week, Ben & Jerry’s said that selling their product in the “occupied” West Bank was, quote, “inconsistent with our values.” So boycotting a country that annexed land it won in a war against perpetual enemies and then building citizens’ houses on that land, is inconsistent with the values of making people obese and giving them heart disease?  

In response to Ben & Jerry’s BDS bullshit, the Israeli government is very likely to do what all Jewish people do when threatened — call their lawyers. They did it three years ago when airbnb, the company for people who don’t think they’re good enough to stay in hotels, airbnb banned listing properties in the territories. Benjy Netanyahu got on the phone to Moskowitz, Moskowitz, Moskowitz, and Flywheel. They put up a flurry of lawsuits, and airbnb reversed its policy. To save face — well, one of their faces — airbnb promised to take any money coming in from those properties and funnel it to humanitarian aid. I just hope the CEO of airbnb gets AIDS.

But I digress. In current times, when even ice cream is politicized, Ben & Jerry’s is facing a backlash over its anti-Zionist actions. Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett called them “the anti-Israel ice cream.” South Florida politician Lavern Spicer tweeted, “I will never buy Ben & Jerry’s again. They might as well change their name to Hamas and Adolf’s.” A little hyperbolic Lavern, but appreciated nonetheless. 

The BabylonBee satire magazine created a new Ben & Jerry’s flavor: Push the Jewish into the Sea Salt and Caramel. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, who has as much reason to eat his feelings as anyone, says he’s reluctantly giving up Cherry Garcia. And right here on Long Island, Town of Hempstead Supervisor Don Clavin bashed Unilever in a speech. He vowed to remove every Lipton teabag and Hellman’s mayonnaise jar from government offices. And let’s not forget Breyer’s ice cream, which is for people who don’t think they’re good enough to eat Super Fudge Chunk. 

Uniloser has opened up a pint of worms with its decision to punish Israel simply for treating land in Israel like Israeli land. It’s time for Unilever, airbnb, and all these suddenly “woke” enterprises, that have no trouble doing business in China, Russia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia; it’s time for them to think real hard about who the good guys and the bad guys really are in this world. Until then, it’s up to us reasonable people to boycott them. Ben & Jerry’s go peddle your lumpy shit-cream elsewhere. We won’t buy it, we won’t eat it, and we’ll make sure your economic future hits a very rocky road.

This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York. Whatever happened to Sealtest?

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DAVE’S GONE BY SKIT: Rabbi Sol Solomon’s Rabbinical Reflection #169 (4/30/21): MERON

Rabbi Sol Solomon’s Rabbinical Reflection #169 – MERON

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RABBINICAL REFLECTION #169 – Meron

(https://davesgoneby.net/?p=26212. on youtube: https://youtu.be/JANamY6kZZs)

Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for April 30, 2021. 

Happy Lag B’Omer everybody! And if you’ve ever had your Omer logged, you know just how delightful that can be. 

Lag B’Omer is a relatively minor holiday on the Jewish calendar, but our people appreciate it because it is a happy one. Well, not completely happy. God won’t let a Jewish holiday be completely happy. And this festival, in particular, is about putting a bookend on a time of gloom.

Some say Lag B’Omer is celebrated because that day marked the end of a terrible plague in the Jewish community. No, not bad drivers. Rabbi Akiva, who was a great sage — and a mediocre parsley — had a lot of disciples who started dropping dead between Passover and Shavuoth. Somehow, on this date, they stopped dying. Maybe it was Pfizer, maybe Moderna — whatever. Suddenly it was time to rejoice. 

Now, a completely different explanation for Lag B’Omer involves one of Ravi Akiva’s disciples, Shimon bar Yochai. Lag B’Omer is the day he kicked the b’ucket. So who celebrates a death? Well, this Yochai guy was something of a mystic. By writing the Zohar, he started the Kabbalah ball rolling. He told his followers, now that I’m leaving my body, all my teachings and good deeds belong to the universe. So don’t mourn; go have a wedding, do a dance, get a fun haircut, light a bonfire because of all the light I’ve brought into the world. And marshmallows.

So that’s what Jews have been doing — taking a break during a somber time on the calendar, when everyone’s worried about the harvest, and having a party. And if you happen to be in Israel, you can go visit the tomb of Shimon bar Yochai, which happens to be in a town called Meron. I think you know where I’m going with this. 

Year after year, hundreds of thousands of Orthodox Jews make a pilgrimage to Meron for feasting and fun. It’s like Woodstock — only Jews don’t take acid; we get acid reflux. The Yidlach gather for this festival — sometimes 400,000 people show up for this Lag B’orgy.

April 2021, because of COVID, only 100,000 came. Easy-peasy, right? Except, a few people slipped, folks behind them couldn’t go backwards — voila! Stampede. 45 people crushed to death like grapes in a Manischewitz pulper. 150 more wounded. It’s the worst peacetime disaster in the history of Eretz Yisroel. I know you’re waiting for a joke but no…that’s the emmes. 

Who’s to blame? Everybody, of course. First of all, you have the insular Orthodox, who don’t think the greater community’s rules apply to them. We saw this with the Haredis in Brooklyn, who were holding massive, unmasked weddings and funerals when the governor was begging everyone: don’t even hold small unmasked weddings and funerals. Were Cuomo’s restrictions draconian? Did the Orthodox exacerbate a health crisis? Or vice versa: by disregarding protocols, did they prove that, at least for people under 60, we’ve all been going overboard with a punishment that’s worse than the disease?

Even if that were true, and Governor Cuomo was erring on the side of caution — well, not with his schmeckel but with everything else — what the Haredi were doing was unbelievably selfish and thoughtless. “We follow American laws to the letter…up until the moment we don’t happen to agree with them. Who needs police? We police ourselves.” So elected officials who crave the Orthodox vote look the other way when rules are bent. 

Sometimes that’s fine — sometimes it enables catastrophe. Wifebeaters and child molesters keep on beating wifes and molesting childs while the Rabbis try to fix things behind the scenes. Ask the Catholic church how well that works. And it’s this entitled arrogance of the Haredi attitude that tells Bibi Netanyahu, “We’re gonna put a hundred thousand people on a road meant for 30,000. HaShem will be our crowd control.” But they forget: God likes crushing things. Look what He did to Samson.

Jews have good reason for being wary of outsiders. From Roman soldiers to Spanish inquisitors to Cossacks — if a goy was on your doorstep, he wasn’t holding a check from Publishers Clearing House. However, when it comes to legitimate concerns about public safety — whether you’re spitting corona droplets on your cousin or getting pushed so close to a stranger your quarter shoes land on his forehead — it would be nice if my brethren would show a little consideration for the bigger picture.

Besides, what’s so wrong with a few more weeks of distancing? We’re Jewish. We shouldn’t be going to mass.

This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches.

Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON IS MISCAST `21 (Put a (Jewish) Curse on You)

MCC Theater held a virtual open call for submissions to their “Miscast” benefit, in which singers perform theater songs that they wouldn’t ordinarily get to sing. Rabbi Sol Solomon chose this number from the Melvin Van Peebles concept album-turned-Broadway musical, Ain’t Supposed to Die a Natural Death.

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All content (c) 2021 TotalTheater Productions.

Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #168 (04/10/2021): Normalcy

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Rabbinical Reflection #168: Normalcy

(Rabbi Sol’s Rabbinical Reflections air on the long-running radio show/podcast, Dave’s Gone By. Watch on youtube: https://youtu.be/BZO2xOs8pPs)

Shalom, Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for April 10, 2021. 

What do we want? Normalcy! When do we want it? Soon. Please!

In case you didn’t know, since March 2020, America has been in various modes of lockdown, quarantine, and stasis, owing to the coronavirus pandemic. This was a sensibly safe response to a disease that swept through the world killing hundreds of thousands of people and putting millions of others in grave danger — and in danger of the grave. Each time we thought we’d seen the worst of it, another wave would come along and submerge us in fear. It’s like listening to an Oasis album. Every time a six-minute anthem finally ends, you’re like, “Ooh, silence. Beautiful quiet.” And then another fucking Oasis song starts.

Life has been like that for the past 13 months. We get our hopes up that the CDC and the NIH and CIA have a handle on the virus equivalent of the Gallagher brothers, and then, Boom!, there’s a holiday, families gather, people travel, and the numbers shoot back up. You could understand Dr. Fauci warning, “hold out a little bit longer. You don’t want to see your mother-in-law anyway, so stay home!” And you could sympathize with vulnerable people or those too young to qualify for the shot, saying, “Sorry, but wearing a mask is not fascism. Put it on, wash your hands, and have fun storming the capitol.” 

But what a magnificent century we’re in! We can encounter a brand-new disease, get our drug companies working on it, and half a year later already have a remedy ready for launch. Thanks to President Trump, the medicine rolled out at warp speed, and thanks to President Biden, it’s being distributed as systematically as dollar bills at a farbrengen. 

As of this ranting, 100 million Americans have received at least one dose of the Pfizer, Moderna, or J&J vaccine. Nearly 20 percent of the U.S. population, including myself and my dear wife, Miriam Libby, and eleven of our 21 ½ children, is fully vaxxed! So why am I vexed?

The answer stems back to the most basic human idea of fairness: Patience followed by reward. Endurance rewarded with triumph. Eat your broccoli, then you can have ice cream. Unless you had steak with the broccoli, in which case you’d be mixing milchig with fleishig, so you have to eat the broccoli AND wait six hours for the ice cream, but don’t complain because some people go to bed hungry and you got to eat steak, so shut up, you kvetch.

But back to my point. We are taught that if we deny ourselves for the greater good, we’ll get some of that great good. Save your pennies for a rainy day, and you’ll have money to buy an umbrella. Since 2020, we have been denying, and forgoing, and masking, and isolating, and socially shrinking because we understood the bargain: when the vaccine comes, and the herd immunity kicks in, life will be life again. We got mad at mayors and governors who appeared to jump the gun on reopening because they valued commerce over public health. We dreaded restoring schools until we realized that juveniles may spread a ton of disease, but not to each other. We cringed at watching another press conference from Governor Cuomo because…he’s Governor Cuomo. And we waited. 

So, nu? We’re getting our shots, we’re doing our best…where’s the reward? Two weeks after the second shot, we’re 90-something-percent protected against the Wuhanian flu. We’re more likely to get hepatitis from a hobo than Covid from a co-worker. And yet, the Center for Disease Control says, “Keep wearing your mask. Don’t get on a plane unless you have to. Stay six feet away from your neighbor. Don’t lick a postage stamp unless you know where it’s been.” Basically the same rules we’ve been tolerating since Alex Trebek was still hosting Jeopardy. So what was the point of the shots? Why put ourselves — or, more importantly, myself — through the inconvenience, the uncertainty, the soreness of receiving a subcutaneous Fauci ouchy, if the result is merely more of the same? 

Imagine a guy going on a date with a hot girl at her place. “Now Reuven,” she says, “did you remember to bring a condom?” “I sure did!” “Did you put it on?” “Oh, yes.” “Great, now stay in the kitchen and make me a sandwich.” What the hell? 

Why am I shooting some profit-driven pharmaceutical company’s untested RNA into my bloodstream if I still must approach the world through solitary confinement? Why do I have to walk in a bank still looking like a bank robber? Why is it after boosting all my antibodies, all I hear about is Covid variants that can kick sand in my antibodies’ face?

You know, the Haredi community has taken a hatload of heat for their response to the pandemic. They obey their own rules, they’re careless with protocols, they hold massive weddings barely six inches apart let alone six feet. And the media has taken significant pleasure in reporting that the spread of Covid has been rampant among the Orthodox. Makes sense. Funny, but they haven’t been reporting — among all the black-hatters testing positive — how many dropped dead? Apart from a couple of decrepit rabbis, how many have kikt di emer? How many on ventilators or in hospitals? Versus…how many had two days of a bad headache and a sleepy streak? Heck, I get that just taking a poop. I’m not saying the haredi should be proud of their insular arrogance, but maybe the rest of us have over-reacted more than they under-reacted.

HaShem, if you’re listening: how about a break? Howzabout acknowledging those of us who’ve done everything right and rewarding us? it’s time to give us the ice cream — non-dairy! We don’t want to be too greedy.

This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York.

(c)2021 TotalTheater. All Rights Reserved.

https://shalomdammit.wordpress.com/2021/04/09/rabbi-sol-solomons-rabbinical-reflection-166-4-10-2021-normalcy/
https://davelefkowitzwriting.wordpress.com/2021/04/09/non-fiction-essay-humorous-rabbi-sol-solomons-rabbinical-reflection-168-4-10-2021-normalcy/

Dave’s Gone By Skit: Rabbi Sol Solomon’s Rabbinical Reflection #167 (2/26/2021): PURIM JOKES 2021

RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #167 (2/26/21): Purim Jokes 2021

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(Rabbi Sol’s Rabbinical Reflections appear on the long-running radio show/podcast, Dave’s Gone By. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAnTjN0qWOE&t=3s)

Shalom, Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for February 26th — Purim 2021! 

As I often do on Purim, one of the rare jolly holidays on the Jewish calendar, I’m going to forego my usual bitching and kvetching and, instead, tell a couple of hilarious jokes that you damn well better laugh at.

We begin on Delancey Street, where a guy walks into a deli and asks the old man at the counter, “Do you sell pickles?”

“Funny you should ask,” says the counterman. “I have sour pickles, half-sour, butter pickles, thin slice, jagged slice, pickles in brine, extra large, extra small, extra dill. And these are just the domestic.”

“Wow,” says the customer. “You must sell a lot of pickles.” 

“Not really,” sighs the counterman. “But the guy I buy from? Boy can he sell pickles!”

What can we learn from this joke? We learn that sometimes it’s not what you’re selling but how you’re selling it. Nancy Reagan could tell teenagers, “don’t do drugs”; she might as well have told them “do drugs!” for all the good it did. But if Beyonce or Lady Gaga say it their way, the message might stick. Or if you’re trying to teach Talmud, or derech eretz to your children, and it’s not getting through, don’t give up; adjust. I suggest smacking them around and making them recite the sh’ma standing barefoot on ice cubes, but that’s just me.

On to the next joke. Many years ago, a great Rabbi and his favorite student were traveling together through Poland to get to Warsaw. One evening, after a long trek, they decide to stop and pitch their tent in an open field. After prayers and some talmudic discourse, they both retire for the night.

A couple of hours later, the Rabbi wakes up, nudges the student, and says, “Chaim. Chaim. Look up at the sky and tell me what you see.”

Chaim yawns and says, “I see a black sky with many millions of stars.” 

“Yes, and what may we deduce from this?”

“Well, Rabbi, astronomically, the view conveys the vastness of the universe. Scientifically, we can tell from the sky’s color that it’s three o’clock in the morning. And theologically, we see the power and majesty of God and our own insignificance by comparison. What does it tell you, Rabbi?”

“Well, first of all, Chaim, it tells me someone has stolen our tent.”

What a delightful joke! Not least because, admit it, you were expecting something disgusting between the Rabbi and the kid sharing a tent. Shame on you! If it was a priest, okay, but not a Rabbi! Still, this is a gentle joke that balances mankind’s longing for the sacred and splendiferous with his earthbound ties to the earth and its more mundane attributes. It also makes fun of Polacks.

And it reminds us not to miss the forest for the trees—or the tent for the stars. We get bogged down in the mechanics of life and get ground up in the gears of detail. Sometimes it behooves us to stop, take stock of our surroundings, and maybe put an alarm system around our tents.

Our final bit of humorosity, also goes back in time—this one to Soviet Russia in the 1970s. A Red Army officer is visiting a school and questioning all the students in the classroom. He goes to a Russian girl and says, “Who is your father?”

“The Soviet Union,” she replies. 

“And who is your mother?” 

“The Communist party,” she says. 

“And what do you want to be when you grow up?”

“I want to work with my comrades for the state.”

The officer goes to a little Russian boy sitting behind her.

“Who is your father?” 

“The Soviet Union,” says the boy.

“Who is your mother?”

“The Communist party.”

“And when you grow up, you want to be . . . ?” 

“A worker for the glorious party.”

The officer smiles and moves on to a scrawny child in the back of the room. 

“What’s your name?”

“Mordecai Groizman.” 

“Ah,” sneers the Officer. “Who is your father?”

“The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.” 

“Mm hmm. And who is your mother?”

“The Communist Party of the Russian Federation.”

“Very nice. And do you know what you want to be when you grow up?”

“Oh yes,” says the boy. “An orphan.”

Ah, the beauty of mordant Jewish wit. Even at the expense of angering an enemy who could send his parents to Siberia, the child tells the truth and embeds a curse inside it. You can always hope your adversary is too stupid to get that the jokes on him. But, let’s face it, it’s a little stupid of you to take that chance. At a time when we scrutinize—and sometimes over-scrutinize—things goyim say about the Jews, it’s nice to have a joke where the Yidl lobs a grenade the other way. 

And isn’t that what happened on Purim? Haman planned to kill all the Jews, but Queen Esther convinced the Persian king that was a bad idea. Not only was Haman hung from the noose he’d built to murder Esther’s cousin, but Haman’s ten sons were killed in battle by Jewish commandos. The only thing left of Haman was his three-cornered hat and his name, which we drown out with noise in the synagogue. Very often Jews taste the first misery but get the last laugh.

Happy Purim! This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York. 

Dave’s Gone By Skit: Rabbi Sol Solomon’s Rabbinical Reflection #166 (1/28/2021): MAKE THEM HEAR ME

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RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #166: Make Them Hear Me

(airs as part of the New York Theater Workshop/Poetic Theater Productions “Let Them Hear You” virtual open mic night, Jan. 28, 2021. watch on youtube: https://youtu.be/u6laq_dzYA8)

Shalom, Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon, founder and spiritual leader of Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York. And this is a Rabbinical Reflection, a mini-sermon, as part of the virtual open-mic night, “Make Them Hear You.” CAN YOU HEAR ME? Good.

This sermon, this event, is all about joy and the future. No matter what side of the political fence you are impaled on, we are coming out of a dark period. And as the father of six teenage daughters, I have seen some dark periods. It’s like I live in a Kotex factory. 

But here, we are talking about a nation riddled with division, disease, and dismay. And last May wasn’t great, either. 

How do we get through this? How do the newly unemployed keep emailing resumes that never get read? How do playwrights get up and scribble their hearts when they couldn’t get produced when theaters were open? How do I keep writing these Reflections even as my prostate fills my shoes with urine?

The answer lies in the great Samuel Beckett paradox, “I can’t go on. Meh, I’ll go on.” We go on because the alternative is jumping out a window. Or going to a New York nursing home, kissing an old person, and waiting.

But death is not the answer. Well, it is, if the crossword clue is “Blank of a Salesman.” But otherwise, death deprives us of the three Ps that make life worth living: pastrami, porn, and pharmaceuticals. So to stop spiraling downward, we aspire upward. Old hippies and politicians call this “hope.”

And once you’ve drunk that Kool-Aid–or, in my case, Dr. Brown’s CelRay—

you ascend to the next level of hoping that ha-olam coolo (the whole world) will unify to build a better tomorrow. Kumba-yada-yada-yada: the great pipe dream of promise. 

We are like the barflies in The Iceman Cometh, all of us, from Bernie Sanders looking so jolly at the inauguration to the dingdongs who stormed the Capitol thinking a home invasion would save America, to the BLM window smashers who thought looting would change America, to the putzes who think wearing a mask during a pandemic is fascism, to the yutzes who stand outside and risk pneumonia to get a shot for COVID. We are all idiots programmed to be hopeful. It is our human DNA.

Emily Dickinson once wrote, “Hope is the thing with feathers.” I don’t know what the fuck that means, so I wrote my own poem and here it is: 

“Let’s take a moment while the year is still newish

To hope for the best, be you black, white, or Jewish

May landlords and tenants avoid going broke

May Covid-19 go the way of New Coke

May Israel make peace with more Arab nations

May God put less blood in my girls’ menstruations

Health and good fortune from this little Hebe

To all–except Mitch McConnell and Rashida Tlaib

We’ve come through this crisis much older and wiser

May 2021 be our mood stabilizer

We have to be hopeful. What else can we do?

If not, we’ll be shtupped in 2022.

This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon. Shalom, and shana tovah.

(c)2021 TotalTheater. All rights reserved.

Dave’s Gone By Skit: Rabbi Sol Solomon’s Rabbinical Reflection #165 (1/17/2021): FREE SPEECH

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(Rabbi Sol Solomon’s 165th Rabbinical Reflection aired Jan. 16, 2021 as part of the Dave’s Gone By show. watch video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/Y0DFpad8eto).

Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of January 17th, 2021.

Can we speak freely? No, I mean, can we speak, freely? I don’t like the “Stop the Steal” mishegoss any more than you do, and I think the nudniks who stormed the Capitol building deserve the strongest punishment. Like fines, imprisonment, or being trapped in an elevator with Jeanine Pirro in your left ear and Nancy Grace in your right. And they’re both using megaphones. And guess what? They’re angry.

But back to the point: we’ve got a paranoid President who is circling the drain because he’s terrified of being called the one thing he is–at least in terms of the 2020 election–a Loser. Not with Israel and the Middle East; he’s a winner there. Not with Wall Street and big business; he’s a Superman there. And, up till March of last year, not with the economy, which had low unemployment, tons of job growth, and a gung-ho attitude. 

But COVID knocked him down, as it did 350,000 of his countrymen. Trump’s rash pronouncements and veiled racial signaling appealed to America’s baser instincts, so although 75 million people voted for him, 80 million didn’t. He lost. Deal with it. I wish he would. I wish his Confederate flag-waving acolytes would. I wish the folks on QAnon would get a Clue-Anon.

However, just before the riots, the President gave a speech where he dubbed the elections fraudulent, the news fake, and the elections rigged by Big Tech. He called on Congress to recount everything, and he said, and I quote, “I know that everyone will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard,” unquote. He also praised the size of the crowd–he does love a big crowd–and urged them to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue. As a protest. As a way for those who legitimately felt the election was stolen to make their voices heard.

For this, Donald Trump was again impeached. For spinning a false narrative, yes, about the election, but moreover for inciting the crowd to riot. “Something is wrong here, really wrong,” he said, “and we fight. We fight like hell, because if you don’t, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” You know what that’s called? Rhetoric. Not insurrection, not incitement to anarchy. It’s a politician telling his believers not to give up hope and to channel their rage into action. If some followers in buffalo skins and football-fan camouflage took that to mean storm the government, break stuff and take stuff, that’s on them. At the very least it’s trespassing; at most it’s sedition. 

The Democrats are accusing the President of having a signed First Sedition. True, he wound the bozos up, but he didn’t set them loose, any more than the makers of Cabbage Patch dolls doing TV commercials telling parents “buy these horrible things for your even-more-horrible children,” caused riots in Kmart. 

But pushing past impeachment and trying to remove Donald Trump from office–which will happen two weeks after he’s already been removed from office–my problem is with the censoring of free speech. President Trump has been banned, permanently, from Twitter.     Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram have deleted him for however long they choose, and YouTube has pulled his channel down. Far more worrisome, they’re doing the same for all his nutty followers who now have no place to share their cries of “fraud!” and “conspiracy!” Google, Apple, and Amazon have all removed the social-media site Parler, because too many kooks were spoiling the broth.

Now, these are private companies–sort of–so their CEOs have the right to monitor everything that goes on them. If you own a restaurant, you can’t discriminate against your customers based on race or gender, but you can still demand, “No shirt, no shoes, no service.” I’ve thrown people out of my synagogue for wearing dirty tallises. Well, they weren’t wearing anything underneath them, but that’s neither here nor there.

The point is we are on a very slippery slope when our biggest purveyors of public palaver start telling us, “Well, you’re allowed to post hopeful things about Joe Biden’s inauguration, but you can’t write anything questioning the legitimacy of his victory.” “You’re allowed to condemn the violent idiots rioting in Nancy Pelosi’s office, but don’t you dare encourage the peaceful idiots to keep marching two blocks away.”

When I was a little Rabbi, a Rabbette, I was taught three things you couldn’t do: yell fire in a crowded shul, slander someone, or be so obscene that a reasonable person would go, “dude, I’m as kinky as the next fetishist, that’s messed up.” But no law says you can’t lie. That’s not even one of the Ten Commandments. Wait, let me make sure (thinks and counts), nope. False witness is different. And there’s certainly nothing in there about not sharing things that you actually believe are true–even if there’s overwhelming evidence they’re false. 

So what happens when you censor folks on the fringe? You make them angrier, you drive them deeper underground, and now it gets harder to track them to make sure they don’t escalate from angry TikTok videos to kidnapping Ilhan Omar. You also cause everyone else to self-censor. “Hmm, maybe I better not post this because they’ll just take it down anyway. Maybe I better not think this, because then I’ll waste time posting it, because they’re just gonna take it down anyway.” 

I am of the mind that you say what you have to say, and if I hate it, I get to say what I have to say back at you, louder. The problem in 1925 was not that Hitler published Mein Kampf; it’s that not enough people read it and went, “ooh, this guy’s bonkers and maybe dangerous.” The problem is not that right-wing Republicans are posting that the elections were a fraud; it’s that they believe it and won’t be de-convinced no matter the proof. Still, prohibiting them from non-violent, non-slanderous, non-obscene communication is non-okay.


Big Brother is already watching us from every stop light, website, Smart TV, closed-circuit camera, and GPS system. You can’t sneeze without someone in the CIA muttering gezundheit. Must we have social-media platforms that restrict content based on alternative narratives? Do we really want to side with Cardinal Maculani over Galileo? With Anthony Comstock over James Joyce? With Ayatollah Khomeini over Salman Rushdie? 

In my version of reality, Donald Trump was an okay president who made just enough poor decisions to lose the election. In your version of reality (points), Donald Trump was a terrible president who should have been impeached before he was elected. Or in your version of reality (points elsewhere), Donald Trump was a great president who got cheated out of a second term. Can’t we all just not get along? Tolerating stupidity is one of the great virtues of our nation. That and cream soda. What, you disagree? That’s your right.

This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York.

(c)2021 TotalTheater. All rights reserved.

Dave’s Gone By Skit: Rabbi Sol Solomon’s Rabbinical Reflection #164 (12/31/2020): 2020 FAREWELL

Rabbi Sol Solomon’s Rabbinical Reflection #164 (12/31/20): 2020 FAREWELL

(Rabbi Sol Solomon’s 164th Rabbinical Reflection airs Thursday, Dec. 31, 2020 as part of the Dave’s Gone By annual New Year’s Eve special). youtube link: https://youtu.be/1J8f9dTce1o.

Shalom, Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for New Year’s Eve, December 31, 2020.

Well, it’s been a year, hasn’t it? I mean, we’ve had some doozies: 1929, 1941, late 2001, a very bad dental appointment I had in 2017. It’s the nature of living that we have to enjoy the good times, because the shitty, rotten, what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-God? times come up right behind them.

The year started well. The stock market was booming, so a couple-hundred really rich people got really richer. And that trickled down to the rest of us because unemployment sank to three percent. Which made it a terrible year for lazy people because now there was no excuse for not getting a job. Everyone was hiring! They weren’t paying a living wage or decent health benefits or treating you like a human being, but you could get a job if you wanted one.

Also, we felt kinda safe. Kim Jong-Un seemed to like Donald Trump and the feeling was mutual. We killed an Iranian General by drone, and Iran went, “eh, we’ve got others.” Meanwhile, American diplomacy was creating peace in the Middle East! Well, not the whole Middle East—never the whole Middle East—but Israel is now doing trade and tourism with Sudan, Bahrain, and United Arab Emirates. It’s an Abu Dhabi honeymoon!

Granted, at home it was politics as usual. 117 BIPOC Democrats were running for President, which got whittled down to . . . an old white guy. Maybe a too-old white guy, but Joe Biden picked a black woman running mate. And thank God for that because anyone whiter than him and Mike Pence would hurt people’s retinas. And through it all, the left continued to despise Donald Trump, the right despised Bill—uh, Hillary—uh, Obama—uh, anyone who doesn’t like country music. President Trump was impeached—remember that? Remember why? Because he allegedly solicited foreign help in the 2020 elections. The Republicans called that crazy and blocked an indictment. Months later, it’s Trump who’s bitching the elections are rigged, and it’s the Democrats calling him crazy. If you ever thought the world was nothing more than a snowglobe that HaShem shakes up and down to amuse Himself, 2020 was your year.

Harry and Meghan exited Buckingham Palace, England brexited from the European Union, and Yuri Tolochko sexited from his blow-up doll. Look it up. 

And, of course, the world blew up in the middle of March. One day, a few passengers got sick on a cruise; a month later, the globe is closing restaurants, theaters, nightclubs, massage parlors—or so I’ve been told—and ordering everyone stay home, wear a mask, and don’t get within six feet of another human being. Go figure, the Unabomber becomes a role model. And worse, thousands of people die. New York’s Governor Cuomo herds all the old geezers into nursing homes, where they do not get herd immunity. And Central Park turns into a M*A*S*H unit because the hospitals are full of victims on ventilators suffering from a malady the President once called a hoax.

Where did Coronavirus come from? You tell me. Did Wuhan mishandle it? Did someone undercook the bat they were making for dinner? Did swine flu go through conversion therapy? The only good news is that a disease no one heard of in March already has two vaccines to prevent it in December. Now if if you can just keep from coming down with corona when you’re on the long lines to receive the shot, we’d be getting somewhere.

So we’re nearing 350,000 dead, 19 million diagnosed, and everyone avoiding each other like the plague—because of a plague. Everyone, that is, except, I’m ashamed to say, Orthodox Jews, who think goyishe rules don’t apply to them. Ten thousand of them show up at a wedding in Williamsburg where they sing, dance, eat, drool, and pull the garter off the Rabbi’s leg. Maybe my Jewish brethren think if they stay among their own kind, they don’t affect anyone else. Except the mailman, the doctor, the grocer, the funeral director. They say they’re being unfairly targeted for just trying to keep their businesses open—especially since the media simultaneously glorified Black Lives Matters protests—which weren’t exactly masked, socially distanced, or peaceful.

To be fair, schvartzes had a lot to feel violent about. They didn’t come through 400 years of slavery and oppression to ignore a policemen crushing a suspect’s neck. Or a bunch of other hinkie deaths of unarmed perps who just happened to be the wrong color. And even more deadly than rogue policemen? Murder hornets! Have you heard about these things? Along with Covid, the Asians have given us flying, stinging insects that are killing off the flying, stinging honeybees that keep our ecosystem going.

And since we’re talking biblical catastrophes: Locusts devoured all the food in East Africa, wildfires burned up half of California, and Cats became a major motion picture. This was the year Hamilton came to Disney, Tiger King came to Netflix, and Harvey Weinstein came just enough times to put him in prison. Aunt Becky from Full House also went to prison, although for some reason, the writers of that show didn’t.

2020 was the year we lost Sean Connery, Kirk Douglas, Diana Rigg, Olivia de Havilland, Eddie Van Halen, John Prine, Tom Seaver, Whitey Ford, Terrence McNally, Toots Hibbert, Terry Jones, Buck Henry, Carl Reiner, RBG, Squiggy, Regis Philbin, and “Jeopardy’s” Alex Trebek. No question: they will be missed. 

To paraphrase Charles Dickens: It was the worst of times, it was the worst of times. But hey, we still got through a presidential election and the less-awful candidate won. SpaceX put humans into orbit—not the humans we’d want to send into orbit, but it’s the science that counts. And speaking of science, because we’ve all been staying indoors, animal species that were becoming extinct are coming out to play again, and best of all: researchers in Australia discovered that giving doxycycline to koala bears cures their chlamydia! Who knows? Maybe by this time next year, they’ll zap the gonorrhea out of those poor giraffes. 

I hope we’re here next year. Well, I hope I’m here next year. But if we can get through the pandemic, and the global warming, and the political divide, and the racial unrest, and the coming apocalypse, we just might have a passable 2021. Hey, I’m Jewish. That’s as optimistic as I get. But even if it’s an even worse year, you can still try to be the best you. In times like these, even HaShem couldn’t ask for more.

This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches. Shana Tovah, ovah and ovah.

(c)2020 TotalTheater

Dave’s Gone By Skit: DAVE’S GONE CANCELING #002 (7/11/2020): Quick Draw McGraw

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DAVE’S GONE CANCELING #002 – QUICK DRAW McGRAW

((c)2020 David Lefkowitz. This piece first aired July 11, 2020 on the 754th episode of the long-running radio show/video podcast, Dave’s Gone By.)

Ladies and gentlemen, last week, we inaugurated this new segment of the Dave’s Gone By program, Dave’s Gone Canceling. We here in the Daverhood feel it is important to call out cultural icons who represent the worst kinds of racism, sexism, genderism, and jingoism. It isn’t enough to put questionable content into context, we must erase it! Cancel it! Begin a clean slate so that America can cease its unrest and . . . rest. 

A week ago, we eviscerated musician and painter Joni Mitchell for her appropriation of black-American culture. Sure, she’s one of the great pop songwriters of the 20th century, but she dressed in blackface on an album cover; therefore, she must be banishe’d from the cultural landscape. There’s no room for shades of grey in our black-versus-white society. You either make politically correct art all the time, or you get called out and canceled. 

Which brings us to this week’s offender. Someone white, someone who prides himself for upholding law and order—just like the police, and we all know how wrong they are these days. Someone who not only oppresses a Mexican who serves him, but appropriates Latinx stereotypes whenever it suits him. All of this, by the way, in the name of “fun.” 

I am, of course, talking about that Cancel Criminal, Quick Draw McGraw. Hanna-Barbera’s white cartoon horse who serves as a sheriff in the Old West. His deputy? A little Mexican donkey with a ridiculous accent, a sombrero, and the embarrassing name, Baba Looey—a bastardization of the Cuban song “Babalu.” Granted, Baba Looey is often shown to be smarter than his boss and warning Quick Draw of impending danger, but he is still the lackey, the second banana, the comical sidekick donkey to the great white horse. 

To make matters worse Quick Draw isn’t satisfied with having a best-friend Mexican stereotype; he, himself, takes on a farcical hispanic persona when becoming El Kabong. A masked vigilante, El Kabong conquers his enemies by shouting “Ole’!” and then bashing their heads in with a Spanish guitar. If you don’t think that’s offensive, just imagine El Kabong as a hegemonic Anglo-Saxon. He’d be named Elliot Kabson, he’d shout “Fore!”, and whack his enemies with a golf club. Or a bottle of chilled white wine.

To those of you who say, “Yes, there’s something unseemly about how Mexicans were treated in that animated series. But these things were drawn 60 years ago. Why take offense now?” Because cartoons are evergreen entertainment, and they’re loved best by children—the most susceptible to systemic racist ideology seeping into their post-cradle crania. Do we want our five year olds watching Quick Draw McGraw and then growing up to say, “Hey, where’s my servile donkey with the funny accent? And why is it, when I hit my little brother over the head with an electric guitar, he didn’t go `Kabong!, he just bled a lot and had to be rushed to the hospital?”

We must protect our youth, ladies and gentlemen, and we must also be offended on behalf of our brothers who are Spanish, Mexican, Cuban, Puerto Rican, Brazilian, Columbian and all those other countries with diarrhea food. It is therefore with a corazon muy triste that we cancel you, Quick Draw McGraw. Baba-Boo to you! Your 45 cartoons shall be blotted out and erased like Daffy in “Duck Amuck.” Long live political correctness. El Ka-bye. 

–> https://davesgoneby.net/?p=27784


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