Rabbi Sol Solomon’s Rabbinical Reflection #158 (1/2/19) – Farewell 2018
Aired Dec. 31, 2018 on Dave’s Gone By. Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/8RIIElz0hH8
Shalom, Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the New Year: January 1, 2019.
Well, you can’t say it wasn’t interesting. Even though we had no major war, the economy was robust, and Ruth Bader Ginsberg somehow stayed alive, 2018 was still a pretty goofy year.
We had winter Olympics in South Korea, while President Trump flirted with the supreme leader of North Korea. And who knows what the real relationship is between Trump and Vladimir Putin? Robert Muller is trying to figure it out, although his investigation is going on longer than the Torah portion at a stutterer’s bar mitzvah.
Meanwhile the stock market, which has been on an almost uninterrupted winning streak since the final weeks of George W. Tush, finally obeyed the laws of gravity and dropped 4000 points by early winter. That said, the numbers have been so topsy-turvy, by mid-January we might be back at new highs again—and even newer highs now that Jeff Sessions is out as attorney general. So it’s likely just a matter of time before—just as in Canada now—you can get marijuana anywhere you wanna.
Sessions wasn’t the only one through the revolving door of Donald Trump’s cabinet. The EPA-hating head of the EPA, Scott Pruitt, resigned in July. Trump fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson over his support of the Iran deal. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis disembarked after disagreeing with The Donald about having troops in Syria and Afghanistan—because they’re doing so much good there, right? And even UN Ambassador Nikki Haley hailed a cab—but not before she and the administration made good on their promise to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. The new Embassy opened on May 14—the 70th anniversary of the founding of Eretz Yisroel, so whatever else bad I have to say about our President, he gets a big “mezuzahs up—way up!” from me about that.
But not everything was good for the Jews in 2018. In October, a racist lunatic opened fire on Shabbos services, killing eleven at the ironically named “Tree of Life Synagogue” in Pittsburgh. Meanwhile, in Israel, Bibi Netanyahu has a friend in Trump but not many supporters on his home turf. He’s likely to be indicted in two separate fraud investigations. His wife Sara is already indicted on charges that she bilked the government out of $100,000 worth of free meals. I know Kosher food is expensive, but sheesh!
Speaking of folks facing prison time, Bill Cosby is doing 3-to-10 in the pen as punishment for decades of making women stir his pudding. Harvey Weinstein lost his movie company and faces criminal charges over his naughty behavior. And Kevin Spacey struck a blow for equality by proving that gay men can be just as creepy as straight ones.
One creep who got away with it and then some is Brett Kavanaugh, who probably did some bad drunken things to even drunker girls back in the day. But without any real evidence against him, he beat the rap and is now tilting the Supreme Court so far right, it’s a wonder all the benches don’t slide to the window.
And yet, even with so many countries—like Brazil and Hungary—electing hard-line xenophobic nationalists—under the guise of “populism”—good things have also occurred. By a popular vote of two-to-one, Ireland repealed its ban on abortion. India finally decriminalized homosexuality. Iceland made it illegal to pay men more than women for the same job. And after a 35-year ban, Saudi Arabia reopened its movie theaters and gave women the right to drive. They even opened an amusement park with a house of horrors—no, wait, that’s just the Saudi Arabian Embassy.
In the 2016 US midterm elections, a record number of women were voted into Congress—most of them Democrats, so the GOP now faces a government more split than Chris Christie’s pants. Even before the House pivots left next week, the White House faces gridlock. As we speak—well, I’m speaking—we’re in a partial government shutdown because the President wants a wall, and the Democrats prefer a bridge. At stake are a few measly billion dollars, which, considering we’re facing a trillion-dollar deficit next year, is really chump change. And hopefully we’ll change the chump in 2020.
Some not-so-nice changes happened to the internet this year. Facebook knows your voting habits, food preferences, and underwear color—and they’ve been selling that information to data-mining firms for years. And the FCC torpedoed “net neutrality,” so now big media companies can charge more for faster internet—or slow down or block sites that aren’t theirs. You think it’s no big deal, but just wait till it takes eight hours to watch a threesome on Redtube.
And speaking of hot, California nearly burned to the ground with wildfires. Too bad Indonesia didn’t loan them their tsunami water. And summertime saw heated protests over gun control after yet another school shooting—this one at a high school in Parkland, Florida. Seventeen people were killed, though many who survived created the gun-control activist group, Never Again. I kind of wish they’d pick another phrase, since that one is reserved for a previous horror, but be that as it may, one kid who survived became a real spokesman for the movement and has just been accepted into Harvard. Boy, the requirements to get into the Ivy League just get tougher and tougher, don’t they?
We had some tough losses in 2018: Penny Marshall, who was in a league of her own. Stan Lee, who was Marvelous. John McCain, a war hero who voted his conscience. (He didn’t always have the brightest conscience, but who does?) We lost both Barbara Bush and George Herbert Walker Bush, who had a mediocre Presidency but absolutely horrible sperm. He also had a funeral that lasted longer than a stutterer’s Bar M—oops, I used that one already. Farewell to film directors Milos Forman and Bernardo Bertolucci, who made people say, “I can’t believe that is butter.” Goodbye to Anthony Bourdain and Kate Spade, who were luckier than 99 percent of the world population but still chose the next life over this one. Aloha to Stephen Hillenburg, who had this crazy idea that a sponge and a starfish would make a fun cartoon, and Stephen Bochco, who actually believed TV viewers would want to spend an hour every week with lawyers. Go figure. Farewell to Burt Reynolds, who posed in Playgirl magazine to show his longest yard. We lost Bill Daily of I Dream of Jeannie, David Ogden Stiers of M*A*S*H, Harry Anderson of Night Court, and Hugh Wilson who created WKRP in Cincinnati. Novelist Tom Wolfe, who had the right stuff. Country musician Roy Clark—Salute! Aretha Franklin—Respect! Dolores O’Riordan, who should have lingered a little longer. Neil Simon, who, lucky for us, was always Broadway bound. Stephen Hawking, who popularized physics but bashed and boycotted Israel, so wherever he is, I hope he’s still in a wheelchair.
Returning to happier news this year, Ethiopia and Eritrea declared a truce after 20 years of war. Who knew? And a whole soccer team and their coach were rescued after three weeks trapped in a cave in Thailand. And water was discovered on Mars. Meh. If they discover seltzer there, then they’d have something. But everyone was looking up at the sky on August 11th, when a partial solar eclipse made us put aside the violence, the politics, the dysfunction, and just take in the wonder of nature. It was the moment we all realized that no matter how crazy things are every day, at any minute the earth could spin off its axis, and we could all be obliterated, so why worry?
My hope for 2019 is that we all work together, we all help each other, and that we actually do discover seltzer on Mars. Hey, it’s better than getting chocolate milk from Uranus.
I wish you all a most happy and healthy Shanah Tova Americana. This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York.
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