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Rabbi Sol Solomon chats with comedy writer BILLY VAN ZANDT
Topics include: Jane Milmore, Richard Lewis, theater, Jamie Lee Curtis, Bob Newhart
Segment aired Feb. 8, 2025 as part of the 976th episode of the “Dave’s Gone By” radio/video podcast program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz.
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click above to watch episode #976click above to listen (audio only)
Here is the 976th episode of the long-running radio show/video podcast, Dave’s Gone By, which aired live on Facebook, Saturday morning, Feb. 8, 2025.
Featuring: Rabbi Sol Solomon chats with comedy writer Billy Van Zandt and offers his Rabbinical Reflection on Gazaland; Greeley Times; Inside Broadway (Eureka Day, 300 Paintings), Colorado Limerick of the Damned (Box Prairie).
Guests: playwright Billy Van Zandt; spiritual leader Rabbi Sol Solomon
00:00:01 DAVE GOES IN w/ Joyce: Amtrak, icy, Barney Greengrass, bagels, censorship 01:13:00 BUNION WATCH 01:23:00 COLORADO LIMERICK OF THE DAMNED: Box Prairie, CO 01:29:30 GUEST: Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews Billy Van Zandt 02:23:30 GREELEY TIMES 02:42:00 INSIDE BROADWAY (reviews: Eureka Day, 300 Paintings) 03:06:30 RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #191: Gazaland? 03:15:00 Friends of the Daverhood 03:22:30 DAVE GOES OUT
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Tad Nelson (Guest: Feb. 15, 2025)
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Rabbi Sol Solomon’s Rabbinical Reflection #191 (2/8/2025): GAZALAND?
This Rabbinical Reflection first aired Feb. 8, 2025 the Dave’s Gone By video podcast.
Rabbi Sol’s Rabbinical Reflections are heard on the long-running Dave’s Gone By radio/video 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.
More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com
More on Rabbi Sol: shalomdammit.com
TRANSCRIPT:
Rabbi Sol Solomon’s Rabbinical Reflection #191 (2/8/2025): GAZALAND?
airs Feb. 8, 2025 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip:
Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for mid-February 2025.
I hate to say “I told you so.”
No, I love to say “I told you so.” I TOLD YOU SO! For 25 years I’ve been ranting about what to do with unfriendly Arabs living in Israel. Time and again you’ve heard me holler that if the Palestinians can’t accept Israel as a Jewish state, and if they can’t live in peace with their Semitic cousins, get them gone. Let their neighbors—in 22 Arab countries and 54 African countries—take them, assimilate them, give them 40 acres and a camel. Leave tiny Israel for the Jews because unlike Jews, Muslims can live almost anywhere else. But no, Palestinians wanted right of return and demanded their chunk of Israel’s sliver. That is, when they weren’t calling for the destruction of Yisroel altogether.
After years of terrorist attacks around the world, not to mention 9/11—which I just mentioned—the Mohammedans still rejected brotherhood. Instead, they gave mass murder one more go. On October 7, 2023, Hamas attacked an Israeli music festival and slaughtered 1200 innocent people. Hamas thought the world would go “tsk tsk” for a few days, and then be on their side.
Which is exactly what happened. Left-wing politicians clutched their pearls over over Israel’s so-called “occupation” of its own land. Every major city saw “Free Gaza” and “Stop the Genocide!” spray painted on sidewalks by morons who I’ll bet couldn’t spell “sidewalk.” And speaking of imbeciles, college students obstructed traffic and made their tuition-paying parents cringe to see tent cities, wanton vandalism, and anti-Semitism masquerading as altruism. The media ate it all up.
But then a funny thing happened. America’s wobbly, slightly demented president couldn’t stumble through the election-day finish line, and his middling replacement lost both the popular and electoral vote. Unlikely as it was, on January 20th, America’s previous, very demented president came back into office and began setting off policy time bombs from day one.
Some of Trump’s ideas are crazy, some unworkable, some brilliant, and one is my dream come true. After 15 months of Israel rightfully turning Gaza into Hiroshigaza, the place is unlivable. But just like Japan in 1945, New Orleans after Katrina, and Pacific Palisades as we speak, you can always rebuild. So President Trump says, “Hey, instead of 80 years of conflict, let’s have nobody occupy that shithole for a while. America steps in, contractors get to work, and instead of tenements, bombs, and sand, we’ll have hotels, high-end shopping, casinos, Starbucks, and TD Banks.” American ingenuity and dollars could turn Gaza into a `Middle-Eastern Riviera’—that is the President’s own phrase.
Of course the Democrats pilloried him; of course the terrorist apologists saw it as manifest destiny and nation building all over again. But I don’t hear Netanyahu complaining. And for all the two-state-solutionists who wanted an “international city” that the two countries wouldn’t fight over…isn’t this it?
What if Trump convinces Disney to put a Disneyworld there? Well, it would suck, because it’s Disneyworld, but it’s a start. What if the mafiosos from Vegas built another Luxor in a place where the pyramid theme would actually make sense? What if Chik-fil-A’s built fifty Chickpea Felafels, just to be culturally sensitive?
Mock our president’s bombast all you wish, but nothing else has worked in the region. We’ve tried diplomacy, we’ve tried self-rule, God knows we’ve tried war; why not try balls-out, last-one-to-the-money-trough-is-a-rotten-egg capitalism? Envision a day a decade from now, when Israelis, bored by the Wailing Wall, Egyptians, weary of the Sphinx, Saudi Arabians wanting a Mecca break, Emirati, who are just so done with Dubai—all of them think, “Hey, honey. Let’s take a long weekend in Gazawood. You book the spa, I’ll hit the links, and then we’ll catch Willie Nelson at Madison Square Gazarden!” Israel would be protected, Palestinians would have homes and jobs, and Paramount would have a cheap place to shoot new episodes of Yellowstone. Except, of course, that Gaza wouldn’t look like Yellowstone anymore; it’d be closer to the Yellow Brick Road. I say, Follow!
This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York.
