November 2013 – Dave's Gone By

Dave’s Gone By Interview (11/30/2013): SARAH KAUFMANN & Rabbi Sol Solomon

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Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews The Cheese Lady! Sarah Kaufmann

Topics include: carving cheese and carving more cheese

Segment originally aired Nov. 30, 2003 as part of the “Dave’s Gone By” radio program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz.

Please Note: Segments extracted from “Dave’s Gone By” may have music and other elements removed for timing and media re-posting considerations. For the full interview with all elements, please visit the audio of the complete original broadcast.

More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com

Dave’s Gone By #446 (11/30/2013): SAY CHEESE

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Here is the 446th episode of the long-running radio show/podcast, Dave’s Gone By, which aired on UNC Radio, Nov. 30, 2013. Info: davesgoneby.com.

Featuring: Rabbi Sol Solomon chats with cheese sculptor Sarah Kaufmann. Plus: Inside Broadway, Rabbi Sol’s Rabbinical Reflection on Thanksgiving Meeting Chanukah, Bob Dylan – Sooner & Later (grateful), and Thanksgivukkah Saturday Segue.

host: Dave Lefkowitz

Guests: cheese sculptor Sarah Kaufmann, Dave’s wife Joyce

Note: Because of recording difficulties, some of the spoken portions of this episode are of less-than-optimal audio quality

00:00:00 DAVE GOES IN w/ Joyce (football, nostalgia & New Orleans)
00:54:30 SATURDAY SEGUE – Thanksgivukkah
01:18:00 Sponsors
01:21:00 INSIDE BROADWAY
01:50:00 GUEST: Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews Sarah Kaufmann
02:12:00 BOB DYLAN – Sooner & Later (grateful)
02:35:00 Friends & Thanks
02:41:00 RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #83 – Thanksgiving Meets Chanukah
02:48:00 DAVE GOES OFF – Current Events
02:56:00 Upcoming
02:59:00 DAVE GOES OUT

Nov. 30, 2013 Playlist: “Give Thanks and Praise” (00:55:00; Bob Marley). “Chanukah” (00:58:00; Lewis Black). “I Have a Little Dreidel” (01:03:00; Groovebarbers). “Thanks to You” (01:04:00; Chris Smither). “Grateful” (01:06:30; Blake Babies). “Thanks” (01:09:30; Pere Ubu). “Thanks for the Memory” (01:12:00; Bing Crosby). “Julie Taymor & Bono in Spider-Man” (01:33:30; Forbidden Broadway – Alive & Kicking!). “Question and Answer” (01:43:30; Violet 1997 off-Broadway cast). “The Cheese Alarm” (01:46:00; Robyn Hitchcock). “The Cheeky Cheese” (02:10:30; Sexton Ming & Billy Childish). “Covenant Woman” (02:13:00), “Tough Mama” (02:19:00), “One More Cup of Coffee” ({live 1975 version}; 02:23:00) & “We Better Talk This Over” (02:28:30; Bob Dylan). “Shir Amami” (03:00:30; Jane Siberry).

Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #83 (12/1/2013): Thanksgiving Meets Chanukah

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RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #83 (12/1/2013): Thanksgiving Meets Chanukah

aired Nov. 30, 2013 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: http://youtu.be/0tnyNRjxP5M

Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of December 1st, 2013.

When the moon is in the seventh house, and Jupiter aligns with Mars – who gives a shit? I don’t follow astrology. But when two happy holidays intersect, that can be a time of much joy and reflection.

Now, all too often, Christmas and Chanukah fall around the same time. This has been hell on Jews, because the media conflates the two festivals into one big secular holiday, which it is not. There’s no such thing as Chrismukkah. Judah Maccabee did not find the baby Jesus in the Syrian temple, and Christ was not crucified on the shamash of a giant wooden menorah.

And yet, the proximity of Yuletide and Chanukah made for an uneasy coexistence. Jewish children would see their goyishe friends on Christmas Day riding new bicycles, playing X-box, unwrapping a new drum set. Then the Yiddishe children would come home, light a candle, sing a song, and then hold out their hands for a big present. Wow! Two ounces of chocolate money. A day-glo dreidel. Next door, the blonde kid gets a Vespa; in the Jewish house, “happy Chanukah, here’s a dollar. Give half to charity.” Is it any wonder the yidlach would look longingly at outside culture and say, “I want to go to there!”?

So Jewish families started playing catch-up. It wasn’t enough to put a menorah in the window. Now we have to decorate, just like the goyim. And the first night of Chanukah is meant to approximate Christmas Eve, so the kid gets a half decent gift. That way, the Jewish child can go next door and say, “Ha ha! Sure, you got all that stuff from Santa. But at 12:01am on Christmas Day, you’re done. No more presents. I got an iPad tonight, and there are seven more days of presents to come. Good stuff like chocolate or money, or chocolate that looks like money. Have fun cleaning up pine needles for a month, you foreskin-totin’ suckaah!”

Even so, the drawbacks of an omnipresent Christian holiday overshadowing a
Jewish one can be oppressive. It’s like people who have their birthday on Christmas. You get screwed, because not everyone double-gifts. You receive a single present, and it’s marginally better than the two items you would have scored had your parents shtupped in February instead of April.

But sometimes, holiday alignment isn’t a bad thing. This year has a rare occurrence of Chanukah falling at the same time as Thanksgiving. Wednesday night we light the first candle, and Thursday is turkey day, with Chankuah continuing all through Thanksgiving weekend.

We can draw parallels between the two festivals. First of all, they both call for gratitude. On Thanksgiving, Americans are grateful that the Indians were trusting and outmatched in warfare, so the Pilgrims could take advantage of them, give them smallpox and take their land. Thanks Pocahontas, pass the giblets. In the Chanukah story, Jews had to fight against Hellenism. I don’t know what they had against girls named Helen, but there you go.

After decades of treating the Jews fairly, the Syrians changed their tune to a song of anti-Semitism. They killed and pillaged, they made Judaism illegal, and they defiled the Hebrew temple in Jerusalem. This caused a number of Jewish families to revolt – and God knows, I’ve met some revolting Jewish families. But you had Mattathias and his son, Judah Maccabee, who fought the Syrians of the Greek empire and drove them out of Judea. They Hebrews and re-dedicated the temple, so we’re grateful to them and to HaShem for saving the Jewish people from conversion, death and unidentifiable gyro meat.

Chanukah and Thanksgiving have other things in common, as well. They’re both pretty secular. Chanukah is post-bible; it’s a cultural tradition rather than a top-down mandate. And Thanksgiving is for anyone happy to be living in the good ol’ USA. Both holidays also share special foods associated with each. Chanukah, you have potato latkes and jelly donuts. Thanksgiving, you have turkey and Dunkin’ donuts. Sports are also a part of both holidays. Thanksgiving, you sit in your armchair and you watch people who aren’t fat and lazy play football. Chanukah, children sit on the floor with a dreidel and learn the basics of gambling. You start with a pot of money, and then try to take money from everyone else. Is it any wonder Jewish children grow up to be bankers?

Chanukah is the festival of lights; Thanksgiving is a feast of lite beer. Both holidays also incorporate fire. Thanksgiving, we recall the way our ancestors burned down Indian teepees and villages. Chanukah, we stand at a menorah holding a colored candle while molten wax runs down our hands. You’d think after 5,000 years they could invent a candle that doesn’t make you look like the accident guy on “Dancing with the Stars.”

Most of all, both holidays are about spending time with family and friends. They’re about women arguing in the kitchen, men falling asleep during halftime, children getting loaded up on snacks and then being forced to eat cranberry sauce – does anybody enjoy eating cranberry sauce? Chanukah and Thanksgiving are about expressing our appreciation to HaShem for keeping us alive, either by letting us defeat empires or giving us delicious crops to harvest. Either way, it’s something worth singing about:

“Over the river and through the woods to Bubbie’s apartment we shlep;

It takes quite a while, and she’s kind of senile
And the baby comes home with strep.

Out of the tunnel, across the bridge and through the old neighborhood
The latkes were yucky, the presents were sucky
And yet, and yet, life’s good.”

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 #82 (11/19/2013): Crystal Spa

RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #82 (11/19/2013): Crystal Spa

Aired Nov. 16, 2013 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: http://youtu.be/uoM7W0ecZKg. https://davesgoneby.net/?p=27958

Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of November 17th, 2013.

I’m not exactly a spa kind of guy. Relaxation frightens me, and if you’re gonna put me on a massage table, you better have huge boobs and a latex glove because I ain’t leaving without my money’s worth. If I were the spa type, however, one place I would hesitate to visit is the Crystal Sauna Wellness Park in Thuringia, Germany. By all accounts, it’s a lovely place: gourmet food, heated pool, sauna, live entertainment, cozy rooms. They really should promote the place more.

Or maybe they shouldn’t. An advertising agency came up with a print ad for Crystal Park that went on the spa’s website. The copywriter wanted to marry the theme of romance and relaxation with the name of the venue. Something that said, “spend a memorable evening here at the Crystal Spa.” However, those were not the words they used. Instead they said – and I’m not making this up – quote, “Enjoy the evening hours in candlelight and relax, in a long, romantic Kristall-Nacht.”

You’d think a German would know that putting the words “Kristall” and “nacht” together is the opposite of romantic. It’s like a cruise ship promoting itself by saying, “Come with us on a journey of titanic proportions!”

An employee of the spa said the advertisement was, quote, “a misunderstanding,” one that stemmed from the park’s name, Crystal. It certainly had nothing to do with the beginnings of the Holocaust. But all we can wonder is how a German ad exec could not know that November 9th, 1938 was the beginning of Hitler’s final solution. That was the night of the broken glass – “crystal night” – when German-Jewish store owners were beaten, their windows smashed, ethnic slurs painted on their bricks – the first wave of the Holocaust. Most importantly, it proved to the Nazi regime that they could get away with state-sanctioned brutality without anyone trying to stop it.

It’s like when the first West Coast rapper said, “Hey, the album is a little short. Maybe I’ll do a duet with someone else on the label. How bad could it be?” He tries it, and two years later, every other song on a rap CD has a guest appearance. Yes, the scale of the tragedy is different, but the principle is the same.

Even as we move into the 21st century, 80 years and three generations since the Nazis took power, Germany remains a prickly pear. Grandchildren carry the moral burden for something completely alien to them, and yet some of those guilty grandparents still walk the earth. It’s illegal to be a white supremacist there, or to own or display Nazi memorabilia or even give the “Heil Hitler” salute. Which is probably as it should be. There are silly aspects to the censorship, but consider this: in 1945, the world would have had every right to set off 25 atom bombs over Germany. So even allowing that country to survive – not to mention letting them reunite – is an act of mercy for which they should be abundantly grateful.

Sure, the Holocaust is taught over there, relentlessly, I hear. So there are people who say, “it’s enough. The country can’t move forward if you grind everyone’s soul into the past.” But the reply to that is, well, this Park-Spa ad. Some product of the German school system, who went into advertising, didn’t hear the alarm bell go off in his head. He saw “Kristall,” he thought of “nacht,” and he had no compunction about slamming them together. This is why there can never be too much Holocaust education – especially over there. And the same goes for any act of savagery that we never want to see again.

I would hate to think that 60 years from now, in Saudi Arabia, or Pakistan, or Syria, there’d be a commercial on TV going, “Come to Achlabad for your bedding needs. On-sale now, our heavenly mattress and box spring – twin towers of comfort.” Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to a blooper reel.

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

(c) 2013 TotalTheater. All rights reserved.
–> https://davesgoneby.net/?p=27958

Dave’s Gone By Interview (11/16/2013): ANDREA MARCOVICCI

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Dave Lefkowitz interviews actress and singer Andrea Marcovicci

Topics include: Cabaret, Broadway, “The Front,” “The Hand.”

Segment aired Nov. 16, 2013 as part of the “Dave’s Gone By” radio program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz.

More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com

NEW YORK – JANUARY 12: Host Andrea Marcovicci during the 2004 Nightlife Awards Concert at Town Hall January 12, 2004 in New York City. — PHOTO CREDIT: Peter Kramer/Getty Images

Dave’s Gone By #445 (11/16/2013): MARCO SOLO

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Here is the 445th episode of the long-running radio show/podcast, Dave’s Gone By, which aired on UNC Radio, Nov. 16, 2013. Info: davesgoneby.com.

Featuring: Dave chats with actress-singer Andrea Marcovicci; Rabbi Sol Solomon offers his Rabbinical Reflection on Germany’s Crystal Spa; Inside Broadway; Saturday Segue (Bjork); Dylan – Sooner & Later (“Dylan” at 40).

Host: Dave Lefkowitz

Guest: singer-actress Andrea Marcovicci

00:00:01 DAVE GOES IN (ornaments)
00:34:00 SATURDAY SEGUE (Bjork)
01:07:00 INSIDE BROADWAY
01:39:00 GUEST: Andrea Marcovicci
02:37:00 Friends
02:46:00 BOB DYLAN – Sooner & Later (“Dylan” at 40)
03:01:30 Weather
03:03:30 Sponsors
03:11:00 RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #82 – Germany’s Crystal Spa
03:19:00 Joyce on Tape
03:21:00 DAVE GOES OUT

Nov. 16, 2013 Playlist: “Tidal Wave” (00:37:30), “Hit” (00:47:30) & “Birthday” (00:57:30; The Sugarcubes). “Cover Me” (00:40:30), “The Boho Dance” (00:43:00) & “Bachelorette” (00:51:30; Bjork). “Discussing Big Fish” (01:34:00; Andrew Lippa & John August). “All in Fun” (01:37:00), “Life, Love and Laughter” (02:02:00), “Sing Me Not a Ballad” (02:19:30) & “Shakespeare Lied” (02:30:00; Andrea Marcovicci). “Lily of the West” (02:49:00), “Mary Ann” (02:52:30), “Big Yellow Taxi” (02:55:00), “Sarah Jane” (02:57:30). “Get Me Out of Here” (03:25:30; Paul McCartney).

Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #81 (11/10/2013): Chocolate-Covered Chips

RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #81 (11/10/2013): Chocolate-Covered Chips

Aired Nov. 9, 2013 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: https://youtu.be/324WHZEig1c

Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of November 10th, 2013.

As if Americans weren’t fat enough already, the fine people at Frito Lay have come up with a new snack item that began its rollout last week: chocolate-covered potato chips. That’s right, they’re dipping Lay’s potato chips, the wavy kind, and covering them with milk chocolate. The idea is to create a salty-sweet taste sensation – one that people will remember fondly ten years from now when they’re in the emergency room having their arteries unblocked.

Now, I am a big fan of Lay’s; that includes the Hawaii kind, the sex kind AND the snack-food kind. And of all the big-batch commercial brands, Lay’s, in my humble opinion, does the best potato chips. My dear wife, Miriam Libby, says they make her think of the ideal man: golden, big, and just the right thickness.

I grew up on Wise potato chips, which are tasty but greasy and small. And half of them are partially burned. Eating a bag of Wise chips is like going to a garage sale after a fire; there’s good stuff, but you have to check every item for smoke damage. I like Utz chips because of the name; it sounds Jewish. Utz! Utz! It’s the noise a guy in assisted living makes when he gets off the couch. Uuuutz! Uuuutz! Ut a zoy!

And then you’ve got your boutique chips. These small-batch micro-fryers with their organic chips and their veggie chips and the kettle chips. I don’t get the kettle thing; it’s like they throw in a whole potato with the skin on, and it comes out so crunchy it makes your head hurt. You’ve got your no-salt potato chips…why bother? At their core, potato chips are a salt-conveyance apparatus, just like celery is merely a less-guilty way of getting to the onion dip.

You’ve got ketchup-flavored potato chips, which I think is just trying too hard. You’ve got Pringles – which the company says aren’t potato chips at all, they’re potato “crisps.” Who are they trying to fool? Chips, crisps – “ooh, I don’t have a beard, I have facial hair.” Get over it Pringles, you pretentious assholes.

And speaking of assholes, remember potato chips with Olestra? It was an idea by snack-food makers to add this fat substitute to the food, so you could eat without getting all the cholesterol. You also wouldn’t gain much weight, because the Olestra gave you rampant diarrhea. What a brilliant strategy for dieting! You eat five-dozen potato chips, but you stay slim because a half hour later, out they go. And Proctor & Gamble wins, because as soon as you empty your guts, you’re hungry again. So you can have more potato chips. And then you shit, and then you eat more chips. And then you shit, and you eat more chips. You don’t even have to leave the bathroom. Why risk a horrible accident? Sit on the crapper, put a Ruffles back on the sink, grab a case of Charmin, and you’re in business. Lean back, eat a chip; lean forward, take a dump. Eat a chip, take a dump, eat a chip, take a dump. Repeat until dehydration. You could just sit all day on the toilet eating potato chips. Which is, I believe, how we got Wendy Williams.

I’m pretty sure that Lay’s’ new chips are made with chocolate and not ExLax. And I’m sure they’re delicious. After all, the salty-sweetness combo is not new.

Chocolate-covered pretzels have been popular for decades, and Trader Joe’s was dipping potato chips in chocolate when I was still in Rabbinical school . . . for a few weeks.

Is it gilding the lily, though? Separately, both snack items are close to perfect. The first thing the archangel Gabriel hands you when you get up to heaven is a Cadbury bar. Or, if you’re Mother Teresa, a Godiva assortment. And if there were one snack food most people would take to a desert island, it would be potato chips. Which is stupid, because you’re surrounded by non-potable water, but I’m assuming if you’re on an island that somehow has unlimited supplies of potato chips, on the other side of the island there’s probably a storeroom Diet Pepsi.

But if you put these two ideal items together – potato chips and chocolates, are you overwhelming your tastebuds? I mean, I like Picasso and I like Grant Wood, but you put `em together, and you’ve got the pitchfork sticking through the old woman’s eye. And that’s because her eye is where her elbow should be.

Yes, chocolate and peanut butter go together. And you can even put chocolate – unsweetened – on chicken to make a mole sauce. Or you can put it on moles to make a chicken sauce. Your call.

I suppose the main issue is health-related, especially for weight watchers. At least with regular potato chips – of course, you can’t eat just one, but if you eat ten or so, you have your little indulgence, you count the calories, and then you watch your snacking for the rest of the day. With these chocolate things, one chip and you have to subsist on water and two grapes for the rest of the month. Two ounces have so many calories, they have to write out the number with commas.

Look, I am all for new products, more variety, novel taste sensations. I’m only saying it would be nice if Proctor & Gamble and Nabisco and Nestle would take a little of their R&D money and figure out how to make okra taste as good as an M&M. Maybe there’s a way to combine cauliflower with fish-oil, so that every child in America would be in the supermarket going, “Mommy, mommy! I want caulifish! Oreos are too sweet, nachos are boring – where’s the aisle with the candy bars made of onions and goat milk?”

Anyway, all this talk of snack food is making me hungry. I got my potato chips. (crinkling) Let’s see… I want something sweet… what can I dip it in? mmm…borscht!

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

–> https://davesgoneby.net/?p=27963

Dave’s Gone By Interview (11/9/2013): JEFFREY SPIVAK

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Dave Lefkowitz interviews author Jeffrey Spivak

Topics include: “Buzz: The Life and Art of Busby Berkeley,”
movies, Busby Berkeley, choreography, Flo Ziegfeld, alcoholism.

Segment aired Nov. 9, 2013 as part of the “Dave’s Gone By” radio program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz.

All content (c)2013 TotalTheater Productions.

More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com
More information about Rabbi Sol Solomon: http://www.shalomdammit.com

Dave’s Gone By #444 (11/9/2013): WHAT’S THE BUZZ

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Here is the 444th episode of the long-running radio show/podcast, Dave’s Gone By, which aired on UNC Radio, Nov. 9, 2013. Info: davesgoneby.com.

Featuring: Dave interviews author Jeffrey Spivak (“Buzz: The Life and Art of Busby Berkeley”). Plus: Saturday Segues (Chris Smither, Veterans Day), Dylan (veterans), Inside Broadway and Rabbi Sol Solomon offers his Rabbinical Reflection on chocolate-covered potato chips.

Host: Dave Lefkowitz

Guests: biographer Jeffrey Spivak, Dave’s wife Joyce

00:00:01 DAVE GOES IN w/ Joyce (Starbucks doctor, chocolate & guns, tallest building)
00:46:00 Friends
00:58:00 DAVE GOES FURTHER IN w/ Joyce Weil (football)
01:06:30 Sponsors
01:12:30 SATURDAY SEGUE – Chris Smithers
01:33:30 INSIDE BROADWAY (news & review (01:42:00; Big Fish))
01:58:00 GUEST: Jeffrey Spivak
02:49:00 More Sponsors
02:56:00 Rabbi Sol Solomon’s Rabbinical Reflection #81 – Chocolate-covered Potato Chips
03:03:00 BOB DYLAN – Sooner & Later (veterans)
03:29:00 Thanks & Upcoming
03:32:30 SATURDAY SEGUE – Veteran’s Day
03:53:30 DAVE GOES OUT

Nov. 9, 2013 Playlist: “Get a Better One” (01:14:00), “I am a Child” (01:17:00), “No Expectations” (01:21:00), “Bittersweet” (01:24:00) & “Thanks to You” (01:27:30) & “Leave the Light On” (03:56:00; Chris Smither). “Right Through You” (01:53:30; Alanis Morissette). “Busby Berkeley movie medley” (01:56:30). “Take a Little One-Step” / “Finale (I Want to be Happy)” (02:19:30; No, No, Nanette 1971 Broadway cast). “Busby Berkeley Dreams” (02:43:00; Magnetic Fields). “John Brown” ({live gaslight 1963 version; 03:03:00), “Two Soldiers” (03:09:00), “Arthur McBride” (03:14:30) & “Thunder on the Mountain” (03:21:00; Bob Dylan). “Veteran’s Day” (03:34:30; Judy Collins). “Soldier’s Things” (03:38:30; Tom Waits). “Soldier, Soldier” (03:41:30; The Clancy Brothers & Friends). “Soldier” (03:43:30; Neil Young). “The Soldiering Life” (03:46:30; The Decemberists).

Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’s RABBINICAL REFLECTION #80 (11/3/2013): Redskins

RABBI SOL SOLOMON’s RABBINICAL REFLECTION #80 (11/3/2013): Redskins

Aired Nov. 2, 2013 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: http://youtu.be/rInYlSN4Gpg

Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of November 3rd, 2013.

In 1932, the Boston Braves football team changed their name to another Indian-related moniker: the Redskins. A few years later, they moved to Washington D.C., but they kept their name and have ever since. No one really paid attention to whether the name “Redskins” was offensive – not until 1992, when a group of Native Americans filed a trademark lawsuit against the team. The details are too complicated for me to explain here – because I have no idea what the hell they are. But I do know that arguing went back and forth in the courts for nearly two decades, and still, nobody really gave a crap.

But recent times and sensitivities have changed, and there’s a legitimate movement afoot to get the Washington Redskins to change their name to something that doesn’t bring to mind tomahawks, smoke signals and sunburned skin color.

Team owners remain adamant that the Redskins have an 80-year history that would be needlessly negated by a name change. Not to mention the cost of changing the signage on everything from souvenir jackets to Rex Grossman bobblehead dolls. And let’s not forget having to change all the signs at Washington’s Jack Kent Cooke Stadium – wait, that was changed to FedEx Field in 2000. How terribly sad for the undying legacy of Jack Kent Cooke. I guess.

Anyhoo, people who are against keeping the Redskins ruby tinted always use this example: What if you had the same situation with a different ethnicity? The Florida Yids? The Pittsburgh Polacks? What if there was a basketball team in the NBA called the Darkies? Well, they all are, but you know what I’m saying.

For 80 years, the University of North Dakota nicknamed its team The Fighting Sioux – which sounds pro-Indian until you realize that “Sioux” was a blanket name given by the whites to cover several different Indian tribes. No doubt, the blanket had smallpox on it, too. But hey, if North Dakotans can adapt, why can’t Washingtonians? I realize that asking someone in Washington DC to be flexible is like asking Stephen Hawking to catch a fly ball, but still.

America’s history with its indigenous peoples is one of lies, bullying and bloodshed – which is America’s history with everything. It was only two generations ago that Cowboys and Indians was a game in which the macho anglo, chaps-wearin’, chaw-chewing Cowboys were the good guys trying to tame the savage, sneaky, tomahawk chopping, paint-wearing, ugga-wugga, smoke-signaling red man. Howevermuch scriptwriters tried to make him noble and clever, Tonto was the Lone Ranger’s bitch. Even his name, “tonto,” means stupid in Spanish. I know this because I looked it up – when my junior high school teacher nicknamed me that in Spanish class. I told my parents, and they made her change it. From then on, she called me “hijo de puta,” which she said means “wise one.” I should probably look that one up, too, but I trust her.

Getting back to the Redskins: as someone who comes from an oppressed people – New Yorkers – I empathize with the desire to undo a little piece of ugly history. There’s no good reason not to change the team name if enough people find it derogatory. When teams move, they change – look at the L.A. Dodgers and the Brooklyn Nets. Even the Beatles went through name-revisions. Do you think John, Paul, George and Ringo sat around saying, “No, we can’t change; we have such an important legacy as `The Quarrymen’”?

Of course, the fun part is finding a new name for the Redskins. One blogger suggested “The Washington Monuments,” which is brilliant, especially if it’s a defensive team; you try toppling a monument to get to the end zone. Others have suggested The Washington Warriors, or the Renegades. Then you had the punsters with their government jokes: The Washington Shutdown, The Washington Impasse, The DC Douchebags. And, for those of you getting old enough to eat your steaks in liquid form, how about The Watergates? Or the Reaganomics?

Polls have shown that most people – even Native Americans – are fine with the name “Redskins.” They’re used to it; they’ve even coopted it, the way black people have made the “n” word their own. And by the “n” word, I mean Nikes. Still, why are Americans still eating Aunt Jemima syrup and Uncle Ben’s rice? How many decades have the movies given us fast-talking Hispanic sidekicks, Asian dragon ladies, Italian guidos and Jewish mothers? There’s truth in stereotypes, and even some good things implicit in stereotypes, but there’s also a time to break the mold. So come, Washington Redskins, let’s smoke-um peace pipe and move forward. How? And how.

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

–> https://davesgoneby.net/?p=28899