Dave’s Gone By Skit (5/30/2026): STORYTIME – Rabbi Sol Solomon shares an A.I. rap and reads “Miriam and her Dancing Shoes”
For this week’s StoryTime segment on Dave’s Gone By, Rabbi Sol Solomon reads a Jewish rap concocted for him by Artificial Intelligence and then reads Sandy Eisenberg Sasso’s “Miriam and her Dancing Shoes”
This segment aired April 25, 2026 as part of episode #1029 of the “Dave’s Gone By” video podcast program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz. Full episodes also available on youtube, Facebook (davesgoneby), and on DavesGoneBy.com.
All content (c)2026 TotalTheater Productions.
More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com
Rabbi Sol Solomon’s Rabbinical Reflection #208 (5/23/2026): MOSQUE ATTACK
This Rabbinical Reflection first aired May 23, 2026 on the Dave’s Gone By video podcast.
Rabbi Sol’s Rabbinical Reflections air on the long-running Dave’s Gone By program (davesgoneby.com) and are also archived on the Rebbe’s blog, Shalomdammit.com.
Rabbi Sol is also the creator of the stage shows, “Shalom Dammit! An Evening with Rabbi Sol Solomon” and “Hate Speech…With Love: Another Evening with Rabbi Sol Solomon.”
TRANSCRIPT: Shalom, Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon, with a Rabbinical Reflection for late May 2026.
So often in these mini-sermons, I am mourning and expressing rage at attacks on Israel, synagogues, and the Jewish community. It came as almost a shock this week when a mosque, the Islamic Center of San Diego, became the target of terror. Three innocent people, including a security guard, were murdered by a couple of teenagers, whose stockpile of weapons included 30 guns and a crossbow. This is a horrible story, yet another in a long line of gun-crazy crazies ruining life for the rest of us. Condolences to the survivors of the dead, and compassion for the Moslem community enduring an unquestionable hate crime.
However, that said, there’s also room for gratitude. (And yes, here comes the politically incorrect part). As Jews, we should be grateful that the shooters were named Clark and Vazquez, and not Cohen and Vogel. All we needed now was another excuse for the watermelon crowd to bash us.
Speaking of the Intifada, I hate to say it (actually, I don’t hate to say it; I’m just gonna say it), but this is the Muslims getting a taste of their own medicine. For 78 years, Jews have lived with both the threat, and the realization, of terror violence. Year after year of bombings, blastings, stabbings, hijackings, four all-out wars, and then the atrocities of October 7th, 2023. Jews are forever the targets of blind hatred and slaughter – all too often at the hands of Arabs.
I am not saying, “Aha! This time we get one back!” That is reductive and ugly, even for me. Then I’d be like the Luigiites. They celebrate a psycho because the healthcare guy he shot was responsible for much more suffering and death than Luigi’s single killing. Still, two wrongs don’t…dot dot dot.
But perhaps this awful tragedy at the San Diego mosque will be a reminder that no matter how you despise someone else, terrorism is the wrong response. For example, just because it feels right to assassinate the guy who replaced supermarket cashiers with automated kiosks doesn’t mean it is right. Maybe.
And let’s not forget, those teenage losers in California didn’t just hate Muslims. These white supremacists abhorred schvartes, faigeles, women – because they couldn’t get laid – Republicans and Democrats. Oh, and they wrote a manifesto blaming Jews for everything. Well, isn’t that a kumbaya moment? Muslims, white supremacists, leftist progressives, and writers for the New York Times all standing together against the Hebrews. Hey, free country. Loathe us all you want. But if you go the next step, once in a great while, it’ll be your brains on the sidewalk. You have been warned.
This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches, in Great Neck, New York.
Rabbi Sol Solomon’s Rabbinical Reflection #207 (5/16/2026): ABRAHAM FOXMAN
This Rabbinical Reflection first aired May 16, 2026 on 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 #207 (5/16/2026): Abraham Foxman
(c)2026 David Lefkowitz. aired May 16, 2026 on Dave’s Gone By.
Shalom, Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon, with a Rabbinical Reflection for mid-May 2026.
Baruch Dayan HaEmet Avraham Chanoch Hanach Fuksman, which is a lot of names to say goodbye to Abraham Foxman, for 30 years the indefatigable head of the Anti-Defamation League, the ADL.
Now before the Israel-bashers chime in, please don’t confuse the ADL for AIPAC. AIPAC lobbies for money from American politicians to keep Israel safe, secure, and on the map. The ADL calls out the kind of idiots who bitch about AIPAC. The ADL is there to monitor anti-Semitism and torchlight it before it becomes Germany 1933.
Founded in 1913, the ADL is an off-shoot of the B’nai Brith – and if you’ve ever had a brith, you know how painful that can be. Thank God for the B’nai Brith because it’s an organization devoted to protecting Jews and the Jewish homeland, Israel. The Anti-Defamation League is exactly what its name promises: taking people to task when they do or say racist things affecting the Jewish people.
That was Abraham Foxman’s job for 30 years. Trained in the law, Foxy would hear some terrible comment by a politician, or a great actor, or Mel Gibson, and he’d be there to say “watch your fucking mouth.” (Maybe not in those words.) With his gift of persuasion, Foxman would guilt the guilty party into apologizing and admitting the error of their ways, or at least pretending to, for the sake of public relations.
More than just catching and punishing people, Foxman truly wanted our enemies to realize the harm they were doing and make them see our side of story. We find a great example of this in a column earlier this year in the Jewish Daily Forward. It covers Foxman’s prickly friendship with another recent dead guy, Jesse Jackson. When he ran for president, Jackson might’ve garnered sizable Jewish support: he was a liberal, a friend of MLK, a voice for the underclass. But Jesse got frustrated by the bureaucracy of New York politics and was heard calling the Big Apple “Hymietown” – which is a nicer way of saying “Kiketown.” Just the way “schvartzetown” is a nicer way of saying . . . Well, anyway, the media picked up Jackson’s racial slur, not to mention his buddy-buddyship with Louis Farrakhan, and now not only wouldn’t Jews vote Jackson for president, they wouldn’t even trust him as a Shabbos goy.
So, Abraham Foxman let Jackson have it – which started a dialogue, which led to years of a grudging mutual respect and Jackson paying attention to and often supporting the Jewish community. Was he perfect? No. Are you perfect? No. Am I perfect? (pause) Was Abraham Foxman perfect? Of course not. It’s easy to overreact when someone in a pissy mood blurts a slur. However, hate speech is a slippery slope, and more power to the ADL for throwing down a little gravel to impede the slide.
How sad it is that Foxman died at a time when we need him most: when social media has brainwashed a generation of college students to despise Israel, when every musical micro-talent spouts Hamas talking points better than their own shitty navel-gazing lyrics, when the New York Times – always suspect when it came to Eretz Yisroel – falls all over itself printing false narratives for liberals to immerse themselves in a Gaza pity party.
Jonathan Greenblatt is the new CEO of the ADL (actually, not so new; he’s been running it since Foxman retired a decade ago), and I commend him for filling his predecessor’s big shoes in a quieter way. But silence isn’t always golden, and while Abe Foxman helped bring the right wing under Israel’s chuppah, the progressive left has left the altar and thrown itself into the arms of Hezbollah. I don’t think Foxman’s turning in his grave (because he’s a big guy and his stomach would get blocked by the coffin lid), but I’m sure he’d have much to say about the state of the world and the state of Israel. If only we could still listen.
This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches, in Great Neck, New York. Alav HaShalom.
For this week’s StoryTime segment on Dave’s Gone By, host Dave Lefkowitz reads Laurie Keller’s “Potato Pants.”
This segment aired April 11, 2026 as part of episode #1028 of the “Dave’s Gone By” video podcast program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz. Full episodes also available on youtube, Facebook (davesgoneby), and on DavesGoneBy.com.
All content (c)2026 TotalTheater Productions.
More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com
Highlights of The Greeley Tribune’s weekly Cop Log column, plus odd stories from elsewhere.
This segment aired April 4, 2026 as part of episode #1027 of the “Dave’s Gone By” video podcast program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz. Full episodes also available on youtube, Facebook (davesgoneby), and on DavesGoneBy.com.
All content (c)2026 TotalTheater Productions.
More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com
For this week’s StoryTime segment on Dave’s Gone By, Rabbi Sol Solomon reads “Jacob and Bunny: The Magic Easter Bunny Comes to Passover Seder” by Leslie Sandler.
This segment aired April 4, 2026 as part of episode #1026 of the “Dave’s Gone By” video podcast program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz. Full episodes also available on youtube, Facebook (davesgoneby), and on DavesGoneBy.com.
All content (c)2026 TotalTheater Productions.
More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com
Rabbi Sol Solomon’s Rabbinical Reflection #206 (4/4/2026): PASSOVER TODAY
This Rabbinical Reflection first aired April 4, 2026 on 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 #206 (4/4/2026): Passover Today
(c)2026 David Lefkowitz. aired April 4, 2026 on Dave’s Gone By. Watch:
Shalom, Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon, with a Rabbinical Reflection for Passover 2026.
My friends and acolytes, I hope you are savoring a safe and pleasant Pesach: carbing up on matzoh, guzzling down the Manischewitz, feeling gratitude that however cruddy things are for Jews right now, at least we’re not slaves to Pharaoh in Egpyt. We’re wage slaves to one-percent billionaires, but still, an improvement.
If you were at a Seder this year, you saw all the important symbols of Passover – objects on the table, all representing aspects of our exodus. I would like to recap those, but instead of the typical symbolism explained in the Haggadah, I intend to connect the Seder plate items to our modern situation as Jews today. So pay attention, dammit!
We begin, of course, with the matzoh. This is the unleavened bread our forefathers ate when they were scrambling out of Eretz Mitzrayim because there was no time to make baquettes. Matzahs are flat, ugly, and tasteless – like Billie Eilish. We eat matzah to remind us how afflicted we are by pop stars who anoint themselves as political oracles and then bash Israel while defending murderous, backward Arab regimes. Discouraged? Just remember: in the first part of the seder, we pay much attention to matzah. But then we break it up, it crumbles, and soon it’s forgotten. Are you listening, Chappell Roan? Couple months, no one’s listening to you.
Next on the Seder Plate we have a roasted shankbone, which represents sacrifice, the animal sacrifices our ancestors made to HaShem, and also what they had to give up to wander in the desert for 40 years. Please add to that the sacrifices Israelis are making now to rid the world of Iranian nukes and knuckleheads. Also, the tzuris all Jews are enduring because Israel’s very existence is seen as a colonial catastrophe. The z’roah, therefore, symbolizes the boner that liberals get when they can let their pent-up anti-Semitism loose under the guise of anti-Zionism.
Also on the plate: a egg. Hard-boiled, like Bibi Netanyahu. The beitzah makes us think of birth, growth, renewal. We can also equate the egg with speeches of Bernie Sanders because like an egg, they come out of an asshole.
Next, we have bitter herbs – not to confused with bitter guys named Herb who lose everything in a divorce. No, bitter herbs are sour veggies or horseradish meant to evoke tears for our enslaved antecedents. If, at your Seder, you convince a gentile to eat a spoonful of white horseradish that he has mistaken for pudding, that’s a great way of getting revenge for the Inquisitions, one goy at a time.
But don’t put away the vegetables yet. There’s a spot on the Seder plate for other leafy greens. These are to remind us – well, me — that no matter how much this world makes me want to hide in a corner consuming brisket and Joyva ring jells until I reach a food coma, that would merely delay the issues I must confront eventually. Herbs and flora remind us: first the spinach, then the chocolate lollycones. It’s delayed gratification, which is, let’s face it, the whole fucking history of Judaism.
Speaking of gratification, at last we get to something edible – charoset! It’s a kind of chutney made from apples, cinnamon, nuts, and wine. If you balance the ingredients, it’s unbelievably delicious. If you use too much of one item…it’s still frickin’ delicious, it’s charoset! – which represents the sweetness of freedom. Also, it looks like a hybrid of shit and cement. When we persecute immigrants, legal or otherwise, just because they’re foreign, we’re forgetting that this country was built by these people out of shit and cement: plumbing, sewers, agriculture, and the concrete of roads and buildings. By all means, let’s keep tabs on our migrants, but acknowledge they usually make our lives pretty sweet.
Lastly we get to karpas, or parsley, which is another goddamn vegetable, which makes me pine for brisket even more.
There you have the essential items on the Passover seder plate, a mix of bitter and sweet, hard and soft, smooth and crunchy, eggy and whatever the opposite of eggy is. These foods encompass the contradictions of life and the variety of our Judaic experience. They also remind us that while the goyim celebrate Easter with glazed ham, lamb shanks, and roasted potatoes, we’re eating this crap. No wonder Herb is bitter.
Still, I wish you a peaceful Pesach, with next year in Jerusalem or any place in Israel because it’s ours.
This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches. Kol b’seder.
Dave’s Gone By Skit (3/21/2026): STORYTIME – The Story of Baby Moses
For this week’s StoryTime segment on Dave’s Gone By, Rabbi Sol Solomon reads “The Story of Baby Moses” by Alice Joyce Davidson
This segment aired March 28, 2026 as part of episode #1026 of the “Dave’s Gone By” video podcast program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz. Full episodes also available on youtube, Facebook (davesgoneby), and on DavesGoneBy.com.
All content (c)2026 TotalTheater Productions.
More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com
